Let’s hope we left alarmism behind when the ball dropped

Before letting 2007 slink away into the night, the Seal Beach Sun ran a retrospective of the most overwrought crime tips of the year.

My favorite involved a resident who phoned police to say there were five boys in an alley who “might be up to something, as they were passing an unknown object around.”

Officers found the youths were playing basketball. I’m guessing the object being passed around was a ball.

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As for the strangest real crime of 2007...

Columnist David Allen of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin nominated the robbery of an adult bookstore by a Claremont man who fled in a stolen taxi. Police chased him down and “took him into custody after he reached for his waistband,” Allen wrote. “He didn’t have a gun there, just a phallic sex toy, which a police sergeant said the man kept ‘tethered to his belt loop for whatever reason.’ ”

Those are enough details, thanks.

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Turning to the weather...

I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt like going out to a Chinese restaurant after I read a forecast for the L.A. area in the New York Times (see accompanying).

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A city with some ups and downs

In his entertaining biography, “Schulz and Peanuts,” David Michaelis mentions that Minnesota-born Charles Schulz briefly lived in Needles, Calif., as a boy while a relative recuperated from a lung ailment.

And I recalled how I once dragged Schulz into a controversy involving the Colorado River desert town and a scruffy bird named Woodstock.

In a March 1981 “Peanuts” strip, around the time the swallows were returning to San Juan Capistrano, Schulz drew Woodstock returning to Needles -- “elevation 550 feet” (see accompanying).

However, a reader wrote The Times to say that the city sign actually put the elevation at 484 feet. I was assigned to look into it, big-time investigative writer that I was.

I contacted Schulz, who did not find the matter funny.

“I can assure you I don’t make up facts,” he said. “As I recall, I took the figure from some information the Chamber of Commerce sent me a few years ago.”

Adding to the confusion, the chamber told me that the elevation was actually 482 feet. “Well, what’s a couple of feet?” a spokesman said.

The other day I phoned a library in Needles to see if the issue had been resolved.

A librarian told me the elevation is exactly 450 feet. Good grief.

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MiscelLAny:

“Home Depot is one of those stores with a liberal return policy for plants and trees,” wrote Steve Durgin of Woodland Hills. “If they die on you, bring it back for replacement or refund.”

But there are limits, especially for some holiday purchases (see photo).

A clerk told Durgin that a guy actually tried to return his Christmas tree six days into the New Year.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, 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.