Director’s Solution Didn’t Hold Water With Amtrak

Harry Griffen, an 80-year-old director of the Metropolitan Water District who rides the train to Los Angeles twice monthly for water meetings, has the impudence to assume that the ride should not be like a vertiginous 2 3/4 hours in a jump seat.

So earlier this month, when Griffen hopped the 9:45 a.m. Amtrak north and found the only available seats in custom class to be facing backward, he grabbed one seat back and flipped it over, then settled in comfortably, facing north.

“The train starts and the conductor comes through,” Griffen recalled this week. “He says: ‘Did you turn this seat around?’ in a stern voice. I said: ‘Yes, I did.’ He said: ‘Why did you turn it around?’ I said: ‘Because I don’t like to ride backwards.’ ”

The conductor allowed as how the seats were reversed for a purpose. What purpose? Griffen asked. To save time switching them back and forth, he was told. To which Griffen retorted that he had paid extra for his seat and believed he was entitled to ride facing forward.

“ ‘What are you going to do about it?’ ” Griffen recalled asking. The conductor responded loudly: “ ‘Well, I guess I could put you off the train.’ I said: ‘I would like very much for you to put me off the train. I’d like to see what would happen!’ ”

Griffen won that round. The conductor passed up the opportunity to evict him. But Arthur Lloyd, director of public affairs for Amtrak in San Francisco, suggested that in the future all seat backs will probably be locked in place.

Lloyd said the new policy, under which half the seats face the wrong direction, is part of a new time- and labor-saving scheme. Soon all trains on the line will be pushed one direction then pulled the other, saving turn-around time and making it possible to add a run.

The new schedule means that trains loiter in San Diego for just half an hour--too little time to flip the seats, Lloyd said. He insisted that he, too, rides backward on commuter trains now and that such a setup is “standard procedure” nationwide.

Asked why the seats had to be locked in place, Lloyd said “there were too many instances of fingers being crushed and then suing for millions of dollars.” Had Amtrak really been sued for that? Lloyd was asked.

“We haven’t,” he conceded. “But others have.”

Rambling the Preamble

Nothing to do Wednesday morning? Looking for something edifying to fill the time? Try stopping by Horace Mann Middle School in San Diego, where students will be reciting the preamble to the Constitution--once every 30 seconds, for six hours and 35 minutes.

That’s nearly 800 recitations.

In case your memory needs refreshing, the preamble is the run-on sentence that precedes the Constitution, touching lightly on such things as forming a more perfect union, ensuring domestic tranquility, promoting the general welfare, etc.

The so-called Preamble-a-thon--”the world’s longest continual recitation of the Preamble”--is a centerpiece of the school’s “Celebration of America.” It is aimed at raising money through pledges to fulfill the wishes of children with life-threatening diseases.

“Strange? This isn’t strange!” insisted Maruta Gardner, principal of the school. Two years ago the school produced an 8-foot-high plywood post card bearing the signatures of all 1,400 students. Then they sent it to President Reagan. By rail.

King of Recycling

Signs for the former Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way have become collectors’ items, it seems. Having rejected the street name, San Diegans are calling the Department of Public Works asking how they can get their hands on a souvenir.

They can’t, according to Gus Brown, a senior utilities supervisor for the department. The 90 or so signs have been collected and brought back into the fold to be “recycled” into signs for other streets as the need arises, he said.

Brown estimated that each sign is worth at least $50. In addition, Brown said his crews have wasted weeks putting up and taking down the signs.

Even so, there appears to have been some attrition.

Brown said he has received unsubstantiated reports of some Martin Luther King Way supporters spotted with a sign or two. “Obviously, they didn’t get it from us,” he mused. “So I would assume they would have had to get it from the field.”

A Healthy Competition

Meanwhile, the county mental health department has a nifty idea for “getting people thinking more positively about CMH”--a countywide contest, running through this month, to come up with a name for the county’s new psychiatric hospital.

Mental health officials say the aim is to create some good will to counter some of the bad press the program has received from time to time, what with state and federal investigations several years back, staff turnover and accusations in the past of improper medical practices.

Will a name-that-hospital contest really sway public opinion, a CMH spokesman was asked. “You’re asking the same questions I asked,” he said.

The winner will receive a $50 savings bond and a duplicate of a plaque to be placed in the lobby of the hospital, an $8- million, 110-bed facility near the corner of Rosecrans Street and Pacific Highway that will replace the current Hillcrest Mental Health Facility, which is referred to as just CMH.