Discovering a Man’s Lost Time Capsule

The walls of Don Borthwick’s duplex couldn’t talk. But his ceiling yielded someone else’s birth certificate, insurance policy, union card and plumbing company’s stamp and stamp pad. The items, sealed for about 32 years, were found when Borthwick’s plumber tore out a ceiling to replace the pipes in the Newport Beach building, which has since been sold.

Strangely, the goods were the property of another plumber, named Kenneth Hansen.

It’s not clear whether Hansen lived in the duplex on Grand Street or left the items inside the ceiling during a plumbing job of his own. He was not living there when Borthwick bought the building in 1972. The latest date on any of the papers is 1967.

“Why did he put it inside the ceiling?” asked Borthwick, who is now a San Clemente resident. Or were the documents lost during a remodeling?

Aside from Hansen (born in 1921), the $5,000 insurance policy lists his wife, Frances, daughters Janet, Dickie Lynn and Eleanor and sons Kenneth and Stephen, all living in Costa Mesa in 1961.

Borthwick was unable to track down any of the family. He found the retired insurance agent, who couldn’t supply any information.

“I just can’t believe it would be sealed up like that,” Borthwick said.

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SERF CITY: After the discussion here about people who mistakenly phone the Brea Chamber of Commerce in Orange County for information about the La Brea Tar Pits, Julie Dock found a similar situation. An online newsletter listed a tour of the art treasures of the Huntington Beach Library in San Marino. But that doesn’t compare with the time the Wall Street Journal referred to the city as Honeyton Beach (see accompanying).

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WOULD YOU BUY A CAR FROM BARNEY FIFE? Actually, the South Bay dealership mentioned in some literature picked up by Steve Gerber (see accompanying) was supposed to say Don Kott Chrysler Plymouth.

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DRIVING MILESTONES: Four years ago this week, a Lake Forest woman, apparently frustrated by slow traffic on an Orange County canyon road, took out a baseball bat and began swinging at a truck she couldn’t pass, the California Highway Patrol said.

Nothing unusual about that in this era, of course.

Except that her license plate said PEACE 95.

A CHP officer quoted her as saying that she chose that plate because she thought “there was so much violence going on in today’s society.”

The incident, by the way, has been immortalized in the book, “More Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest.”

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ARE HMOs TO BLAME? Paul Kautto of Lakewood searched the state DMV Web site for personalized license plates and found DRJEKAL, DRJEKEL, DRJEKIL, DRJEKKL, DRJEKL and DRJEKYL as well as JEKYLDR and JEKYLL.

PEACE 95 is no longer listed, incidentally.

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ZERO TOLERANCE: Upon studying the goals of one fitness club (see accompanying), Teri Donahue of Lancaster wrote: “I must be more physically fit than I thought. I’m absolutely positive I can do zero leg lifts in one hour. In fact, I can probably do it in even less time than that.”

miscelLAny:

The seepage of oil into Ballona Creek from a spot near the La Brea Tar Pits was somewhat reminiscent of the movie “Volcano,” in which lava explodes from the pits. The ensuing destruction of the Westside by the spreading molten menace occasioned one unforgettable piece of dialogue in the movie:

“Better take the freeway,” one character is advised. “Wilshire looks pretty bad.”

Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, 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.