Sometimes it seems as though there’s no...

Sometimes it seems as though there’s no winning when you’re an L.A. commuter.

Friday was retirement day for Steven Morgan, a city labor negotiator, and his wife, Sandra, a bank vice president. Rather than make their daily grueling drive in from Northridge themselves, they decided to treat themselves to a limo.

So what happens? Traffic was extremely light because it was Good Friday. The limo arrived early, and Morgan, 56, had to sit in the back seat for 20 minutes, waiting for his colleagues to give him a planned send-off.

“Steve never gets to work early,” explained one surprised co-worker.

If you’ve put been putting off writing that Great American Novel, here’s your chance. And you don’t have to worry about what to say in the first sentence. Or the first 4,269 sentences, for that matter. They’ve already been composed.

It’s all part of a promotion by the Montblanc pen company, which hopes to land in the Guinness Book of World Records by having 7,500 or so people scrawl a sentence apiece to create a massive tome. L.A. is the eighth of 12 cities on the book-writing tour.

Angelenos can make their contributions next Monday through Friday in the main lobby of the South Tower of the Century Plaza Towers.

The company makes one request. If you get your turn, please don’t insist on reading the previous 4,000-odd sentences.

A bit irritated, Lucile Thomas of L.A. writes that she’s never heard a native Californian say:

Los Angeles’ Main Spring crop is Broad Hills of Olives with the Grand Hope of Flowers and Figs.

She was referring to an old formula that we heard had once been used for memorizing the sequence of the Civic Center’s north-south streets.

Thomas adds that “in my youth--many years ago--the poem we learned was . . .”:

From Main we Spring to Broadway, then over the Hill to Olive. Oh! Wouldn’t it be Grand if we could Hope to pick a Flower at Figueroa?

In retrospect, we should have been tipped off by the figs.

Now, we feel up against a Wall, trying to decide whether to flee to San Pedro, to the Central part of the state, or, perhaps, farther north to Alameda.

The blessed event occurred more than a month ago, so we’re a bit miffed that we only received this unique birth notice (see photo) Friday from Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City).

The delay doesn’t make our chore any easier, either: Mainly, how do you shop for a gift for a 75-pound newborn?

The L.A. Unified School District is considering building a much needed elementary school at the current location of the Hollywood Tropicana, the noted emporium of female mud wrestling.

Could be a case of sand boxes replacing mud boxes.

miscelLAny: There’s a Whittier Elementary School in Costa Mesa, Hemet, Long Beach and Oakland. But there’s no Whittier Elementary School in Whittier.