Was That Homesick or Carsick?

Judy Graeme of L.A. felt homesick--almost--during a slide show by a park ranger at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. While extolling the beauty and fresh air of the surroundings, the ranger inserted a shot of a traffic jam on the Santa Monica Freeway for laughs. It was the Fairfax Avenue exit--Graeme’s exit.

MR. GOODWRENCH, YOU DEVIL: Service stations have long offered all manner of trinkets and prizes to lure in customers. But Jack Daniels of Northridge noticed a possible first in the San Fernando Valley (see photo).

AT LEAST IT DOESN’T RESEMBLE THE SANTA MONICA FREEWAY: Writer Hugh Ryono asks whether anyone has noticed that the photos taken on Mars “look a bit like Saddleback Butte near Lake Los Angeles (a dry lake) in the Antelope Valley? Take out the Joshua trees and spread a few more boulders and rocks around and you have your own little piece of Mars in the Mojave Desert.”

Uh oh. Sounds a bit like a remake of the movie, “Capricorn One” (1978), about a manned flight to Mars that is a hoax.

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, QUIETLY: Bob Padgett of Manhattan Beach took a shot of an emergency exit in Lakewood that has an unusual postscript (see photo).

IT’S A WONDERFUL ZUCCHINI: The death of Jimmy Stewart prompted real estate agent Norma Oreskovich to relate a story told by a neighbor of the actor in Beverly Hills. It seemed that one day Stewart had picked some vegetables in his huge garden and, still in work clothes, took some to another neighbor, Lucille Ball. “He rang the doorbell,” Oreskovich said, “and the maid answered. She saw his old clothes and thought he was a peddler. She said, ‘Sorry, we’re not buying anything.’ ”

OH, DOCTOR: In a slightly mind-boggling notice, Northridge Hospital Medical Center informed employees of the following changes in its disaster/emergency code:

* “All emergency codes are now standardized between RBC (Roscoe Boulevard Campus) and SWC (Sherman Way Campus).”

* “Code Orange formerly meant phones down at RBC only, now means Hazardous Chemical Spill at both campuses.”

* “Code ‘A’ formerly meant an Infant Abduction at RBC only. Code Pink is now used at both campuses.”

* “Code Yellow formerly meant Computers Down at RBC only, now means Bomb Threat at both campuses.”

HAPPY NOW, UTAH? Maureen McConaghy points out that “Flatlander,” a short story by novelist Larry Niven, gives a traffic report on the Santa Monica Freeway set far in the future. It’s a time when other planets have been colonized and traveling is accomplished instantaneously by “transfer booth.”

A visitor to Earth flies above a racing competition of antique and now obsolete automobiles on the Santa Monica Freeway. The starting point for the “groundcars” is “the end that used to join the San Diego Freeway. This end is a maze of fallen spaghetti, great curving loops of pre-stressed concrete that have lost their strength over the years and sagged to the ground . . . “

When the machines come close to crashing, the visitor makes a startling realization about life in the 20th century: “Those automobiles had no radar.”

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Claire Simon, age 7, was asked by her father if she knew why Americans celebrate July 4. “Because we beat the aliens,” she responded. Asked where she got that notion, she said, “I watched the movie with you, Daddy--’Independence Day.’ ”

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, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.