If You Live in Rancho Santa Margarita, Keep Those Bagpipes to Yourself!

In the you-think-you-have-problems category, the Rancho Santa Margarita News reported that a caller complained to authorities one recent afternoon about someone “standing outside his residence, blowing on a bagpipe for more than two hours.” Oh, Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are galling!

No bringing home the bacon: The passage of time has seen the disappearance of the 1-penny postcard, the 5-cent ice cream cone and the $25 BLT (see photo).

I learned about the bacon-lettuce-and-tomato situation when I drove out to Dave’s Burgers in Long Beach to see proprietor Dave Terry.

Alas, I was told that Dave had retired and the new owners, though retaining the name of his burger stand, had removed the $25 BLT from the menu, no doubt puzzled about why it was there.

BLT -- the rest of the story...: As my namesake Paul Harvey would say.

Anyway, don’t get Dave Terry wrong. He charged reasonable rates for burgers and dogs -- and once had for BLTs, as well. Then, one customer took a liking to BLTs and soon began bringing friends to try them. The sandwiches were so greasy that Dave was constantly forced to clean his grill, holding up his other lunchtime customers.

When Dave mentioned his dilemma to the BLT lover, the guy said, “Well, raise the price.” So Dave did -- in a big way. And he was serious.

The customer came back once and departed empty-handed.

Actually, as the menu indicates, you could get a BLT for as low as $17.50 -- if you brought your own bacon.

Yes, sir, that’s my bambina (I think): You may have read that Hillary Clinton was outraged over censorship of the Chinese edition of her memoirs.

Well, as mystery novelist Wendy Hornsby of Long Beach points out, you never know what changes are going to pop up in foreign language editions (see photos).

A Chinese edition of Hornsby’s “A Hard Light,” for instance, carried a cover photo of Julia Roberts and a smaller shot of Denzel Washington, though no movie has been made of the book. (The photos were from the movie “The Pelican Brief,” based on a John Grisham novel.)

The cover of the Italian edition of Hornsby’s “Midnight Baby” (“Bambina Della Notte”), meanwhile, showed a drawing of an assailant in a jacket bearing the name of a certain football team though no such garment is in the book. Interesting to see that the Raiders’ image sells overseas, too.

miscelLAny: A secret Mission Viejo military operation? The Canyon Life newspaper’s crime log mentioned a phone call from an alarmed resident who “returned home from vacation to find a rocket on her deck that had ‘U.S. Army’ printed on it.” The newspaper added: “The rocket was later determined to be a child’s toy.” Just the thing for a future Raider fan.

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