Should Beverly Hills’ most famous defendant be...

Should Beverly Hills’ most famous defendant be found guilty, Mayor Max Salter has a suggestion about what type of community service she could serve.

“Zsa Zsa could rake leaves at our Robinson Gardens,” said Salter, referring to the facility run by the County Arboretum. “She could work with the rose bushes, do a little digging in the garden. . . . I think it would be an interesting sight.”

If a telephone poll conducted by Accetta/Mosier Productions Inc. is at all accurate, perhaps Ms. Gabor should get her favorite pair of garden shears out. About 81% of the respondents supported the Beverly Hills police officer who cited her.

Long before the city of Vernon won a measure of fame as the home of the mural-covered Farmer John slaughterhouse, poets were singing its praises.

Today, on the 84th anniversary of the incorporation of Los Angeles’ neighbor to the south, we reprint this poem, which appears in David Clark’s “Los Angeles: City Apart.”

The ode to Vernon was written by a real estate booster in 1887:

Go wing thy flight from star to star ,

From world to luminous world as far

As the universe spreads its flaming wall.

Take all the pleasure of all the spheres

And multiply each through endless years --

One winter at Vernon is worth them all.

Somehow, Vernon never became the Miami Beach of the west.

With Southern California becoming more crowded, and liability concerns on the rise, an old custom of the automobile age appears in danger here: Teaching the 15 1/2-year-old in your family how to drive on a secluded piece of pavement.

The problem is that more and more parking lots seem to be roped off after hours.

Griffith Park is even less subtle, citing an obscure city ordinance in its lot along with a sign warning, “No Practice Driving.”

(The ordinance applies to unlicensed motorists, not to golfers wishing to polish their swing before stepping onto the course next door.)

Brad Altman even found a “No Driving Instruction” sign on spacious Lucerne Boulevard in the Hancock Park area, where novice parallel-parkers are a not uncommon sight.

The passing of the ritual could well evoke bittersweet feelings for those who have attempted to learn from Dad--and can still recall his calm, measured bits of advice that were mingled with screams of, “You’re wrecking the car! You’re wrecking the car!”

Who says we live in a cold, impersonal world these days? One Long Beach real estate agent addresses his pieces of junk mail to: “My Favorite Resident.”