A Car Alarm--for Newlyweds, Anyway

Lo-Jack and The Club may have some fierce competition.

A Paramount resident bought a new truck but didn’t want to fork over any money for an anti-theft system. Instead, the novice inventor tied a string of tin cans to the rear bumper and backed the truck into the driveway.

One night, the tin cans began to do their noisy dance and the owner phoned L.A. County sheriff’s deputies.

Sure enough, deputies found two felons fleeing in a stolen vehicle.

But it wasn’t the resident’s vehicle, the city’s newsletter reported. It was a neighbor’s car.

“Apparently the truck had proven too noisy to steal,” the newsletter said, “and the thieves had moved on to an easier mark.”

AND, NOW, FOR OUR AUGUST BRIDE SECTION: Readers have contributed ads for a trio of gowns with various lengths of service (see accompanying).

David Stark noticed an outfit with “tool,” which, he points out, “should be ‘tulle’ (sheer net fabric).”

But the “tool” aspect reminded me of a “weeding” gown found by Betty Birney a while back.

Meanwhile, L.A. Traut read about another gown that had lost its sequins in the ad copy.

LUCKILY, THE METAL DETECTORS WON’T STOP IT: Here’s a new theory on why L.A. has experienced no full-scale smog alerts this year.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Scott Ostler said his city seems to have more polluted air, “most of it brought up from L.A. in tourists’ suitcases.”

KNOW YOUR SUBURBS: Columnist Nat Read notes in the Glendale Gazette that the city’s name was suggested “by a painter from Chicago” in 1883 and was selected over several other nominees, including Minneapolis and Ethandale.

“Our name is strange,” Read added, “since ‘glen’ and ‘dale’ both mean valley. Thus, Glendale means ‘valley-valley.’ Glendalians are redundant and repeat themselves.”

Some of them visit San Francisco, too.

CALIFORNIA, HERE WE LEAVE: “The California Escape Manual,” by Mark Bacon, warns fleeing residents that many of their new neighbors subscribe to the stereotype of Californians as beings who have lots of money, know all the answers, are unapproachable and drive too fast.

Bacon’s book suggests that interlopers from the Golden State should comport themselves somewhat in the manner of a spy in a John Le Carre novel.

He offers these tips to transplants:

* Hit the DMV office in your new state for new plates immediately.

* “Buy a home in a new neighborhood” so you’ll be more likely to be among your own kind (other latte-swilling Californians).

* “Learn the local lingo.” In inland Oregon, for instance, if you decide to visit the ocean and “you say you’re going to the ‘beach,’ locals know you’re from California. Oregonians go to the ‘coast.’ ”

* “Avoid broadcasting your origins, at least at first.” One Malibu expatriate in Idaho said that when he is asked where he’s from, he responds: “South of Lewiston.”

* If you lived somewhere before you moved to California, tell people! But “don’t pretend you’re really a Minnesotan who was just passing through California for 25 years.”

miscelLAny:

Author Gloria Walls Seelye dropped a note after reading a column item about Angela Lansbury, who got her big break in show biz while working at the old Bullock’s Wilshire store. Seelye wrote a biography of another Bullock’s employee who became a movie extra while attending USC: Pat Ryan. The latter gave up the business, however, to marry a young lawyer named Richard Nixon. And that’s the news here, from south of Lewiston. Looks like a good day to go swimming on the coast.

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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.