When Fast Lane Requires a Wing and a Prayer

Cookie Koomprapun boarded the Woodman Avenue onramp to the Ventura Freeway one recent afternoon just as traffic slowed to a crawl--or, more accurately, a waddle.

Ahead of her, a driver had jumped out of his pickup truck and managed to bring everyone to a stop so that a mother duck and her brood could march across to safety.

“That’s right,” confirmed KFWB traffic reporter Robin Johnson. “We heard about it--a mother and her 12 ducklings. We get duck reports every once in a while on the Ventura. I don’t know if people have little farms out there or what.”

It’s nice to know that in this electronic age, an Angeleno can still come across an old-fashioned webbed site.

LET’S NOT SPLIT HAIRS: Those criticizing the L.A. Airport Commission’s hiring of Clinton crony Webster Hubbell as a Washington lobbyist have overlooked one important angle. Mayor Richard Riordan was merely observing his pledge to expand service at LAX--mainly, on-board haircuts. President Clinton, you may recall, received a $200 trim from Cristophe of Beverly Hills at the airport a few years ago. A pretty price to pay. But then the food prices at LAX are outrageous too.

NEXT--A SALVATION AIR FORCE? Otto Plum of Torrance found a thrift shop on Melrose Avenue that would seem to be a new branch of the nation’s thrift forces. Actually, the name’s a gag. “People get a giggle out of it,” said owner Martin Fromer, who doesn’t wear a uniform. And, no, he hasn’t received any calls from attorneys representing the Salvation Army.

FORGET ABOUT THE ITALIAN CUT: An anonymous reader sent us a shot of a sign that appears to offer a German cut of fabric (see photo).

NEVER UNDERESTIMATE MAN: The sewage spill that closed a beach at Malibu recently has become an all-too-frequent event here. And it has rendered as outdated the comment by Det. Lew Archer in Ross Macdonald’s “The Drowning Pool.”

“They had jerry-built the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed superhighways through the mountains, cut down a thousand years of redwood growth and built an urban wilderness in the desert. They couldn’t touch the ocean. They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn’t be tainted.”

The novel was published in 1950.

POETRY PEDDLER: David Libby passed along some verse by Wendell Brown, a homeless man in Brentwood who sells his writings to passersby for $1 a poem. In “Vanishing Woman,” Brown writes:

Time was when only men wore pants,

Then women only dresses.

And you could figure which was which

By women’s flowing tresses.

But now on many manly heads

The hair hangs to the shoulder.

And women’s dress has changed as well,

As they get ever bolder.

(Sorry about the reference to shoulder-length hair, Cristophe.)

miscelLAny

Steve Morris saw an MTA bus with an ad for the Dodgers that showed a diving Todd Hollandsworth. Only problem is that the latter has been farmed out to the minor leagues in New Mexico. The caption of the ad says “Hollandsworth saves the day.” Asks Morris: “Is that bus headed to Albuquerque?” With the MTA, you never know.

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.