Highlight of Show: Neon Pardner

H owdy, pardner . They call me Santa Monica Sam. I’m a winking cowpoke with a come-hither thumb, and I get lit up every night. You can’t miss me--I’m 31 feet tall.

That’s no tall tale. “Sam” moseyed all the way over from Shreveport, La., to take part in an exhibit called “Legends of the West--A Hollywood View of the American Cowboy” at a Santa Monica museum.

“It’s Hollywood’s view, and what’s more Hollywood than a neon cowboy?” said Tobi Smith, director of the California Heritage Museum at 2612 Main St.

The show is scheduled to open July 21, but Sam, illuminated for the first time Monday night, will cast a gassy glow over Main Street until mid-October.

“He’s a small part of a large exhibition,” said Smith, who put the museum’s show together with exhibits from 30 lenders.

The neon cowboy was brought to Southern California by Scott Hopper of Santa Monica’s Track 16 Gallery, which is showing other large-scale neon art at Bergamot Station. .

“Sam” is one of seven identical brothers created by the Louisiana Sign Co. in 1957. Two of his siblings survive, one in Laughlin, Nev., and another in Las Vegas, where he is known as “Vegas Vic.”

Sam’s previous residence was the roof of a five-story lumber store in Shreveport. You could see that cowboy from 70 miles around.

Fancy duds, ropes, lunch boxes, hand-painted ties and other collectibles will represent such famous riders of the silver screen as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Tex Ritter, William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Will Rogers and John Wayne.

The $50 opening reception will be a chuck-wagon barbecue, complete with hayrides and rope tricks by Montie Montana and his horse, Rex, starting at 7 p.m. and lasting “until the cows come home.”

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OUCH: Developers and traffic jams may pose threats to the Ballona wetlands, but there’s another problem that is much more immediate for nearby residents: biting midge flies.

“While they pose no public health risk, they are a terrible nuisance,” said Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents the area.

County workers will combat the pests from now until the end of October by applying insecticides and cleaning the Ballona Creek channel, where heat and moisture make the flies feel at home.

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LUNCH BREAK: Students at the Westwood Charter School and their moms, dads and legal guardians--bagged about 13,000 lunches for distribution to the hungry during the school year that just ended. (Hooray!)

The meals, made at home every Tuesday evening, often pile up so high in the waiting room at the school office that troublemakers have to wait in the hall for their confrontations with the principal.

Actually, the school has no troublemakers. All the children there are above average, as Garrison Keillor would say.