Sweet Dreams, Cubbies!
It’s nappy time for a dozen cubs at the Giant Panda Research and Breeding Center in Chengdu, China. Scientists there are working to save the beloved species from extinction. There are only about 1,600 pandas left in the wild, mostly in a few mountain ranges in central China.
Hey, What Are All These Cops Doing Here?
Two burglars who tried to break into a Chinese restaurant in Salem, Ore., at 4:30 a.m. were unaware that the owner was inside working on the security system. He heard them cutting a hole through the roof and called the police. By the time they lowered themselves inside, the cops had the place surrounded.
Food Marketer Struck Gold With Doritos
Arch West created Doritos, the best-selling tortilla chips in the U.S. Mr. West, who died Sept. 20 at age 97, was a marketing vice president at Frito-Lay in the early 1960s when he came across a restaurant near San Diego where the chips were especially tasty. After he failed to persuade his bosses to copy the product as a companion to the company’s corn-based Fritos and Cheetos, Mr. West secretly spent part of his budget on the project anyway. Introduced nationally in 1966, Doritos were a hit in plain and what the company called “taco” flavors. The chips were aimed at the youth market, marketed as “the with-it chip.” Doritos became Frito-Lay’s second-biggest seller, behind Lay’s potato chips.
Mr. West was a native of Franklin, Ind. He grew up in a Masonic home for boys after his father, a Mason, died. Mr. West won a scholarship to Franklin College and became a cheese salesman. After serving as a gunnery officer in the Navy during World War II, he took a job as a food marketer at Lever Brothers. Sales of Doritos grew to more than $1.2 billion in the past year, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a market-research firm in Chicago. But it didn’t make Mr. West rich. “It’s not like we got royalties,” said his daughter, Jana Hacker.
He remained proud of his big hit with Doritos, and during a recent hospital stay insisted his family bring big bags of them for the nurses to snack on. In recent decades, Frito-Lay re-engineered Doritos, making them thinner and adding dozens of new flavors such as “Pizza Supreme” and “Scorchin’ Habenaro.” Mr. West wasn’t enthusiastic about the changes, or the brand’s recent spate of irreverent Super Bowl ads. “He wasn’t real tickled with the weirdness,” his daughter said.
At 83, Connecticut man becomes a perfect bowler
Pete Bochese’s love for bowling began when he was 10 years old and setting pins in Apollo, Pa. At the time, people, generally young boys, stood in the back of the alley and reset the pins. Bochese gradually developed a love for the game, especially since one of the perks of being a pin-setter was free bowling when no one was in the alley.
Mr. Bochese continued to bowl throughout his adult years and is still at the lanes once a week in the Monday night Willimantic Winnelson Bowling League in Norwich. He is a two-time Connecticut senior bowling champion, having won the title in 2002 and 2009. But Bochese had no inkling that he was going to bowl a 300 game on that Monday night. He had just bowled a “lousy” first game and decided to change his ball for the second game. He was thinking he would change back to his first ball for his third game until he finished on a three-strike note and decided to stick with it.
“One after another, I just kept getting strikes,” he said.
Through the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth frames, Pete Bochese bowled perfectly, following a routine after each throw. He said he turned, dried his hands, waited for the ball to come back, picked it up and sent another “beautiful” ball down the lane. As he neared the final frame, the crowd behind him grew, and on his final three balls, he was the only person bowling in the alley. Everyone was watching Mr. Bochese attempt to become the oldest man in the Southeast Connecticut Bowling Association to reach perfection.
“My hands were a little sweaty when I saw all the people watching, but I knew as soon as I threw the ball (in the final frame) that it was headed for the pocket and everybody started to holler,” he said. “My son came over and picked me up and everybody came over to shake my hand. I was more nervous about that than when I was bowling.”
Jeff Bochese said he believes his father is the oldest person in Connecticut to bowl a perfect game. Pete Bochese wasn’t far off from being the oldest in America. Jeff Bochese said the oldest recorded 300 was by an 89-year-old man.
From The NY Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Herald.
