I used to do it myself. A...

I used to do it myself. A lot of travel agents did. But we didn’t do it all the time. You had to pick your spots.

On a trip to Switzerland, for instance, you wouldn’t dare do it with Sierra Club types who’d hike into your office with Lederhosen on and snow-burned calf muscles and pitons clanking in their suitcases. No way.

But some old Russian lady, say, who’d spent half her life in an apartment in Fairfax with her borscht and her cats--I’d sell her a ticket and fly her up to Big Bear. She’d see mountains, she’d see chalets--she couldn’t see anything very clearly--and I’d pocket the difference in air fare.

Everybody was happy.

So when John McKinney gives his slide show “Travel the World--in California!” at the West Los Angeles branch of Adventure 16 outfitters, 11161 W. Pico Blvd., at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, just remember he isn’t telling you anything new.

Our Southland really does have it all. I sent a Bedouin sheik back “home” to the sand dunes west of Yuma, and he never knew the difference. I sent honeymooners to Catalina instead of to the Greek islands--ditto. They had eyes only for each other. When a Desert Storm vet wanted to take a nostalgia trip to Kuwait, I sent him to the gravel pits of Irwindale and told him they were bomb craters, and he bought it.

The only trouble came when I got greedy. I wanted to keep all the fare, so I started sending customers to film-studio back lots. Paris? London? No problem. And Griffith Park was the all-purpose backdrop -- half the movies ever made have been shot there, so it looks like wherever people think they’re going.

Too often, though, they’d turn a corner on the London set and wind up in Paris and beef that they never got their Hovercraft ride across the Channel.

Then along came this old Chinese guy.

He was a diplomat, one of Mao’s or Deng’s henchmen, I forget, but so decrepit I figured he couldn’t tell the Great Wall from Dodger Stadium anymore. He booked a flight to Beijing and I maneuvered him into Mann’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard and slipped the projectionist a few bucks to play “The Last Emperor” until he fell asleep.

But before I could make my getaway, he came wandering back out into the courtyard and suddenly stood transfixed, foggily reading the HOLLYWOOD sign on the hill above.

My heart sank.

“Hong Kong? “ he muttered.

Then he turned on me, his wisp of a beard trembling with indignation. “Running dog of a capitalist roader! Your government will hear of this. Give me a refund. Put me on another airline. Return me to Los Angeles immediately, you . . . you businessman. “

That part, at least, was easy.