Next They’ll Offer Him Fire Insurance

In Van Nuys, firefighter Howard Lewis received a fake, junk mail check for $50,000, announcing that “your home at 7921 Woodley Ave. has recently been verified as eligible for a low interest second trust deed.”

Great news, except that 7921 Woodley Ave. is the address of L.A. City Fire Station 90. Hardly a hot property.

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INTIMIDATING INSTRUCTORS? Learning to drive is a nerve-racking experience for most everyone. That’s why Rick Martin of Downey was a bit surprised to see a billboard that said, “We use F Words,” atop a driving school (see photo).

Turns out the “F Words” sign was a promo for a local talk radio station.

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WHICH REMINDS ME: The late Times Metro columnist Gene Sherman once wrote about a driving school whose business cards suggested songs for drivers to warble at different speeds. The selections included:

* “I’m but a Stranger Here, Heaven Is My Home” (55 mph).

* “Nearer, My God, to Thee” (65 mph).

* “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I’ll Be There” (75 mph).

* “Lord, I’m Coming Home” (85 mph).

Needless to say Sherman was writing in a less supercharged era: the mid-1950s.

Nowadays, for instance, 55 mph would merit something along the lines of “Slow Boat to China.” And 85 mph wouldn’t inspire anything more shocking than “By the Time I Get to Phoenix.”

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VEGETARIAN SPECIAL? Danny Schneider of Glendale noticed an ad for a pizza that had a “tree topping” (see accompanying).

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ON THE OTHER HAND: The city of Paramount’s newsletter reports that a commercial property owner planted a couple of cactuses in the front of his building, only to have them disappear. “He later learned,” the newsletter said, “that the cactuses were cleaned, boiled and eaten by a local passerby.” Whether as a pizza topping, he didn’t say.

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SQUASHED DESSERT OF THE DAY: It’s becoming a specialty on local freeways. On Tuesday, you’ll recall, there was a spilled load of pies on the Harbor Freeway. On Wednesday, the Golden State Freeway offered a tipped-over shipment of 80,000 pounds of apples.

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ZEBRA MODERNE STYLE: A company that will apparently stripe your antique furniture caught the eye--though not the fancy--of Sallie Wiegman of Simi Valley (See accompanying).

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BUT NO ONE’S PERFECT: I kid other publications about errors, so it’s only fair to mention that Louise Carr, Jonathan Lubin and several other readers caught a boo-boo in a caption in The Times a while back. It said that the New York Yankees’ David Wells had kissed his chance at baseball “immorality” goodbye after his bid to pitch a second perfect game this season was foiled.

On the other hand, several other pro and college athletes have achieved “immorality” this year.

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HIS TITLE HAS BEEN RETIRED: In case you missed, it, Leo “Popie” Baugh, a man with links to the entertainment industry, died the other day at the age of 84. With the change in shopping habits in recent decades, Baugh took his title to the grave. A onetime Adohr delivery man in Hollywood, Baugh was known as “Milkman to the Stars.”

miscelLAny:

Guess where the Dodgers were 10 years ago? In the World Series, playing the Oakland A’s, whom they would soon vanquish to earn a bit of baseball, uh, immortality. Yes, the Dodgers have a glorious past. Keep that in mind in case you’re the next person they beg to manage the team. Somebody’s got to do it.

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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.