Snapshots of life in the Golden State. : Remnants of Red Peril in Land of the Mellow

With the ban on Communist Party activities in the Soviet Union, the joke goes that a Communist now has more rights in California than in the Crimea.

Well, sort of.

During the post-World War II wave of anti-Communist hysteria, state legislators passed laws that, among other things, forbade Communists from working as state government employees or public school teachers. Many of the statutes have been repealed. But some, while currently unenforceable because of court decisions, have never been stricken from the books.

Other vestiges of the McCarthy era remain, as well. For example, all prospective public employees still must take an oath to defend the state Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic.”

“You can’t be dismissed for belonging to or joining the Communist Party,” says state Personnel Board policy division chief Duane Morford, “unless you actually advance, or intend to advance, its goals of unlawful overthrow of the government.”

Painting the Prado

Graffiti-of-the-year award goes to the vandals who altered the 56-foot-high letters on the Prado Dam, visible to thousands of motorists as they whiz down California 71 and 91 in Riverside County.

The dam’s 15-year-old Bicentennial message--”200 Years of Freedom”--was changed to: “200 Years of Greed.”

Corona developer James Deegan, who last week returned Freedom to the Prado with eight gallons of red paint, said he wasn’t impressed by the vandals’ message. “(But) I admire their ingenuity,” he added.

Warren Thomas, whose Army Corps of Engineers district operations office maintains the flood control structure, admits they didn’t notice until Deegan called. “Thousands of cars go by a day. The drivers all probably just giggled.”

WHITE HOUSE WATCH

Nature abhors a vacuum: California, often in the vanguard of political and social trends, appears single-handedly to be ending the dearth of Democratic presidential contenders.

This week, former Gov. Jerry Brown all but formally launched his third bid for the Democratic nomination, saying he plans a populist campaign in which he would accept no contribution exceeding $100.

Another recently announced hopeful for leader of the Free World is ex-Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, who was drummed out of local office in 1990.

Then there’s Gary Ryan, 52, a Morro Bay musician and sign maker who adamantly denies having any political experience. Ryan, in his campaign kickoff, said the nation’s problems are due in part to “political inbreeding” which has created a “small good-old-boy network.” Running as “the little guy,” Ryan says he will accept no donation of more than $1.

If he has done nothing else presidential, Ryan has taken on a press coordinator who can put together a quotable, albeit fractured, phrase. Asserting that Central Coast residents are beginning to take his man seriously, coordinator William Yates insisted that Ryan “has a lot of inertia going on up here in Morro Bay.”

Hunting Game in California

While the hunting of small game birds in California is restricted only by set seasons and quotas per day of take, hunters after larger game must obtain state license tags. The tags, issued by lottery, restrict the numbers of animals in any species that can be killed in a given year. Following are estimated statewide populations of some larger game and the number killed legally last year by hunters.

1990 EST. 1990 ANIMAL STATE POP. NO. KILLED Deer 700,000 26,000 Black Bears 15,000--18,000 1,187 Pronghorn Antelope 8,000--10,000 717

Elk Tule Elk 2,500 75 Roosevelt Elk 3,500 4 Rocky Mountain Elk 1,500 2 Desert Bighorn Sheep 3,500 5

SOURCE: California Dept. of Fish and Game, Sacramento

Compiled by Times editorial researcher Tracy Thomas

MEDIA WATCH

Coastal differences: In yet another indication of the differing points of view between East and West coasts come last week’s news reports on a San Diego researcher’s breakthrough in comparing the brains of homosexual and heterosexual men.

In the Los Angeles Times, the portion of the hypothalamus found to be smaller in gay men than in heterosexuals was termed “no larger than a grain of sand.”

In the New York Times, the same brain segment was described as “barely the size of a kosher salt crystal.”

EXIT LINE

“Tens of thousands of Muscovites risked their lives to face down the tanks sent to surround and intimidate their legislature. Could we imagine Californians putting their lives on the line to protect their legislators, who accept big pay raises while cutting welfare grants and state workers’ salaries and shake down special-interest lobbyists for checks?”

--State government columnist Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee.