Southland Primps for Visit by Prince Charles : Royalty: Market in Inglewood, mechanics training center on itinerary. ‘It’s like a dream,’ says one worker.

At Crenshaw High School, the python stays, the iguana goes. At Brookes Restoration Co., the bronze bust of Queen Elizabeth retains its high perch on a shelf, but the Wedgwood cup adorned with cameos of Prince Charles-- and his estranged wife, Diana--gets whisked away. And at the Vons supermarket in Inglewood, exit Coca-Cola display, enter Schweppes tonic, Carr’s crackers and Colman’s mustard.

From South-Central to West Hollywood to Cerritos, no detail is too small for Angelenos preparing to greet Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, who arrives in the Southland on Monday for a five-day visit. Though he will spend a night or two hobnobbing with entertainment industry folk, much of this trip takes him to learning centers and after-school youth programs in parts of Los Angeles seldom trod by royal feet.

“I’m shocked that he’s coming to a supermarket, of all places,” said assistant produce manager Michael Parker, arranging oranges at the Vons on Manchester Boulevard in Inglewood, which will get a royal visit Nov. 2.

Charles is stopping at this Vons to promote British foods. He is also meeting members of the Urban Retailing and Development Program that the supermarket chain has instituted. The program trains lower-income people in the community to work in the store.

“It’s like a dream come true,” said Lillie Robinson, 40, who went through the program and now works in the meat service area. She sets up the meats and fish and kills the live catfish that the store sells. “Ever since Mike (Courtis, the store supervisor) called me into the office and told me I was chosen to meet the prince, I’ve just been smiling to myself.”

Even though she won’t be meeting him, shopper Bess Aubert said she understands why the prince put this part of town on the royal itinerary.

“He’s curious about South-Central,” said Aubert, 57, pushing a cart of groceries Thursday afternoon. “He’s like everybody else. He wants to see for himself.”

At the Los Angeles Urban League Automotive Training Center on Crenshaw Boulevard--where the prince will visit a class in brakes and suspension--some student mechanics are indifferent, others intrigued.

“I get to meet somebody important,” said Jose Moreno, 20. For Moreno, Charles is exotic. “He’s from another part of the world. The President we know about. We see him on television and in the papers. But we don’t know anything about the prince.” Moreno paused. “He’s the prince of England, right?”

But if some are stunned Charles chose to visit them, others are convinced they were destined for a royal appearance.

When the students who run Crenshaw High School’s highly praised Food From the ‘Hood salad dressing venture heard he was coming to L.A., they figured their project was just the kind of inner-city success story that interested him. So they wrote to him.

Not only are they getting a visit, they have been chosen to host a lunch. For weeks, they’ve been planning with a precision worthy of, well, Buckingham Palace.

Lunch will be held in their quarter-acre garden behind the school. They sodded, landscaped--and agonized over the 100 person guest list, finally paring it down to community activists, their own supporters, a few actors (Edward James Olmos, for one), film director John Singleton and their reliable Federal Express delivery man, a Crenshaw High graduate himself.

Charles’ tour at Crenshaw will take him past the school’s resident reptiles. The glass-caged python was no problem. But the usually free-roaming iguana will be confined to quarters.

They’ve hired a caterer--Greg Dulan of the nearby Dulan’s restaurant. The menu: smothered pork chops, corn-bread dressing, cranberry sauce, fresh collard greens--also baked chicken and a vegetarian entree.

“It’s amazing where collard greens and black-eyed peas will take you,” said Dulan with a chuckle, surveying the part of the garden where he will serve royalty. “South-Central L.A. gets a lot of negative publicity,” he mused. “I would like him to know he can come here and have a nice lunch and not see a drive-by shooting.” He glanced toward the street. “I hope that won’t happen.”

Melinda McMullen, a full-time business adviser to Food From the ‘Hood since it started, reassured Dulan. “It’ll be the safest place in town that day,” she said.

And perhaps for Charles the most welcoming. The 45-year-old prince leaves behind a native land obsessed with the latest foibles of the royals--including a couple of recent tell-all books. One offers a scandalized account of the 33-year-old Princess of Wales frolicking with her riding instructor; the other, with Charles’ blessing, contends that the Prince of Wales was goaded into a loveless marriage by his father.

But this is L.A., haven for fallen angels and eccentrics of every stripe. The prince will find the people he has chosen to visit mostly curious, excited and grateful for the attention. And though the itinerary does not say, “Revamp Public Image: Oct. 31-Nov. 4,” Charles would, no doubt, be just as grateful if Angelenos saw him less as a caricature of the tabloids and more as a world figure with the clout to call business leaders to conference tables, the star status to get Aaron Spelling to donate his house for a fund-raiser, and a longstanding interest in the revitalization of inner cities everywhere.

It’s been 17 years since Charles visited L.A., and in those years both city and prince have dramatically changed. Riots, earthquakes and a changing of the mayoral guard from the long-sitting Tom Bradley (who greeted the prince on his last visit) to the political neophyte Richard Riordan (who will be at the airport this time) have irrevocably altered Los Angeles.

The prince, for his part, has weathered a rocky marriage, a highly publicized separation and the usurping of his limelight by his charismatic wife. And the job he’s spent a lifetime training for is still not available.

When British aides made advance trips to Los Angeles this past summer to plan the prince’s visit, the stuff of scandal was taboo. The talk was of the prince’s interest in seeing how Los Angeles had rebuilt itself since the 1992 riots, and how the prince--who has involved himself in training and employment programs, among other urban projects in London--could get a sense of that.

Back home, the Prince commands an array of charities, business groups and community organizations known as the Prince’s Trusts.

“He likes to see people doing things,” said British Consul General Merrick Baker-Bates, the ranking British diplomat in Los Angeles, “and he likes to see young people.”

It took two years to find time on his schedule, but the prince is finally taking advantage of a 1992 invitation from then-Mayor Bradley and then-chairman of the county Board of Supervisors Deane Dana. Charles’ trip also coincides with the two-month-long, citywide British arts celebration known as the UK/LA Festival. And the visit is logistically convenient--when he leaves L.A., he jets off to Hong Kong for an environmental conference.

The prince and his entourage of 13 will be ensconced in the lush environs of the Bel-Air Hotel. “It’s obviously a great honor,” said Frank Bowling, the British-born vice president and general manager of the hotel, who declined to give any details of the arrangements. “They’ve asked me to keep it very low key--which is the keynote of this hotel.”

When he arrives on a British Airways flight, the prince will be met by Riordan and any Los Angeles City Council members who choose to come.

After that he speeds off to the British consul general’s Hancock Park residence for a reception for 150, including community activists and members of the City Council and Board of Supervisors.

Of course, Charles will do the requisite glittery things: He will attend the premiere of “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” (directed by his countryman Kenneth Branagh--who will attend with his wife, Oscar-winning actress Emma Thompson) at the Cineplex Odeon in Century City. Then he will go over to the Century Plaza for an after-theater fund-raising dinner for 1,200 who paid at least $250 a ticket to benefit various local charities and UK/LA.

And Charles will don a tuxedo for one black-tie dinner--a $2,500-a-ticket fund-raiser, also for UK/LA and local charities, hosted by Arco Chairman Lodwrick M. Cook and MCA-Universal Chairman Lew Wasserman at the home of television producer Aaron Spelling.

There’s no shortage of people who want to meet the prince. At the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts alone, he will attend three receptions. Somewhere in there, he will get to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance of “Henry VI: The Battle for the Throne.”

Other stops include the Foshay Learning Center in South-Central; the Sheriff’s Department’s Lennox Youth Activity Center; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Quantel Co. in Beverly Hills, a British film and TV special effects company; the Huntington Library in San Marino and the PUENTE Learning Center in Boyle Heights.

“I was delighted,” said Sister Jennie Lechtenberg, the founder and executive director of the PUENTE center, which offers about 1,400 students a variety of classes ranging from job training to adult education and language skills. “When our students are allowed to see or hear international figures, it’s so good for them.”

And it’s not bad for fund raising either. “This kind of visit is always good for a nonprofit organization because of the publicity it brings,” she said.

Charles also is squeezing in a visit to the West Hollywood workshop of Frank Brookes, a British-born master potter who restores broken ceramics and glass. Brookes, painfully aware of the disintegration of the Royal Relationship, has already removed from his shelf the Wedgwood cup commemorating the 1981 marriage of Charles and Diana. “I didn’t want to cause any embarrassment,” he explained.

Charles finishes off the week with a speech at the Downtown public library to a group of local business leaders at a conference organized by the prince’s international Business Leaders Forum.

By the time he gets on a plane for Hong Kong, Lillie Robinson will be back to serving up catfish at the Vons fish counter, and the Crenshaw High School iguana will be free to amble where it pleases.

Times staff writer William Tuohy contributed to this story from London.

The Royal Visit

OCT. 31

* Prince of Wales arrives.

* British Consul-General Merrick Baker-Bates’ reception.

NOV. 1

* Opening of Foshay Learning Center at former site of Foshay Middle School in South-Central.

* Visit to Toyota/L.A. Urban League Automotive Training Center on Crenshaw Boulevard.

* Lunch outside Crenshaw High School hosted by Food from the ‘Hood, a student-run company.

* Visit to county Sheriff’s Department’s Lennox Youth Activity Center in South-Central.

* Premiere of the film “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” at Cineplex Odeon in Century City; dinner at Century Plaza.

NOV. 2

* Visit to Vons market on Manchester Boulevard in Inglewood to promote British goods and meet employees trained through the company’s urban renewal program.

* Visit to PUENTE (People United to Enrich the Neighborhood Through Education) Center in Boyle Heights.

* Private lunch.

* Evening performance of Royal Shakespeare Company’s “Henry VI: The Battle for the Throne” at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

NOV. 3

* Visit to Brookes Restoration Co., run by former Wedgwood master potter Frank Brookes in West Hollywood.

* Visit to L.A. County Museum of Art for exhibit of R.B. Kitaj, an American painter who lives in London; prince will also meet L.A. County supervisors and museum trustees.

* Visit to Quantel Co. in Beverly Hills, a British film and TV special effects company.

* Visit to Huntington Library in San Marino to see illustrations by English poet William Blake.

* Fund-raising dinner at Aaron and Candy Spelling’s home in Holmby Hills, co-hosted by Arco Chairman Lodwrick Cook and MCA-Universal Chairman Lew Wasserman.

NOV. 4

* Prince speaks on inner-city revitalization at a Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum conference at L.A. Library.

* Leaves L.A. airport.