People and Events

Youngsters from several Los Angeles city parks converged on the Mar Vista Gardens Recreation Center for the third annual Dickerson Rangers “Just Say No” Fair, a daylong anti-drug exercise that included games and food.

The Dickerson Rangers take their name from Eric Dickerson, a running back for the Indianapolis Colts football team who may be familiar to you. Tuesday’s event was sponsored by the city Department of Recreation and Parks.

The Natural High Group was on hand to sing, dance and do puppet acts that hit the anti-drug theme pretty hard. The Banana Lady was there to paint the kids’ faces. But a basketball game with some local cops didn’t come off.

About 10 teen-agers were ready to play against a team of officers from Pacific Division. Center director Hubert Price said the officers called to say they couldn’t make it because they had to go out and “take care of some arrests.”

At Pacific Division, Lt. Carl Wilhite said he did not know why the officers failed to reach the recreation center. He said that they had scheduled a day off to participate and that “a couple of them left the station several hours ago with a basketball in their hands.”

It was possible, he said, that not enough officers were available to field a team.

Barbara Fabricant, who goes by “Captain” in an outfit she organized and calls the state Humane Task Force, had hardly issued her hot-weather warning to dog owners the other day when she saw a new pet threat falling from the sky: malathion.

As a couple of helicopters crisscrossed part of the San Fernando Valley spraying the stuff in an effort to crunch the Mediterranean fruit fly before it can settle in, Fabricant scoffed at official declarations of safety to humans and pets.

“I don’t care what they say,” the Captain declared. “They’re going to be spraying into water dishes and food dishes. A lot of these animals are going to get sick.”

Fabricant has described herself as an “astrologer and psychic” and is the widow of Sidney (Sid the Squid) Fabricant, who followed horse racing with rarely matched intensity. When he was buried in January of 1984, a tape recording of track announcers calling races was played and mourners threw old racing forms onto the casket.

It does not distress Barbara Fabricant to bring up such things. “If I can get people to take care of their kids and their animals and older people,” she said, “you can say anything you want about me. I just want to get my point over.”

Published photographs of old Terminal 2 at Los Angeles International Airport being torn down to make way for a new-and-improved “jet harbor” stirred nostalgic feelings for a few old-timers. It hardly seemed possible that the oval satellite structure served the jet set for 26 years.

Receiving international flights before the Tom Bradley Terminal took over four years ago, Terminal 2 was frequently the scene of madhouse arrivals of the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, the late Richard Burton, the late Grace Kelly, the Beatles and all sorts of other celebrities.

When the British rock group came in, one photographer recalls, the mob of teen-age fans got so excited that the moisture rolling off their bodies made it necessary to swab the floor.

The moppers called it “Ringo water.”

In announcing last week that 14 people and groups had been chosen to have their names on sidewalk stars added to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce chose not to disclose those turned down for the honor on this go-around.

Two of the losers, however, have come forward on their own to admit defeat. They are film extras Christopher Salamunovich, 28, of Los Angeles and James Heisterkamp, 58, of San Francisco.

They nominated themselves.

Heisterkamp, a retired municipal clerk who says his professional name is Baron von Heisterkampf, contends: “It’s about time they remember some extras, because of their value to the movies. Who helps to make the stars famous but the extras?”

He says he even had some lines in “Breach of Contract,” but “I ended up on the cutting room floor.”