Petaluma Art Lovers Have Designs on Garbage Cans

--Dick Hoorn thought that the black polyethylene refuse containers that the city of Petaluma, Calif., was requiring residents to use were, well, trashy. So, in a “gesture of defiance--a visual Bronx cheer--I painted mine as a Samurai warrior with a downturned, snarling mouth.” The gesture was much appreciated on the next collection day by the garbage truck driver, who “broke into such a big, happy grin when he saw that can the first day, I realized I could have fun with this,” Hoorn said. The artistic fever spread, and soon the whole community of 10,000 was caught up in decorating their garbage cans. In fact, Mayor M. Patricia Hilligoss proclaimed the first day of spring, March 20, “Garbage Can Art Day,” and set aside April 18 as the day for a garbage can art contest judging. Prizes will be awarded for the best neighborhood garbage can, the best can painted by a high school art class, and the best painted can submitted by the Petaluma Girls and Boys Club.

--The Pillar Mountain Golf Classic in Kodiak, Alaska, may consist of only one hole, but it took the 45 duffers who participated two days to complete the par-70 course. The hole, a five-gallon bucket, was buried in the snow atop the rugged windblown mountain. Contestants hacked their way up to the 1,400-foot summit through blinding fog and snow in temperatures ranging to 5 below zero, using shovels and hatchets instead of woods and irons for their drives and chip shots. Rick Lindholm of Kodiak took home the first prize of $746. (His winning score was unavailable, but the worst was 536.) Half the tournament proceeds went to the hypothermia unit of Kodiak Island Hospital and to an orphanage. Shaillor Cummings and David Neiman of Miami, who played as a team, finished the course with a “blazing 153.” But they vowed revenge by forming their own golf classic on more familiar turf--Florida’s Everglades.

--Today, when callers to the Bronx Zoo in New York ask for Mr. L. E. Funt or Buff A. Low, they’ll be asked to cough up a donation for the New York Zoological Society. All contributions will be matched by the New York Telephone Co. It is an April Fool’s Day tradition for jokers to flood zoos with crank calls and a perennial headache for zoo staffers. So this year, volunteers are manning a bank of phones installed by the phone company in the zoo’s administration building and putting the bite on pranksters. Zoo official Louann Brauer said they got the idea from the San Antonio zoo, which raised about $5,000 in donations last year.