Good help is easy to find:Architecture buff...

Good help is easy to find:

Architecture buff Stan Kelton parked at the recently closed Terminal Annex to study the exterior of the half-century-old postal landmark.

“Excuse me, sir,” said a man who was directing traffic. “I apologize for the inconvenience, but the post office is closed and you’ll have to go over to that building.”

He pointed to the temporary facility nearby.

“Yes, but I want to see Terminal Annex,” Kelton explained.

“No, I’m sorry for the inconvenience,” the man repeated, “but you’ll have to go over to that building.”

“But I just want to see the outside of this building,” Kelton repeated.

“Oh, OK,” said the unofficial apologist for the post office. “Say, do you have any spare change?”

WILL THE LONG-QUIET HOTEL MARQUEE ALONG THE SANTA ANA FREEWAY RESUME ITS WISECRACKING? No word yet from the just-opened Commerce Plaza Hotel, except that it’s negotiating to become a Holiday Inn. During previous incarnations as the Hyatt and Radisson, the hotel marquee offered such epigrams as, “Tomorrow has been closed due to lack of interest,” “Shhh--Rosemary’s baby is sleeping” and “Welcome to San Diego” (on April Fool’s Day). OK, they weren’t always knee-slappers, but motorists trapped on the 5 were grateful for any kind of distraction.

And there were occasional spicy sayings. Once the Hyatt quoted the German poet Goethe, who said, “Life is the childhood of our immortality.’

Only the marquee said, “immorality.”

WASTE SIZE: DeWayne Johnson of Northridge, who contributed today’s laundry ad, asks: “Do they take it in or let it out for the $4.50?”

LIST OF THE DAY: For all the good publicity Jack Webb’s “Dragnet” show brought Los Angeles police, department brass were suspicious of the producers in the 1950s, as Joe Domanick relates in “To Protect and Serve--The LAPD’s Century of War in the City of Dreams.”

For instance:

* Chief William Parker objected to the narration, “My name’s Friday, I work here, I’m a cop.” The department viewed “cop” as the word “that every two-bit hood was placing after the adjectives ‘dirty’ or ‘damn. . . .’ ” Webb deleted the “cop” reference after several episodes and replaced it with, “I carry a badge.”

* The makers of “Dragnet” were not allowed to keep overnight the LAPD badge shown on the show or the plastic decals with the LAPD insignia used on studio cars. Instead, the items brought over from the LAPD for each day’s shoot.

* When Webb planned his first “Dragnet” movie, he wanted to call it “711,” which was Joe Friday’s badge number. Parker objected because “711 had gambling connotations.” The movie was retitled, “Badge 714.”

miscelLAny Author Domanick says that the first police use of the term “dragnet”--indicating the fanning out of a hundred-man squad “across 10 or 12 major boulevard intersections” to question “suspicious characters”--was made by LAPD Chief James Davis in the 1920s.