A Long Beach trash truck driver, his...

A Long Beach trash truck driver, his load on fire, spotted a building with a huge American flag flying and a red firetruck parked out front. Thinking he had found the right place, he stopped.

What he had found, however, was not the Fire Department, but the abode of Long Beach’s most famous eccentric, Ski Demski.

“I handed him (the driver) a garden hose but it didn’t do much good,” said Demski, a frequent mayoral candidate who has feuded with the city for years over the giant flags he flies on his 132-foot pole.

Demski phoned the real Fire Department, which used its superior hoses to douse the flaming trash.

Which leaves just one question: Whose fire truck was that parked out front?

“It’s mine,” Demski said. “I bought it for $2,700. I use it for parades.”

Of course.

Hearing screams from the jury room in the “Cotton Club” murder case, a

bailiff punched 911 for assistance and ran to the scene. He found a group of smiling people. The jurors had just learned that their Little Lotto pool had won $5,000.

Caltrans Boo-Boo of the Week:

Jamie Frankel of West L.A. notes that one sign on the Bundy Drive on-ramp of the Santa Monica Freeway seems to indicate an intra-agency squabble over the required number of people for the car-pool lane.

Let’s split the difference and say 2.5.

Long before freeways, a visitor to Southern California wrote of seeing “trees laden with the little golden

lamps of oranges, and, as we moved up the foothills, scents of orange bloom. . . .”

Alas, most of the lamps have dimmed and the scents have evaporated in L.A. County. It’s the home of 45 acres of commercial orange trees--so few that the state Department of Agriculture lists L.A. County and several others in its “others” category for that crop. The leader is Tulare County, with 75,046 acres.

So it’s official: L.A. no longer deserves to be called the Big Orange unless you’re referring to the color of the air.

Which brings us to this ad from the lung center at St. Vincent Medical Center:

“L.A. can take your breath away,” it says. “We can give it back.”

We always like to close on a cheerful note.

miscelLAny:

Alpha Beta supermarkets derived their name from founder Albert C. Gerrard’s idea of stocking merchandise on shelves in alphabetical order.