NEIGHBORS : High and Low Notes : Ventura College gets an organ, Oxnard is given a musical tribute and store patrons receive an early dose of Christmas carols.

The Ventura College Gym finally has a Baldwin organ, just like the big-time college and professional arenas.

Jerry Dunlap, the school’s director of physical education and athletics, said the 16-speaker, three-keyboard instrument is ready to play--but it was touch-and-go for awhile. Until late last week, the school didn’t have an organist.

Then David Burdick volunteered for the job. For you gossip lovers out there, Burdick is the boyfriend of Kathy McCarthy, daughter of Nora McCarthy, who works in the college cafeteria, and John McCarthy, one of the college’s biggest sports boosters.

In his search for an organist, Dunlap said he wanted someone who could play ballgame-type music. “Where you introduce the player and go da-da-da-DA-da-DA, charge,” Dunlap said.

It is unlikely that Dunlap would have assumed organist duties had no one else taken the job. “I know ‘Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater’ and that’s all.”

Back in late September, if you remember, musician Michael Feinstein performed a song titled “Oxnard” during a show at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles.

Few, if any, Oxnarders had actually heard of the piece, so I promised to share the lyrics with you as soon as I got hold of them. Well it turns out that the copyrighted song, written as a take-off on such songs as “My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)” and “New York, New York,” was written in 1989 by a Studio City man named Ray Jessel. Here is an excerpt:

(Verse)

” . . But there’s one great town

The songwriters ignore.

And it’s starting to make

This one songwriter sore.

So I set out to write this song

Yes, I set out to right this wrong. . . .”

(Chorus)

“We’re steppin’ out tonight in Oxnard!

The town they named after the nard of an ox. . . .

We’re steppin’ out tonight in Oxnard!

No more those ‘far-from-Oxnard’ blues!

But there’s one thing to warn you about

Before we go steppin’ out --

Once you step in Oxnard,

You can’t get it off of your shoes.”

What do Oxnard residents think of the song? We asked Jim Faulconer, the city’s director of community services, and it looks as if the song will be a tough sell.

“Maybe each listener will make his own decision,” he said. “I’m caught kind of cold. I don’t know which way to go.” Hardly a rave review.

The big question--does songwriter Jessel step out in Oxnard?

“No. Does anybody step out in Oxnard?” he asked. “Usually it’s somewhere we pass through or by on our way to Santa Barbara or Ventura. There’s not too much there besides the beaches that interests us.”

He reconsidered (after conferring with his wife) and admitted, in fact, that the couple does get their strawberries in Oxnard and that they attend the annual parade of lights at Channel Islands Harbor.

Still more music: Guess it’s never too early to get into the holiday spirit. Even as ghosts and goblins were making last-minute adjustments to their trick-or-treat costumes last week, Christmas was in the air. Make that on the airwaves, at least at La Petite Boulangerie on Westlake Boulevard in Westlake Village.

Patrons of the bakery were getting a full course of piped-in Christmas carols as early as the weekend before Halloween. Is management trying to get patrons in the mood for a fruitcake croissant?