a game of inches

The title is a common description of rugby league... but is perfect for this.

I have mentioned a few times that Ruth's curtain rods, when assembled, matched the length of the assembled rifle that was ordered - 36 inches.

But there is another measurement mentioned in testimony that I previously missed and that matches the length of the rifle that was allegedly received - 42 inches - and she actually changes her mind about the 36 inches and ends up going with 42 inches. So... again... the same "pattern" -- thought I ordered 36 inch but got a 42 inch instead!

But before getting into that, let's consider the quality of the wrapping paper.

Mr. JENNER - What do you have in your home, Mrs. Paine, by way of heavy wrapping paper?
Mrs. PAINE - I have the sort of paper you buy at the dime store to wrap packages, about 36 inches long, coming in a roll.

There's that pesky 36 inches again. But the word I am looking at here is it was DIME STORE wrapping paper, which was not usually a heavy paper at all.

Here is how Frazier initially described the sack he saw: "definitely a thin flimsy sack like one purchased in a dime store...a flimsy, thin consistency"; in a subsequent December 1 FBI report as "crinkly brown paper"; then in a follow-up FBI report on December 2 as " a cheap, crinkly, thin paper sack, such as that provided by Five and Ten Cent Stores."

It was the FBI showing him a REPLICA bag that got him to change his description from cheap crinkly paper to HEAVY wrapping paper.



I have no doubt that Oswald did have a sack with him that day, made from Ruth's cheap dime store wrapping paper. He claimed all he took to work that day was his lunch. If I had to say what he took, I would have to go with that - though I do believe taking the rods had been discussed, despite Ruth's denial of it.

Now back to Ruth's testimony.

Senator COOPER - The length of the rods, at the time you wrapped them.
Mrs. PAINE - They would be 36 inches when pushed together.
Senator COOPER - What?
Mrs. PAINE - They would be about maybe 36 inches when pushed together.
Senator COOPER - You remember wrapping them. Do you remember what the size, the length of the reds were at the time you wrapped them?
Mrs. PAINE - Yes.
Senator COOPER - How long?
Mrs. PAINE - Didn't I answer about 36 inches?
Mr. JENNER - In other words, you pushed them together so that then, they were then their minimum length, unexpanded?
Mrs. PAINE - Yes.
Mr. JENNER - They were not extended, and in that condition they were 36 inches long?
Mrs. PAINE - Something like that.
Mr. JENNER - Now, how many of them were there?
Mrs. PAINE - Two.
Mr. JENNER - These were lightweight metal?
Mrs. PAINE - Very. Now, there was another item that was both heavier and longer.
Mr. JENNER - In that same package?
Mrs. PAINE - No; I don't think so. In another similar package wrapped up just to keep the dust off were two venetian blinds. I guess they were not longer, more like 36 inches also, that had come from the two windows in my bedroom. I took them down to change, and put up pull blinds in their place.
Mr. JENNER - And had you wrapped them?
Mrs. PAINE - Yes.
Mr. JENNER - How many were there?
Mrs. PAINE - Two.
Mr. JENNER - And what was their length?
Mrs. PAINE - I think around 36 inches. The width of these windows in the back bedroom.
Mr. JENNER - Let us return to the curtain rods first. Do you still have those curtain rods?
Mrs. PAINE - I believe so.
Mr. JENNER - You believe so, or you know; which?

She avoids answering that question.

Have highlighted the testimony about blinds because in some versions of the curtain rods story, it is blinds being mentioned and they too, are 36 inches long.

Now here is the testimony of her changing her tune about the length.

Mr. JENNER - Was the subject of curtain rods--had that ever been mentioned during all of these weekends that Lee Oswald had come to your home, commencing, I think you said, with his first return on October 4, 1963?
Mrs. PAINE - It. had not been mentioned.
Mr. JENNER - Never by anybody?
Mrs. PAINE - By anybody.
Mr. JENNER - Had the subject of curtain rods been mentioned even inadvertently, let us say, by some neighbor talking about the subject, as to whether you had some curtain rods you weren't using?
Mrs. PAINE - No.
Mr. JENNER - That might be loaned? I think you had testified that the curtain rods, when unextended, were 36 inches long, approximately?
Mrs. PAINE - That is a guess. I would say, thinking further about it, it must be shorter than that. One went over a window that I am pretty sure was 30 inches wide, and one went over a window that was 42 inches wide, so it had to extend between these. They were identical, and had served at these different windows.
Mr. JENNER - The rods were identical in length when unextended?
Mrs. PAINE - Or when fully extended; yes.
Mr. JENNER - What?
Mrs. PAINE - Or when fully extended.
Mr. JENNER - Or when fully extended; yes. They could be extended to as great as 42 inches?
Mrs. PAINE - At least that. I am just saying what windows they were used for.
Mr. JENNER - If the rods are still available, we will be able to obtain them?
Mrs. PAINE - Yes.

The WC ends up going to the infamous garage to measure certain items. Half the time it appears t be Ruth telling them what they should measure. The woman is a dead set control freak.

The venetian blinds package was 35 inches (after being estimated by Jenner to be 28 to 30 inches). The blinds themselves when taken out and measured came out as 30 inches. What gave the package the extra 5 inches?

Of some interest is that the curtain rods are no longer wrapped and they are not measured when joined together, only separately. Each measured 27.5 inches.

Of further interest is that Frazier indicated that the package was 27 inches. But even more interesting is that Krystinik testified that Mike Paine indicated the package was about 27 inches.

Paine himself testified to the blanket roll being about 37 inches - but the object inside being about 30 inches. 

From Mike's testimony: "It had an iron pipe about 30 inches long with a short section of pipe going off 45 degrees. No words here, it just happened that I did have this image in my mind of trying to fill up that package in the back burner of my mind."

Is this what Mike was feeling? Jenner and Howlett during Ruth's testimony:

Mr. JENNER - These curtain rods--the ends of each of them are turned. Those ends extending are turned up how many inches?
Agent HOWLETT - About 2 inches measuring from the inside of the curtain rod.
Mr. JENNER - On the cream colored one, and what about the white one?
Agent HOWLETT - Yes; on the cream colored one and the white one measures about 2 1/2 inches.
Mr. JENNER - Now, these curtain rods with the ends turned up form a "U," do they not, a long "U"?
Agent HOWLETT - Yes, sir.

----------------

Since Ruth believed the rods were wrapped in cheap dime store paper, but they no longer had this wrapping when checked... did Oswald take the bag to use for his lunch that day?

Marina noted that when she was looking for parts from the crib, she checked inside that blanket and claims she saw the rifle instead. No doubt those drib parts had been in there - until then. I believe she took them to assemble the crib and then those rods got wrapped in the blanket after that - and it was the rods that Mike mistook for camping equipment. 

The similarity of the measurements to the two rifles in question (the 36 inch and 42 inch remains relevant).

TO: Dr Obuku Millegan Nigerian Minister of Public Health MD( L' Ecole L'Huile de Serpent Gabarone Botswana) PhD ( Texas Christian University) Dlitt ( the Lemkin Institute of Applied Hysteria)

FROM: Master R Booth esq c/o The Education Forum

Dear Obuku,
                     I happened to be browsing through Trine Day's quite remarkable collection of certain niche Scandinavian publications from the 70s and 80s you have available online when I stumbled upon a fascinating article in May 1974s issue of Rammer ( expecting a glossy publication dedicated to stock car racing I was slightly aroused to discover instead a somewhat libidinous celebration of all things fistular... the magazine, edited by the presumably pseudonymous Kris Krack, was apparently designed to appeal to the dedicated students of the mystical art of amateur proctology)

The article in question " The Other Watergate Scandal" Tosh Plumlee's shocking exposé of lack of continence in contemporary rubber sheet manufacturers, was certainly eye opening. Lucky poor Cicely Angleton had been such an accomplished gymnast back at Vassar! 

Buried at the bottom of the full colour double page spread of Tosh showing exactly how he positioned both the Great Dane and the Euphonium was an advertisement " A Game of Inches!! Showing a hooded man with some sort of pendulum attached to his w****. Kock Kroquet , the ad read, it really is a game of inches!!! Don't be a Grinch!! Add a couple of inch!! It's the most fun you can have with a hood and a winch unless you are out on the lynch"( Kock Kroquet Trine Day 1973 WARNING Includes toxic and flammable materials!! The nitroglycerin based extensions are NOT meant for internal consumption. )

A fellow libertarian Donald " State's Rights the South Will Rise Again" Jeffries gave the product a very positive review in both the Confederate Veteran and the Libertarian Today magazines and since Kock Kroquet boasts the Kris Millegan Guarantee ( you'll probably remember the Kris Millegan Guarantee from Thalidomide- Hands Across the Ocean!! The Movie ,Dating Can Be Fun with Harvey Weinstein and the Ernst Zundel gas free barbecue oven) a friend of mine, who is very very interested in this subject asked me to contact you when he saw the thread advertised as " A Game of Inches"...

Shit ! I have just read the thread!! Since I have no tolerance for debates or ad hominem, if you discuss the contents of this email with anyone  I'll ignore you by bombarding you with countless angry ad hominem laced emails...then I'll tell my mommy on you..

For A Whiter Brighter World


Best regards

Richard

P.S. Please forgive me for interrupting what looks set to be another fascinating thread...

Dr Obuku Millegan Nigerian Minister of Public Health MD?

That is uncanny. I got an email from a lawyer in Nigeria named Obuku McGillicutty about an inheritance left to me by a relative I never even knew I had!  A Millegan Vary Parker - missionary with with the Divine Sisters of Sodomy. Apparently MVP had amassed a vast fortune in donations from various world leaders  after they would spend a weekend in retreat at MVP's home for Wayward Boys, to help keep this needed work going. Charity truly does begin in the home.

More on the blanket and what it contained.

From Marina's testimony:
 
Mrs. OSWALD. After we arrived, I tried to put the bed, the child's crib together, the metallic parts, and I looked for a certain part, and I came upon something wrapped in a blanket. I thought that was part of the bed, but it turned out to be the rifle.

"After we arrived". That must be reference to just after arriving from New Orleans.  But Marina is not asked and does not volunteer where she eventually found the parts. That is because they were in the blanket - as she knew they were. She then put the crib together. The blanket had nothing further in it until Ruth gave them her rods to use when they found an apartment. The rods were inside a homemade paper sack.  That sack, as I said in the OP, was taken to use for Oswald's lunch that morning. Ruth testified that the light had been left on in the garage - this was why - Lee was taking the sack for his lunch.

Greg, do you think Linnie told the truth when she saw a sack in Oswald's hands?

Yes mate. His lunch. She prpbably lied about seeing him place it on the nack seat though.

Greg P., I think this is brilliant connection of details on your part--the thin crinkly paper from the Ruth Paine garage as being the thin crinkly paper Wesley Frazier described the paper bag brought by Oswald Friday morning Nov 22. I have puzzled and puzzled over the matter of the paper bag Oswald carried to work that morning with Frazier and in light of what you have brought out a possible picture is emerging to me that goes something like this: 

I go back to Ralph Yates, the sad case of the man who had a mental breakdown after picking up a hitchhiker on either Wed. or Thu. who he insisted was Oswald carrying a large package which the hitchhiker said was curtain rods. Yates picked up the hitchhiker about 10:30 am at the Beckley Street entrance to the freeway going into Dallas, and dropped the hitchhiker off at the TSBD. I know you have made an argument elsewhere that that was Larry Crafard but stay with me on this: I have a reason for saying that was certainly Oswald, despite the cautions understandably raised concerning the witness's testimony by the witness's mental breakdown in the days immediately following. The reason that really was Oswald is a point that I have not seen raised before but to me is smoking-gun: it was on that same day, either Wed. or Thu., that Oswald was at the Dobbs House Restaurant at 10 am that morning. Nobody believes that because TSBD records show Oswald was at work at that time and Oswald was never reported late for work. That may be, but Oswald was at the Dobbs House at 10 am that morning, because in this particular case the witness testimony credibility is solid gold, unimpeachable: it is a waitress who knew Oswald as a regular (the Dobbs House was very near the Beckley St. rooming house), and knew who she served. This is not a one-time sighting of a stranger recognized later on TV etc. This is as credible as it gets: it was him, and a cook corroborated the same. By an astonishing coincidence Officer Tippit also was there in that restaurant at the same time, just two and four days respectively before both of those persons at that restaurant that morning at the identical time were separately shot dead before they could speak what they might have known relevant to the JFK assassination. 

Oswald created a scene in that restaurant that morning. Since nobody much believes Oswald was there, despite in this case extremely high quality of witness evidence that he was, nobody asks what that scene was about. Was Oswald really angry about how his eggs were cooked so as to make a public spectacle of himself? I think that could be part of spycraft, identifying himself to someone else who was to meet him there. And someone significant to the Oswald/JFK case, as unimpeachable fact (based on the same solid gold witness waitress witness testimony concerning a regular patron), did happen to be there at that very same time (Tippit). 

But here is the smoking-gun part that connects to Ralph Yates: Oswald is at the Dobbs House at 10 am. I have looked at a map and it is about one mile walk on Beckley from the Dobbs House to the Beckley freeway entrance ramp where Yates picked up Oswald carrying a package at 10:30 am. Same day, thirty minutes later, at the one place a car-less Oswald late for work would have gone to get to work--to the entrance ramp to hitchhike. That Ralph Yates picked up a hitchhiker at about that time and that Yates was certain that it was Oswald and that Yates was not intentionally lying about anything are all established (this last by a polygraph test which showed him truthful, which was however rejected on the grounds of his mental issues). It is the time juxtaposition and the certainty that Oswald was one mile away at the Dobbs House thirty minutes prior to being picked up hitchhiking to work which is the smoking gun providing startling corroboration of Ralph Yates' story.

However Oswald had a package consistent with conveyance of a firearm, which he told Yates (according to Yates) was curtain rods. It makes little sense that Oswald would have had that package with him when he left the rooming house that morning. The picture is: he uncharacteristically does not go to work at 8 am that morning, leaves his rooming house late without a package, eats at the Dobbs House at 10 am, makes a scene signaling something or his identity to someone, leaves the Dobbs House walking to the freeway entrance now carrying a package which he did not have before. Picked up by Ralph Yates at 10:30 and taken to the TSBD where he arrived late to work and worked the rest of the day. 

Now about the curtain rods claims. There were no curtain rods. The most likely item in Oswald's package--the package he carried upon leaving the Dobbs House (not the one the next day with Wesley Frazier, which Frazier has always been adamant was not and could not have carried a rifle)--was the rifle. This is the most likely mechanism for how that rifle did get into the TSBD, since it did not via the paper bag Oswald carried in Fri morning. 

Oswald says "curtain rods" simply as bullshit, telling the driver that, not wanting to say "a rifle". So that explains that curtain rods utterance of Oswald. Then at the TSBD Oswald asks Frazier for a ride to Irving that night. Since the request was unexpected and sudden Oswald has to have an explanation. He makes up an explanation, using the same thing that had worked with the driver who had picked him up hitchhiking: he says "I need to go out there to pick up some curtain rods". That was bullshit too. The real reason Oswald wanted to go to Irving Thu night almost certainly was he knew something was coming down Fri and he wanted to see Marina and his kids. Pure and simple, a fully sufficient explanation for the sudden trip to Irving. He tells Frazier some BS reason because it is not Frazier's business to know why he wants to suddenly see Marina and his kids a day before he would normally see them. So again there are no curtain rods but there is explanation for why Oswald would say that there were.

Then in Irving and the crinkly paper that was in the Ruth Paine garage, and that being the source of the bag that carried his lunch!--I agree! Makes sense! Oswald when asked by Fritz said it was his lunch. He usually carried a lunch. It was his lunch! You are right--how simple. But then--if so, why does he tell Frazier something different, that it was curtain rods? Because he has to stick to his BS story he told Frazier in the first place! Oswald appreciates the ride from Frazier but (from Frazier's later descriptions) Oswald did not confide much to Frazier, even when Frazier would ask leading or open-ended questions trying to get him to talk. The "curtain rods" answer to Frazier in answer to Frazier's inquiry, "what is in the package" keeps nosy Frazier satisfied and completes the original story of going out for curtain rods in the first place. But as you say, really it was his lunch.

When asked by Fritz about it, Oswald (as I interpret it) simply decides it would raise too many questions if he admitted he told Frazier that his paper bag was something other than his lunch when it was really his lunch (what kind of sense does that make?), so (as reconstructed) Oswald denies he told Frazier that. Oswald claims to Fritz (untruthfully) that he only told Frazier that it was his lunch, and (truthfully) that it really was his lunch.

This reconstruction explains some things while opening up other questions. I do not think Oswald fired a rifle the day of the assassination, despite this reconstruction supporting Oswald having a role in infiltrating the rifle into the TSBD. It is neither here nor there concerning the present point, but I am suspecting that Oswald, in some sort of double-agent game, was involved in what he understood to be a setup of a blame of the Soviet Union and/or Cuba for a (fake) attempted (not actual) assassination of JFK. That would be consistent with the reconstruction here. 

But I could think of no good reason why Oswald was talking about curtain rods (or others saying he did)--what that was about, what was going on there, or what was in Oswald's paper bag Friday morning. Your thin, crinkly paper connection and simple lunch solution is what prompted me to put together this reconstruction, even if you may (or may not?) disagree with the Ralph Yates part of it.

AH NO.
That by your own admission was not Lee at the Dobbs House yelling about his eggs whilst he was verified at work.
Thanks for long diatribe full of Inconsistencies though.