It didn’t quite pack the suspense of...

It didn’t quite pack the suspense of a countdown at Cape Canaveral.

“Three, two, one . . .” a reporter intoned.

And then, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter pulled the lever on a toilet that was stationed outside the Department of Water and Power building downtown.

As the machine flushed its water out through a specially attached hose Friday, conscientious radio and television reporters gallantly thrust their microphones inside the white ceramic bowl to illustrate its relatively quiet thrust.

The colorful exhibition was staged to unveil an ultralow-flush toilet, which swallows just 1.6 gallons of water at a time, about half of what a standard toilet uses. A city ordinance mandates that, beginning July 1, all new and/or replaced residential toilets must be of the low-flush variety.

Galanter said that she expects about 250,000 such toilets installed in the first year, which would save an estimated 476 million gallons of water. That’s enough water, her staff pointed out, to fill the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum four times over. And, perhaps, wash the Raiders out of town.

Indian Joe hasn’t been forgotten.

The headstone of the 19th-Century Downey resident disappeared from a local cemetery last year, but Ed Lewis and the Greenleaf 4-H club have come to the rescue. They’re constructing a duplicate--a 2 1/2-foot-tall redwood marker that will bear the original painted inscription:

“He was a good Indian while he lived. He belonged to the Kaweah. He lived in Downey 22 years and died November 22, 1895.”

Lewis said he’s making this marker longer so that it can sit deeper in the cement. “Last time it was in cement, too, and they (the thieves) just dug the whole thing out,” he said.

Joe, who died at about the age of 55, was something of a local medicine man who shared his home remedies with local residents, said Joyce Lawrence of the Downey Historical Society.

In an obituary on Joe, a Downey newspaper noted that he lived his last years outdoors. Once he had lived in a shed near the tracks of the Southern Pacific Railroad, the article said, but after a storm blew the shed down on him, he “could never be induced to sleep under a roof again.”

In Southern California, you can find valet parking for everything from movie premieres and the Beverly Hills post office to barbecued ribs joints.

Now comes an event so big that a $5 valet charge is being assessed drivers--and the charge must be paid by mail 10 days early.

What is this extravaganza? The June 30 inauguration of Los Angeles’ newly elected city officials on the posh 1st Street steps of City Hall. No paparazzi, please.