The phone at Harley (Lou) Cobb’s home...

The phone at Harley (Lou) Cobb’s home in Pasadena rang so much Friday that it was several hours before he had a chance to shave or fix himself some breakfast. That was because a local newspaper had just published a story about the sign he posted in his front yard:

Widower 55 Seeks Attr. Lady (40-60) Friendship . . . Maybe More 798-6680

By early afternoon, he had counted nearly 40 calls, and they were still coming in. “I haven’t had a chance to do anything,” he said. “I never knew I was such a star.”

Cobb put the sign up Wednesday in an effort to end the loneliness that set in after his wife died three years ago. He said he is looking for someone affectionate and caring. If she likes jazz, so much the better.

After he put up the sign, one of his callers promised affection, all right--but charged by the hour. That wasn’t quite what he had in mind. He never got around to finding out what she thinks about jazz.

Cobb, a retired facial therapist, said he moped for a couple of years after his wife’s death. He had a dog, but it died, too. He finally began to take an interest in life again about six months ago, even answering an ad placed by a woman who was “blonde, 30, kind and generous.”

When she showed up, she was neither as young as 30 nor naturally blonde. And she wanted to borrow money.

As for Friday’s callers, Cobb was sorting them out by asking a few questions, then inviting likely prospects to drop by. “I told them to just drive up, and I would walk outside,” he said. “If they didn’t like what they saw, they could just drive away and no hard feelings.”

Five ladies had actually stopped in for a visit by 1:30 p.m., and all “seemed nice.”

Cobb, it appears, has his work cut out for him.

A Hollywood agency that supplies famous-folk look-alikes for television shows, commercials and parties is having more trouble finding Bushes and Bentsens than Dukakises and Quayles.

“There are plenty of Mediterranean-type guys” seeking jobs as doubles for the Democratic presidential nominee, says Edward Lozzi, of Ron Smith’s Celebrity Look-Alikes. And there have been a lot of calls from young fellows who want to impersonate the GOP vice presidential candidate.

But not many seem to want to go around impersonating the older fellows.

Lozzi says one Dan Quayle hopeful was asked for autographs when he stood outside the agency’s Hollywood Boulevard office while “a couple of palookas with wires in their ears” like Secret Service men hovered nearby.

More than 60 members of the Korean Senior Citizens Assn. in green-and-white uniforms were out with their brooms again Friday morning to sweep the Koreatown area streets and sidewalks.

They cleaned up along 8th, Berendo and Alvarado streets as well as Normandie Avenue.

Eui Shik Chung, president of the 1,500-member association, said through an interpreter that the cleanup has been going on for several years on the first Friday of each month.

“I think the city has a sweeper,” the interpreter said, “but it does not do enough to clean here.”

The L.A. Police Centurions, insists Officer Frank Mezquita, president of the Police Protective League, “are probably the best police tackle football team in the United States. . . . We’re being challenged by everybody.”

One of those challenges has come from Florida where the Centurions plan to be Jan. 14 to play in the Orange Bowl against a squad made up of players from the Miami city police team and the Dade County Deputy Dawgs. In May, Mezquita says, “We’re playing New York’s finest at Columbia University.”

As with other games played by the police teams, proceeds will go to charity. Unlike professional and college teams, the team pays it own way.

The Centurions usually play only two games a year because of the press of their normal duties as cops. Their big rival is Phoenix. This season’s lineup will not be set until after tryouts, but the Centurions have available such players as former University of Nebraska quarterback Randy Garcia and former L.A. Express player Ty Richmond.

“A lot of our guys have been cut by the pros,” Mezquita bragged.