Now, If They Could Only Add Mother’s Day and . . .

Next Columbus Day, when you can park in San Diego without feeding the meters, you should think a kind thought about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

You say you don’t understand how respect for King translates into free parking on Columbus Day? That just shows how little you know about the politics of race and ethnicity.

Let’s start here: Martin Luther King Day is a new holiday for San Diego city employees. Columbus Day used to be a holiday but got bargained away.

For that reason, the City Council this week was asked to drop Columbus Day and add Martin Luther King Day to the list of days when parking meters aren’t enforced. Each day the meters go dark, the city loses $30,000.

Naturally, the idea of deleting Columbus and adding King caused a furor.

Bruno S. Guiffrida, for the Order of Sons of Italy in America: “Italian-Americans ask for very little from the city.”

Don Stillwell, for the Knights of Columbus, framed the issue as “King vs. Columbus.”

He said free parking is needed for the Columbus Day Parade. He was unfazed when reminded that the parade is usually not held precisely on Columbus Day.

The city manager also noted that Columbus Day is a shopping day and that merchants say they need the parking turnover prompted by enforcement. Someone grumbled that the same could be said of King Day.

There was another alternative, of course: Equality. Enforce the parking meters on Columbus and King days. Fatten the treasury by $60,000 a year, enough to hire another cop maybe.

That idea proved unspeakable. This is the week San Diego is making a final push to get Super Bowl XXVII by convincing the NFL that it truly reveres King’s memory.

In the end, the council voted 6 to 2 to add King Day and also keep Columbus Day on the free-parking list, even though as a non-holiday it no longer legally/technically qualifies.

Only council members Bob Filner and Judy McCarty saw something odd about this.

Splint Those Verbs

The restless city.

* Now it can be told.

As the Jan. 15 deadline approached for Saddam to quit Kuwait or get bombed, military personnel everywhere where given last-minute instruction on skills they might need in case of war.

In San Diego, Navy medical personnel were quickly gathered for a crash seminar on “Get a Grip On Your Grammar.”

Instruction was given on field-stripping verbs and the use of long-range diction.

* Warm words, cold cash.

Randy Ortego, the 8-year-old grandson of Old Globe Theatre publicist Charlene Baldridge, wrote a letter to President Bush, pledging his support for Operation Desert Storm and enclosing a dollar “for the troops.”

In response, the President sent the youth a “Dear Young Friend” letter and an autographed picture. But he kept the dollar.

* Classy sign at the new Trolley Barn Park in University Heights: “Please Stay Off Meadow.”

Unfortunately, meadow doesn’t seem to be in everybody’s vocabulary. Lots of people are lounging and stepping on the grass.

* North County bumper sticker: “No Comment.”

Trash-Nabbers Get Bold

Trash pirates are getting bolder.

San Diego’s curbside recycling program has attracted its share of clandestine scavengers, who arrive under cover of darkness on trash day and siphon off newspapers, cans, glass and plastics.

For whatever reasons (a higher grade of garbage maybe?), the pirates seem to favor Hillcrest, Mission Hills and Point Loma.

Even if they’re caught, it’s only a $50 citation. Not much deterrent there.

Maybe that’s why the pirates have escalated: phony but official-looking postcards have been sent to homeowners, saying it’s OK to put everything in a single container (quicker to snatch that way) rather than sorting.

The cards have been turned over to police and prosecutors. No suspects yet, but scary words like felony mail fraud are already being used.