They could sip pink ladies and hum madrigals, as long as they had a good time. : Anybody Here From Burbank?

In the halcyon days before toxic cheese, tainted watermelons and killer bees, I learned the business of newspaper reporting by covering the Oakland City Council. They were a tough, hell-raising bunch who, when they wanted to get to know each other better, usually did so at a downtown saloon called the Hollow Leg.

During the regular council sessions they’d be at each other’s throats, but almost invariably they would end up that night at the Leg hugging each other, swearing eternal fidelity and singing “O Mein Papa.” That’s because a good many of them were, as we used to say, slightly awash in Cutty Sark and water.

They probably drank too much and hollered too much but managed nevertheless to conduct the business of the city with a relatively high degree of efficiency.

Which brings me to Burbank.

The City Council there is having a problem because its members, one of them told me, never have an opportunity to get to know each other. So they considered holding a $5,000 retreat led by a paid “facilitator,” whose job would have been, as I understand it, to facilitate their, well, conversation.

The plan was not dissimilar to Oakland’s Hollow Leg Solution, except that now we call it enhancing interpersonal communications, whereas up north they simply called it having a drink. The facilitator was the one who bought the first round.

The Burbank council fussed over whether to hold the retreat, then, at the last moment, voted against it, a flash of wisdom not displayed in West Hollywood, where the council is known for its bitchy infighting. They plunked down four big ones there in order to learn that they ought to get along better.

The legislators in Burbank do get along all right, which was what prompted one of them to remark, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and lead a successful effort to defeat plans for the encounter session.

Not everyone was happy by what seemed the cavalier dismissal of modern group therapy. Councilwoman Mary Kelsey said she thought it was a shame and added, “We just never have a chance to sit down and get acquainted.”

I asked her why it was necessary to spend $5,000 in order to do that. Why, for instance, couldn’t they just meet at the Burbank equivalent of the Hollow Leg and raise a little hell? It would not be necessary to get falling-down drunk or even to sing “O Mein Papa,” which for reasons that escape me now was the big drinking song in Oakland back then.

They could sip pink ladies and hum madrigals, as long as they had a good time.

Kelsey replied that they were thinking now along those very lines. “We have an all-day session planned October 2nd with the school board to discuss the joint use of facilities,” she said.

You get the feeling they might be missing the point in Burbank? A formal session with the school board to discuss the joint use of facilities wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

I’m going to try to explain this in such a way that even a Burbank City Council member will understand. In order to get to know each other, it would be best not to meet with the school board. You with me so far?

Meet at a nice cocktail lounge in the city and concentrate more on whose turn it is to buy than on the joint use of facilities. The facilities of the joint you’re in ought to be enough.

But, Mary Kelsey asked, what about the facilitator? “He is said to be very good at drawing us out in conversation.”

I see. Well, Mary, back in the days before group encounters and psychotherapeutic techniques of interpersonal communications, we had something that was probably too simple to be effective in today’s rarefied intellectual environment. It was called talking.

Bear in mind, it was an undisciplined and primitive method of getting to know someone. Not until years later did human behavioral facilitators, using advanced computer graphics and sophisticated audio electronics, evolve the first-approach method of communication that was synthesized down to Do you come here often? and I’m a Virgo, what are you?

Lacking the wit and refinement of contemporary psychology, we just began babbling away and hoped that the person to whom we babbled would respond in a similar vein.

But how, I hear you ask, do you get started talk -ing? Well, a friend of mine who traveled a good deal used to stand up on a bar stool of whatever city he was in and shout, “Anybody here from Oakland?”

He did this in the jungles of New Guinea and, so help me, found a guy who once ran a floating crap game on the east side. They had a great time.

I am not suggesting that Mary Kelsey, a matronly lady in her 60s, crawl up on a bar stool and, waving a tumbler of gin on the rocks, demand to know if there’s anybody there from Burbank, but the idea is essential to effective interpersonal relations.

In other words, as they used to say around the Hollow Leg, you gotta be loose if you’re gonna get juice. I never did know exactly what that meant, but the council members stayed loose, got along fine and probably saved the city $5,000.