PEOPLE

Not long ago someone asked Arnold Palmer to invest in a company that would freeze fatally ill people and keep them in cold storage until a cure was found for what ailed them. Palmer politely declined. But professional golfers ordinarily are interested in new investments—for instance, Ben Hogan has his golf club factory, and Palmer a string of laundries. Now Doug Sanders has come up with the biggest investment of all, a 17-story, $1.25 million skyscraper in downtown Fort Worth. After he bought the building, Sanders remarked, "As a kid I was thinking of taking up pool, but it would be pretty hard today to buy an office building playing professional pool. You don't buy too many things these days swinging a pool cue."

When Cub First Baseman Ernie Banks, a Methodist, met Pope Paul VI (below) it was not as if he was an absolute stranger. "Naturally, I have heard of Chicago," said the Pope, "and I know the game of baseball." Which is more than the Hungarians did whom Banks had met in a Budapest hotel a few days earlier during his extended tour of Europe. They guessed he was an athlete but, try as he might, Banks said, no amount of sign language could get across to them the game of baseball.

Pablo Picasso went into seclusion on his 85th birthday at his home overlooking the French Riviera and a loudspeaker at the entrance to his villa repeated over and over: "Mr. and Mrs. Picasso are out and will be gone for several days." But the citizens of nearby Vallauris, where Picasso goes once a month for a haircut, celebrated his birthday anyway. They staged a motorcycle race, the Picasso Grand Prix, through the city streets, and afterward the cyclists drank a toast to his health. "I can't claim that Picasso is a bicycle-racing fan," said the head of the Grand Prix committee, "but once, about 10 years ago, I saw a Picasso drawing of a bicycle. Well, actually it wasn't a bike, and there was no rider, but it was a fine handlebar."

Last season Fullback Jim Brown was helping draw 80,000 people into Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, but this year Actor Jim Brown is not as big at the gate. When promoters could sell only 1,000 tickets to a Jim Brown Day in the stadium that was supposed to have had a supporting cast of people like Harry Belafonte and Sammy Davis Jr. they decided to postpone the affair. The stated reason: the Dallas-St. Louis game was being carried by a Cleveland TV station the same day and many of Jim's friends would want to see it. However, in Hollywood, Brown is still regarded as an attraction. He has been signed to make five more movies

As if winning the pennant and the World Series wasn't enough, Oriole stars Brooks Robinson and Boog Powell have just hit oil in Nebraska. They and 22 other ballplayers are partners in a company founded by Carl Hubbell's nephew, Bill, which has made a strike in Red Willow County.

He had tales of kangaroo rustling in the Outback, camping among bull ants, sheep shearing and lumberjacking, and the way he talked you had to think he was a tough bloke. Prince Charles' description of his six months in Australia ("I could hardly see my hands for blisters"), which appeared in the Gordonstoun School magazine, must have made some of his schoolmates all too eager to prove their own mettle. In an intrahouse Rugby match at Gordonstoun, Charles, the lock forward for Windmill Lodge, was buried in a scrum and turned up with a broken nose. "Unpleasant...inconvenient...an awful bore." said a spokesman for Buckingham Palace, "but we do not believe that it will have any disfiguring effect."

Last summer the photo editor of the Topeka Capital-Journal sent part-time employee Jim Ryun out to West 31st Street to photograph a story on a run-of-Topeka-type family washing its dog. Ryun returned pleased with the assignment. "Was it because the pictures went well?" asked the editor. "No," said Ryun, "it was because the family didn't know who I was." Now they must. The Associated Press last week awarded Photographer Ryun third prize in its Kansas-Missouri photo contest for his picture act, which was captioned, "Hey Jack! How would you like a bath?"

Each year, come autumn, Charlie Brown, the nonhero of the comic strip Peanuts, tries to kick a football. Lucy pulls it away (below) and Charlie Brown goes aaugh! For 10 years Charlie Brown has been gulled by Lucy into trying to kick that football, and this year he even tried twice. On TV, before 30 million viewers, Lucy presented him with a signed document declaring she would not pull the football away. But, as usual, Lucy stole the ball. "Peculiar thing about this document," she told Charlie Brown. "It was never notarized." In the newspaper strip the result was the same, but the reason was different: "An involuntary muscle spasm," she blandly explained. In all honesty, Lucy is not solely responsible for Charlie Brown's ill-fated attempts at football. Artist Charles Schulz, a confessed baseball buff, says, "Football is not a good sport for a comic strip. It doesn't have a static situation. In baseball, Charlie Brown can stand on the mound and wonder what is going to happen. Football moves too fast." So does Lucy.

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