Inmates All Have Sentences, but They’re Not So Good With Words

What Mike Hammer of Redondo Beach ordered was a personalized license plate with a rugby message. What he received was a plate with a not-so-wholesome message.

Hammer contacted the DMV, which apologized and sent a corrected version (see accompanying).

A DMV spokesman ascribed the mix-up to a “typographical error” and said there didn’t appear to be any mischief on the part of the plate makers, the inmates at Folsom Prison. (And certainly I’m not going to accuse them of wrongdoing.)

The oversight was understandable in a way. After all, the DMV Internet site https://www.plates.ca.gov lists SCUMBAG, SCUMBG, SCUMBG5 and SCUM70 among the plates proudly displayed in California’s pond of drivers.

*

STUPID DRIVER TRICKS: Contributing to this column’s continuing series, Tapherine Mausteller of Sherman Oaks recalled a rainy day when she saw a driver with “his window down and with the upper half of his body hanging out, thus enabling him to squeegee his windshield as he made his way down the street.”

Yup, the old windshield wipers were apparently on the fritz.

Then there was the time Mausteller was shocked to see a car race past on Santa Monica Boulevard doing more than 50 mph.

“His speed did not shock me,” she said. “It was the fact that his hood was open. Not open a little, but broken, so that it was practically flat against his front windshield.”

(Thursday’s column: The car as dressing room.)

*

THE FRENCH HAVE A WORD FOR IT: I make jokes about the postal service, so it’s only fair to mention the improbable route that a letter took from France to Tony Hart. It was addressed to “Mr. and Mme. Hart” on “Quarlarrod” Street in “Moorpale.” Aided by a correct ZIP Code, the postal clerk translated that to mean Quailwood in Moorpark.

My favorite case of postal sleuthing concerned a Pasadena woman who received a letter from Hong Kong that was addressed to her at “E Cikiradi Bkvd.”

A clerk figured out that the sender had meant to type “E Colorado Blvd.” but had accidentally stationed his or her right hand one key to the left on the keyboard.

*

TRY, TRY, TRY AGAIN: Why do there seem to be so many unsafe drivers on the road? Listen to this story from Felice Sussman of Los Alamitos:

“I took my teenage son to the DMV. As he waited in line to have his exam graded, the man in front of him received bad news from the DMV clerk: He had failed the written exam for the third time. We felt sorry for the guy--until we got out to the DMV parking lot and watched him get behind the wheel of his pickup truck and roar off, jabbering away on his cell phone.”

*

Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A., 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.