His Janitorial Ambitions Got Swept Aside

Fifty years ago, long before he became a network sportscaster, Dick Enberg applied for a $1-an-hour janitorial job at a radio station in Mount Pleasant, Mich.

Someone at the station noticed his voice and asked him to read a page of news.

Enberg did so and went home, forgetting about the audition.

A few days later, he got a phone call and the station told him he got the job. “I asked them, ‘Where’s the broom closet?’ ” Enberg told ESPN radio (KSPN-AM 710).

No, no, the radio station told him. He had gotten a job as a disc jockey.

And the pay?

“A dollar an hour,” Enberg said.

Word play: Enberg was appearing on ESPN radio in connection with the publication of his autobiography, “Oh My!” (co-written by Jim Perry).

“Oh my,” as his fans know, is Enberg’s trademark phrase.

I have to admit, though, I always preferred the pet phrase of the mythical sportscaster on Bob and Ray’s radio recordings: “And this is Biff Burns, rounding third and getting thrown out at home.”

Will the warranty cover it? A car with a rare malady was mentioned on a traffic website that Louis Hirsch of Agoura Hills spotted (see accompanying).

No discrimination here! Betty Barnett of Pomona noticed that the fine print on one pastry she bought revealed that its maker apparently employs eccentric individuals (see accompanying).

Hey, big spender ... : Look who has gift cards, Mary deVall of Santa Monica pointed out (see accompanying).

Word imperfect: Wendy Benson of Bakersfield passed along an error that gave a contest an unseemly ring (see accompanying).

Those Santa Anas ... : The windy conditions this week were foreshadowed by Gordon Hauptfleisch of San Diego, an entrant in this year’s Bulwer-Lytton overwriting competition, sponsored by San Jose State University.

Parodying Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the English novelist who began a book with “It was a dark and stormy night ... , “ Hauptfleisch wrote: “The day was packing heat and cracking wise as the scorching sun torched the hot dry Santa Anas like fry on rice, crispy with a snap, crackle and pop, and poured into the surreal bowl of the Los Angeles Basin as the red winds rattled every dwelling from Bay City bungalow to Bel Air chateau like a china shop in a bullring, the whole stinking, teeming tinderbox as combustible as a drill sergeant at clown college, as unsettling as corn on the cob rationing at an Iowa Society picnic.”

It should come as no surprise that Hauptfleisch was given a “dishonorable mention” by the judges.

miscelLAny: Novelist Raymond Chandler gave a slightly crisper description of the Santa Anas in “Red Wind,” writing of the howlers “that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.” I’ve hidden our cutlery.

Steve Harvey can be reached by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.