Celebrity Sightings

I love good writing and recently-deceased Roger Angell was one of the best at it. Roger wrote for The New Yorker for decades, usually about baseball. Right now I'm enjoying a collection he published in 2015. Two stories in it made me laugh. 

In a piece on NYC celebrity-sightings Roger mentions his experiences passing stars on the street such as Paul Newman, Babe Ruth (Roger lived into his nineties), Richard Nixon, et al. Once he saw Harry Truman after Truman had left office. Truman was walking alone and Roger muttered a short compliment. Truman responded and they chatted a bit while continuing to walk. Roger writes, "Midway, a man I knew named Harding Bancroft -- a Times executive, in fact -- spotted me and my companion as we came toward him, and performed a double take worthy of the late Oliver Hardy."

The other story which is well-known didn't involve Roger. A woman stopped at an ice cream stand and ordered a cone. After she does she realizes that the man on line behind her is Paul Newman. Trying to remain calm she pretends not to notice him. She pays for her cone and walks away. When she reaches her car she grabs her keys but, what?, doesn't see her ice cream cone. Where did it go? She looks around and doesn't see it. She returns to the stand and explains her predicament to the counterman. He replies "Ma'am, you put the cone in your pocketbook."