Your Tax Dollars at Work, Play?

Heading back to Southern California, Steven Lentz passed through Laughlin, Nev., where he was surprised to see a couple of Caltrans trucks in the parking lot of Avi’s Hotel and Casino. That’s right, Caltrans trucks, not Nevtrans trucks.

Lentz mailed some snapshots here (see photo), after which I phoned Caltrans to see if any of its workers had defected to Nevada. A spokesman explained that some crews must do maintenance work in outlying areas “hundreds of miles away from home, and it is not uncommon for them to stay overnight near the border, even in Nevada. Here they just happened to stay at a hotel that has a casino.”

And what the heck. It’s not like the drivers lost the vehicles at the gaming tables.

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YOU SAY POTATOES . . . But Milton Suchin of Valley Village and W. Gess of Sherman Oaks each say those vegetables in a supermarket mailer are tomatoes (see accompanying). Suchin also notes, “Not only have the potatoes changed color, but the spelling has been Dan-Quayle-ized.”

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WHALE OF A TALE: It’s an announcement you don’t often hear a lifeguard make: “Attention, surfer. There is a large reptile to your right.”

The target of the warning, Dave Kaneshiro, was aware of the escort, even if it wasn’t a reptile, reports the Easy Reader, a South Bay weekly. He had been surfing off 22nd Street in Hermosa Beach “when he noticed sand being stirred up from the bottom, just outside the surf line. Moments later he saw the telltale barnacle-encrusted ridge of a humpback whale.”

Kaneshiro said the 25-foot mammal dove beneath him “and then resurfaced two feet in front of him and splashed him with its fluke.” The behemoth followed Kaneshiro to 16th Street, where the surfer got out of the water. The whale continued south, apparently dissatisfied with the surf.

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COLDCUTS ARE ONE THING . . . Jo Paris says her husband was at a dinner meeting where “a man asked the waitress if they had Chateaubriand. The waitress said, ‘I’ll ask the bartender if he has any on ice.’ ”

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MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT: In an account of a gourmet dinner held last summer, a county Natural History Museum publication mentions that the hors d’oeuvres included “fabulous stuffed oysters from the 1909 Southern California Medical Society Dinner at the Alexandria Hotel.”

Talk about leftovers.

Actually, the dinner consisted of “courses” that had been selected from “the menus of historic Los Angeles landmark events from 1876 to 1988.”

I’m offended that the chef ignored my first lunch at the Kosher Burrito in 1975.

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FIRST THINGS FIRST: While walking his dog in a park, Don Golden of Bakersfield came upon a youngster’s discarded note that said: “I’m looking forward to the day I can drink, smoke, gamble and drive legally. Then I will travel and party till I am more mature and feel I can make a commitment to marry and start a family. I am also looking forward to when I get my skateboard back.”

miscelLAny:

Did you hear where Mayor Richard Riordan made a speech in which he urged the San Fernando Valley not to secede from the city? Obviously, Riordan doesn’t want to go down in history as the mayor who lost Chatsworth.

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.