Sure, XXX Marks the Spot, but Hot Rodder Isn’t a Parking Ticket Scofflaw

Corky Rice of Woodland Hills got 15 parking tickets in the mail the other day. That’s a record for him, though he once got 10 in one month.

And he’s received about 60 in all, despite the fact that the car in question, a 1934 Ford hot rod, almost never leaves his garage.

The problem is his personalized license plate: XXX.

What happens is that when a parked car with no plate is ticketed somewhere in California, the officer sometimes enters the notation XXX for license plate. The batch of 15 tickets that Rice received was from the city of Oakland.

“In about 90% of the cases, I can get the matter cleared up with a phone call,” said Rice, part owner of a car rental company.

Does he ever consider changing his plate?

“No,” Rice said, “because it’s the perfect plate for a hot rod--sort of a nasty connotation.”

So he puts up with the occasional irritations--like the time the city of San Francisco cited his car for several dog-walking violations.

“I found out they had run out of [forms for] dog-walking tickets, so they used parking citations for the dog-walking tickets,” he said. “And since dogs don’t have license plates, the officers wrote down XXX where it said ‘license plate.’ ”

Rice still can’t believe that the city would accuse his Ford of making a mess on a sidewalk.

Other vanity plates that spell trouble: I was reminded of the case of Andrew Burg, who received several undeserved parking tickets in the early 1990s because his license plate said MISSING.

As did Robert Barbour, whose plate read: NOPLATE. The last I heard, Barbour said that the DMV told him that his problems were over because officers had been instructed to cease entering the words “no plate” on the tickets of plate-less cars.

Instead, they were supposed to write in “missing.”

Nutty for America: Some readers were dismayed with my characterization of squirrels as scheming fruit thieves. So I just want to say for the record that I realize that some of the critters are very patriotic (see photo).

Kids, don’t read this: On a children’s menu, Sarah Aiken of Laguna Niguel found a homonym problem in a question about pandas (see accompanying).

Unless the answer is “no parachutes.”

Crawling with possibilities: Allen Wilkinson of Whittier and George Lemberger of Temple City each noticed a sales position that offered some unusual terms (see accompanying).

Stupid driver tricks: “A minivan was swerving back and forth,” reported Leslie Kinikin of Sylmar. “After about 30 seconds, the driver opened up the window and a balloon shot out! Instead of letting it go, the dopey driver pulled it back in and continued to drive away after shutting the window again.”

A billboard you won’t see in Dubuque: A car ad over the Long Beach Freeway reads, “Sold a script? Need more head room?”

miscelLAny: Robert Reiss of Manhattan Beach read in The Times that boxer and human billboard Bernard Hopkins had the name of a company tattooed on his back and said he’s looking for other sponsors. “Trust me, you’ll see one on my forehead,” Hopkins said.

Asked Reiss: “Do you think Target would be interested?”

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.