Watercooler Stories

Man inherits massive clown collection

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Sept. 30 (UPI) -- A Florida man says he inherited more than 13,000 clown items when his father-in-law and business partner died two years ago.

Richard Levine is currently trying to figure out what to do with a warehouse in Davie filled with his late father-in-law's clown collection, South Florida Sun Sentinel reported.

The collection, which belonged to Jack "Clown Jackey" Kline, who died in 2010 at the age of 81, includes clown dolls, paintings, figurines, puppets, photographs, books and costumes.

"They need to be in a museum or something, not in some warehouse," said Levine, 58 of Fort Lauderdale.

Kline, who often visited children hospitals dressed as a clown, amassed the collection over more than 50 years.

"My wife and I had to make a decision. Leave it up there and probably lose it, or bringing it down here," Levine said during a recent tour of his warehouse.

Levine said he has little time to go through all of the items, but he hopes to inventory all of it, sell most of it, keep some of it and donate the rest to a local charity group.

"I am slowly starting to like them and getting enthusiastic about them. I can see how Jack was into them," Levine said. "I don't go for the sad clowns much though, but I really enjoy the happy ones."

El Paso waitress saves customer's cash

EL PASO, Texas, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- A Texas waitress returned an envelope full of cash to a man who accidentally left it behind after dining in her restaurant.

Lizeth Naranjo, a waitress at Guadalajara Restaurant in downtown El Paso, noticed the wad of cash in an envelope on the restaurant's counter Wednesday, the El Paso (Texas) Times reported.

Naranjo, 32, said she ran after the customer, but he had already disappeared from the street, so she stored the $138 in a drawer in the back of the restaurant in case he returned to claim it.

The man, Richard Rechy, 60, went back to the restaurant the next day in hopes that someone had saved his cash, which he said he planned to use to pay off a library fine dating back to his time as a New Mexico State University student in the late 1980s.

Naranjo on Thursday said she recognized Rechy right away and produced his money.

"I joked that I had spent it already," Naranjo said. "I knew he was upset about it, so I wanted to cheer him up."

Rechy said he was thankful for Naranjo's actions.

"It's very emotional when you never have had money and you lose $138," Rechy said. "When someone cares and treats you well after you've had a hard life, you get emotional."

Cane-wielding woman sends burglar running

WILMINGTON, Del., Sept. 29 (UPI) -- A disabled Delaware woman said she used a few good licks from her cane to send a decades-younger burglary suspect packing.

The 55-year-old woman, who wanted to be identified only by her first name, Anita, told WTFX-TV, Philadelphia, she saw the young man coming through a window of her home in Wilmington.

She started wielding the cane after she "saw him put his foot in, his butt in, ... his arm in, his face in."

"My dad told me a long time ago, if the Bible don't get you, the cane will get you," Anita said.

Investigators were trying to determine whether the man was involved in the theft of a television from another house in the same neighborhood. Someone saw two young men carrying a large television down the street, but they apparently set it down and it was recovered.

U.K. prison cable upgrades irk politicians

LONDON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Nearly 3,000 British prison inmates have minded their manners well enough to earn free cable television, government officials said.

Jeremy Wright, a Justice minister and member of Parliament, said in a letter obtained by The Daily Telegraph, 2,976 inmates housed in contract prisons had earned enough credit for good behavior to receive subscription channels offered by British Sky Broadcasting.

The program was meant to reward adherence to the rules but some members of Parliament and other officials were not amused and objected to idea of prisoners being able to tune into anything other than the nine available free channels.

"Prison is not meant to be a place that people enjoy being in," said Chris Grayling, the Justice secretary. "I don't (want to) see prisoners in this country sitting in cells watching the Sunday afternoon match on Sky Sports."

Wright has defended the program, saying it keeps inmates occupied and reduces staffing requirements. He said the final decision on who gets the upgraded cable privileges is left to individual prison administrators.