Love of Three Oranges" to shame opened recently in Polk County, Florida, citrus capital of U.S. It seems that a good many locals had tired of Cypress Gardens' famed waterski girlie show, longing to stage scenes from "Something For the Boys."

The act got under way with the arrest in Winter Haven of three youths dressed in women's clothing. Coming as it did immediately following a similar incident in quiet little Eagle Lake nearby, County Solicitor Clinton Curtis moved to the center of the stage surrounding himself with a supporting cast of suspects which jammed his office. Questioning them was scheduled to continue all night, longer than an O'Neill play.

As the second act opened horrorstricken bit players were rending their garments while the show's stars revealed that call-girl type operations had long been in full swing in their midst but that the call-girls were boys, some of them of highschool age. Did they expect them to work full-time, what with compulsory education these days?

From Winter Haven the scene shifted rapidly against a background of orange-blossoming groves to Auburndale, Bartow, and Lakeland, with its Florida S. U. and preposterous Frank Lloyd Wright Library Bldg. By the time the "drag" net had caught 125, reaction began. to set in. Perhaps someone important felt the "pinch." At any rate, Winter Haven Chief Det. Hamp (wouldn't you know he'd have a name like that?) Rogers moved hastily to "curb rumors falsely connecting prominent Winter Haven citizens with the current investigations of homosexual activities," and claimed that every effort was being made lest the whole performance turn into a witch hunt.

WAY DOWN YONDER IN MIAMI

Never a town to take a back seat to anyone, Miami, first coming under our observation many years ago (ONE Jan., 1954) and often since then, reported a call-boy deal with prices appropriate to such a plush play spot in the cocoanutpalm jungles. Some of the boys were taking in $100 a night, it was reported by the 11 plain-clothesmen assigned by Miami Police Chief Walter Headley to make themselves "'approachable' by homosexuals." Nice work if you can get it. Unhappily for Chief Headley and City Mgr. M. L. Reese, who jointly master-minded this important mission, none of the first 11 arrested could be pin-pointed as a leader of a "homosexual ring." And this is what they were after. Big game to make it look like the big town boys were earning their pay, maybe?

GULF COAST GOINGS-ON

Bustling Gulf port Panama City and nearby Tyndall AFB really got jittery as 20 men were arrested following a month-long investigation of a "ring largely centered on a downtown public restroom." Must it always be a "ring"? Two Air Force Lts. and a Sgt., several schoolteachers, college students, a priest, a minister, and a number of lesser fry made up the catch.

But this was pretty poor competition for more important goings-on up the road a piece in Tallahassee where a legislative investigating committee had been making an extensive study of Florida's public educational system and reported finding it "a veritable refuge for practicing homosexuals." (See "tangents," July, 1961).

Fifty-three teaching credentials had either been revoked or were under suspension as result of the

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