City Hall can be light years away:The...

City Hall can be light years away:

The day this column published John Mayer’s photo of a house that had two light poles in front, we heard from the owner.

“We’ve been trying to get the city to come out here for a year and take out the old pole,” said Glenn Miller, a North Hollywood resident. “Then you guys put in the picture and guess what? It’s 2:20 (p.m.) and the service people just left--the Bureau of Street Lighting. They took it out in less than 30 minutes. We were told that they had lost our paperwork, but when some supervisor saw the photo today it went to the top of the list of their things to do.”

The second pole had been installed because the original one was damaged in the Northridge quake. The city “told me their truck would be back in two weeks to take out the old one,” Miller said. That was in January.

As the weeks and months went by, Miller said, he had phoned everyone from Street Lighting to Councilman John Ferraro’s office to the Department of Water and Power (“They said all they would do is replace a bulb if it burned out”).

But Miller is happy now. “I had just wrapped some red ribbon around the old pole,” he said. “And they even removed it and wrapped it around the new pole.”

THE GRINCH WHO STOLE THE SHERIFF’S DEPT.: Henrietta Manchel of Los Angeles sent a Christmas card to Sheriff Sherman Block and it was returned to her. The department had moved, she found out. But where? Hey, you can’t expect the Post Office to keep track of everyone. Sources tell us the Sheriff’s Department now makes its home in Monterey Park.

THE NAME FITS: Gwynn Deyoung of Pasadena reports that a local library has a staffer named Christine Reeder.

AT LEAST NEITHER WAS EDUCATED IN CALIFORNIA: A boo-boo in a party invitation sent out by unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate Michael Huffington and his wife, Arianna, was included in Esquire’s “Dubious Achievements of 1995!” It also made Newsweek’s roundup of the funniest quotes of 1995. The honored phrase was: “Your invited.” (Ours must have been lost in the male.).

PRESS RELEASES WE NEVER FINISH: “The makers of French’s mustard want to know what memories mustard makes you think of. The first annual ‘Mustard Memories’ contest will give mustard lovers a chance to have fun and win prizes in exchange for sharing their mustard memories.”

AREN’T THE FREEWAYS LOUD ENOUGH? Fujitsu Ten, a Torrance-based maker of automotive products, recently held a demonstration of “21st century automotive wonders” such as “in-car karaoke for beating the rush-hour blues.”

Honk.

miscelLAny The L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce received a gift basket from Audio Visual Reporting Services that included a small bag of coffee--and the message, “Have a little pot on us.” And revive those mustard memories.