A FARAWAY DRUMMER

Where else but in the land of the free and the home of the brave is it appropriate to commemorate that lovable protostereotype who doesn't ""play the game"" even if he knows its name. Thus Fletcher Tippey who just as appropriately tipples, saws up a bar or stages a caper on television, and who behaves unaccountably or unmanageably from time to time. As against his ""Sunday school son of a bitch"" brother who appears regularly in this small Southern town at the Kiwanis Club or as United Fund chairman. But more irregularly is having an affair with his secretary (much too nice for him) and is responsible for her death in an accident which he hangs on Fletcher who goes to jail for a year but in the end comes out both ahead and alive. . . . Bristow has written this kind of popular melodrama before in which sentiment is the real fixative and if you should happen on it, it will hold your interest reasonably well.