Odds & Ends Around the Valley

Tiny Bowlers

We know that yuppies think they invented bowling, but the latest group to discover the sport is the age 3 to 7 crowd. “We don’t keep numbers, but we’ve definitely seen a rise in these bowlers,” says Cathy Wells, secretary of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Young American Bowling Alliance. She also works at Panorama Bowl in Panorama City.

“They are a boon to bowling,” she says, calling them “the bowlers of the future.”

Bowling alleys are able to compensate for the youngsters’ lack of strength and aim by adding “bumpers” down the sides of the lanes. These are tubes of either inflatable rubber or cardboard or plastic piping. “They make it almost impossible for a kid to get a gutter ball,” explains Mike Willis, manager at Canoga Park Bowl.

Most alleys are also equipped with lighter-weight balls with tinier finger holes. (And some alleys give discounts during the day.)

Like adult enthusiasts, these junior bowlers join leagues. “The age range for a bumper-bowling league is 3 to 7,” Willis says. “They have team names like The Nerds, Strike Force, Slammers, Cherry Bombers--you get the idea.”

Jonathan Schwartz, 4, of Woodland Hills enjoys the sport, and his mom, Valarie, loves watching him play. “It takes forever for the ball to get to the pins, or sometimes it rolls all the way down there but stops dead right in front of them,” she laughs, “but at least it doesn’t go in the gutter.”

Rx for VCRs

Perhaps you’ve seen that American Express commercial where a youngster feeds his family’s video cassette recorder a bowl of cereal. Parents of toddlers know all too well that a VCR is more fascinating than any toy to small, curious hands that fit so perfectly into the cassette slot.

Some VCR repair shops in the Valley owe 10% to 20% of their business to toddlers who use the VCR as a dumping ground for whatever happens to be in their hands at the moment.

“Keys and coins are the most common objects you’ll find,” reports Greg Larson of Sound Service Center in Canoga Park. “The most unusual thing I ever found was a big brass door handle. I’m still trying to figure out how the kid got it in there.”

Other items that frequently wind up inside the VCR are pens, pencils and crayons, notes Mildred Thomas, co-owner of Thomas Technologies in Woodland Hills.

“We once found a Barbie doll head inside one,” recalls Sonny Mun of Pleasure Electronics in Reseda. She suggests you buy a dust cover for your VCR and put it on when you’re not using the machine. “We’ve also had kids throw up on the VCR’s remote-control unit, doing damage to the board inside, she adds.

Toddlers aren’t the only ones who do damage to VCRs. “We find pet hairs inside them all the time,” Mun says. “We can always tell whether or not a customer has a cat or dog by the hair we find. And a lot of dogs chew up the remote control.”

Who says pets aren’t good practice for babies?

Big Cash

If you paid more than $100,000 for your vehicle, you might be a little annoyed if it only lasted for seven years. Yet that’s the average price and average life span of the city’s garbage trucks.

The Bureau of Sanitation’s East Valley district has received 11 new refuse-collection vehicles in the last four months--worth more than $1 million altogether. The trucks are not additions to its fleet of 125 trucks, but replacements for older, worn-out models.

“The average payload for a truck is about 9 tons, and the drivers make one to two trips a day to the landfill. Because of all the starting and stopping, there’s a lot of wear and tear on the hydraulic system, as well as on the engine,” explains R.E. Cullors, who supervises the East Valley district from his Sun Valley office.

The city buys about 104 replacement trucks a year. Older trucks are salvaged for parts.

It’s easy to imagine how it could make your day to be given the keys to a spanking new $122,200 vehicle. “They’re pretty happy about it,” Cullors says, referring to his drivers, but adds, “All of our guys are proud of their trucks.”

Overdue Credit

At least it happened in his lifetime. Nineteen years after landscape designer Koichi Kawana designed the Japanese Garden at the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys, a plaque with his name will finally be hung inside the front gate.

The garden was a long time in coming to fruition. Kawana designed it in 1970, but funding problems delayed construction until the early 1980s. By then some of the technical specifications were outdated and had to be revised. It cost $3 million to build and was opened in 1985.

“We all want to do know why Dr. Kawana’s name didn’t make it onto the original dedication plaque,” comments Gene Greene, senior landscape associate at the site. “But now that we’re ready to cast a separate plaque in his honor, he’ll finally get credit.” (The original plaque looks like a directory listing of city politicians.)

The 6 1/2-acre garden was Kawana’s first endeavor. Since then he has designed gardens in half a dozen other states, in addition to working in the UCLA department of campus architects and engineers. He graciously deflects any questions about overdue credit.

To this day he is very involved in the garden’s care. “You feel like it’s your own baby. I go there about once a month or whenever they call me to check it out,” he says, adding, “In Japan there are 300- to 500-year-old gardens. New gardens do not possess any importance in Japanese aesthetics. You have to be patient.”

Which he has been, in more ways than one.

Overheard at...

“This is the part about being an adult that I hate.”

--Woman waiting in a long line at a Canoga Park auto dealer service department