A Hand Signal to Live By on Highway of Life

Unimpressed with the suggestions printed here for a hand signal that tells other drivers “I’m sorry,” Phil Di Prima of San Gabriel said the solution is obvious.

“The Vulcan salute--’Live long and prosper,’ ” Di Prima explained (see photo).

A good candidate . . . perhaps. On the other hand, was there ever a group of car-poolers that encountered as much violence, week in and week out, as Mr. Spock’s gang?

DOG DAY: Writer Angela Fox Dunn was walking her Maltese dog Sophie in the Fairfax area when the pooch ran over to three women sitting in a retirement complex. One of the women fed Sophie a cookie, at which point Dunn said thanks but asked them not to give the dog any more handouts. “What kind of a mother are you?” thundered the woman, slipping another cookie to grateful Sophie.

LIST OF THE DAY: Some nuggets from Fred Basten’s just-released pictorial history, “Paradise by the Sea--Santa Monica Bay”:

* Composer Ferde Grofe’s best-known work, published in 1931 as “Grand Canyon Suite,” was originally titled “Santa Monica Canyon Suite.” But Grofe, a Santa Monica resident, feared the Southern California area would be too obscure.

* While I have noticed that some snooty Malibuites pronounce Point Dume as though it were a French term--rhyming with Doo-may--it was actually named after Father Francisco Dumetz.

* During World War II, the Douglas aircraft plant on Ocean Boulevard was camouflaged with more than 4.5 million feet of net. “Fake houses, gardens and trees, with employees tending them, were constructed on the roof to blend in with the surrounding subdivisions,” Basten wrote.

* An 1875 map of Southern California listed an area down the coast from Santa Monica as “Palace Verdes.”

* An early century trolley run took pleasure-seekers from Morocco Junction to Santa Monica. Morocco Junction? It’s now called Beverly Hills.

SPEAKING OF DOUGLAS’ MAKE-BELIEVE TREES: Jeff Winter of Van Nuys found a store that sells “live artificial trees” (see photo). Whether it’s for camouflage isn’t clear. As someone once said, it’s difficult to separate the real fake from the fake fake in this town.

IT’S THE TRUTH: On the misspelling front, Nancy Mullen of San Pedro recalled working for a Chamber of Commerce in the South Bay that had a storage room with “six huge boxes labeled ‘LIES.’ I knew many chambers tended to exaggerate the virtues of their cities, but six boxes full! I had to look inside and found props for a luau.”

Leis.

ANGELENOS ABROAD: In our now-daily series of cross-cultural language clashes, Lillian Koslover of Redondo Beach says that some years ago she and her husband came down for a dinner in an English hotel and found the dining room still roped off with a few other guests milling about.

“Another gentleman came up,” she continued, “and with a cordial smile said to me, ‘You are cute, aren’t you?’ With a nervous giggle, I responded, ‘Yes, I guess I am cute if you say so.’ At that my husband indignantly declared, ‘Yes, she’s cute all right and what’s it to you?’ The poor chap looked momentarily baffled. Then, pronouncing each word slowly, he repeated, ‘You are queued, aren’t you? Queued? In-a-queue?’ ”

Line.

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Chuck Shepherd’s “News of the Weird” syndicated column recently gave prominent space to Southern California for the August fire of 18,000 acres in the Angeles National Forest, northeast of Azusa. Reason: Shepherd noted that the fire “was started, said investigators, by an environmentally conscious camper who was dutifully burning his used toilet paper.” Shepherd forgot to mention that locals dubbed it “the Charmin fire.”

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.