A worker for the county Natural History...

A worker for the county Natural History Museum stopped at a gas station to buy cigarettes. Asked what brand she preferred, she answered that it didn’t matter because she wasn’t going to smoke them. Intrigued, the attendant asked what else the cigarettes could be used for.

“Would you believe an offering to the gods?” she said.

The worker wasn’t joking. In return for the loan of some sacred Indonesian heirlooms, museum officials agreed to make a show of respect for the objects twice a week, in keeping with that nation’s traditions. In front of the objects, workers leave offerings of the petals of five kinds of flowers, mixed with tobacco.

Ron Vock found a hotel in Santa Monica where you might have to share your room with critters--but critters who are apparently willing to negotiate.

Moscow’s announcement that it will allow spy planes to fly over its territory to verify arms control agreements is another reminder of how times have changed. It was 1960, you might recall, when American pilot Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, setting off an international furor.

There’s an L.A. footnote here. Powers survived the incident but was killed in a helicopter crash in Encino 17 years later while working as a traffic reporter for KNBC (Channel 4).

You know you’re on the Westside when:

You spot a self-serve tap in a restaurant--Malibu’s Reel Inn--with a sign that says: “Filtered water.”

Touched by the recent enshrinement of Carl’s Jr. founder Carl Karcher in the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, we recently published a list of L.A. food pioneers who deserve immortality in the Hollywood Wax Museum. But Kay Chandler of Glendale feels we left out an obvious candidate--Bob Wian, founder of the Bob’s Big Boy chain.

“I remember going into his place in Glendale in the ‘30s,” Chandler said. “It was a little white shack and he had stools and a counter,” she said. “It was one of the first hamburgers I ever had.”

Later came the Big Boy statue, modeled after a 6-year-old boy named Richard Woodruff who, according to legend, cleaned counters in exchange for Wian’s contribution to the Southland--double-decker burgers.

Meanwhile, David Lemon of Culver City, who says he’s normally “too lazy to write,” couldn’t sit by and allow us to equate chili burgers with chili sizes in a recent discussion of another pioneer, Tommy DeForest of Ptomaine Tommy’s in Lincoln Heights.

“There is a big difference,” he said. “A chili size is a hamburger or ground-round patty with chili on top of it--no bun. Bread is served on the side--preferably a French roll. Please correct.”

Some Silver Lake motorists encountered a pre-freeway jam Monday morning when a moving van stalled on Descanso Drive. Dan Nussbaum noticed that the lettering on the rear of the van said:

“Moving?”

Always a sensitive question during the rush hour.

miscelLAny:

The Baxter Street stairway in Elysian Heights, with 230 steps, is believed to be the longest stairway in Los Angeles.