Memoir of a Rose Queen

Holly Halsted Balthis, queen of the 1930 Tournament of Roses, was asked by the Pasadena Weekly to describe how different Pasadena was 68 years ago. “Old Town was new,” she replied.

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ERROR MAIL: Some people like to make fun of the folks at the U.S. Postal Service, but not Mike Miller of Culver City. After receiving a misaddressed bank statement from France, he said, “I take my chapeau off to them” (see accompanying).

“Despite what my bank in France might think (and my balance there certainly does not support such a theory), I do not live in Lafayette PALACE,” continued Miller, a Reuters reporter. “I live in a humble abode on Lafayette Place in Culver City, which is not even mentioned in the address.”

Added Miller: “Vive la ZIP Code!”

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NO ONE SENSED SOMETHING WAS WRONG? Karen Satzman of L.A. sent along a shot of a fortuneteller who couldn’t spell her occupation (see photo). Since taking the picture, by the way, Satzman reported that the psychic has closed up shop. One assumes that this business reverse came as no shock to the occupant.

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LOOSE ENDS: As an English teacher in the L.A. Unified School District, William Freeman says he’s come across “some very creative mistakes” by students with limited-English skills. One that stays in his mind “was the misspelling of the United States of America as ‘The Untied States of America.’ I was wowed by the simple profundity of this error. I think it was Maya Angelou who called our nation ‘these yet to be United States of America.’ ”

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SPEAKING OF UNTIED: L.A. City Council members routinely give constituents certificates for such events as birthdays, weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc. But one Valley resident requested a different type of recognition.

“You gave me a beautiful wedding certificate, and I have it hanging in my living room,” she said in a call to a council office. “It’s beautifully framed and cost me a fortune. Now I’m getting divorced. And I thought it would be quite ironic and funny for my friends to come in my house and see a wedding certificate from the council hanging next to a divorce certificate.”

She was informed that the office was out of divorce certificates.

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STUPID CRIMINAL TRICKS: Adding to the recent discussion here of bizarre crimes, a cop told us of stopping a guy who was breaking into an industrial shed south of the Civic Center. The suspect was asked his name.

“Man, I don’t know,” he responded.

Nor did he know where he lived.

He was asked to explain.

He replied that a few days earlier he and a buddy had been trying to steal a transformer off a power pole and he was zapped with several thousand volts of electricity. He didn’t remember anything before that.

The suspect took off his shirt and revealed that, sure enough, he had prominent scorch marks up and down his arms.

Thinking back on the incident, the cop observed: “He didn’t forget his line of work: taking things that didn’t belong to him.”

miscelLAny:

A stage production about a misbegotten U.S. president, who has a controversial love affair and is impeached, opens next month at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse.

It’s set, naturally, in 19, uh, 31.

Titled “Of Thee I Sing,” the ageless Pulitzer Prize-winner was written by Morrie Ryskind and George S. Kaufman, with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin.

It runs Nov. 11-22, assuming, that White House lawyers do not get a restraining order.

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.