Mrs. Margaret Guevara, 742 W 144th St., was going about her household chores the other day when her daughter Diana, 9, called, "Mommy,  a lady on the phone wants to talk to you."

    The lady on the line said, "My phone rang and your little boy just kept saying 'Hi' so I asked to speak to someone else.  I knew it was a toll call and I thought you'd want to know about it."

 

    "Where are you?" Mrs. Guevara asked.  "In Torrance or Long Beach?"

 

    "No, I live over here in the Bronx," was the reply, "Where are you?"

  

     "I'm over here in Gardena," Mrs. Guevara said.

 

    "Gardena, where's that?"

 

    "In California.  Where's the Bronx?"

 

    "You know, the Bronx — New York."

 

    TO GET TO the point, Charles Guevara, 2 years 8 months old, had playfully picked up the phone and dialed directly a sequence of numbers with a Fairbanks exchange that gave him the Bronx lady.

 

     The phone company hasn't yet tabulated the call but inasmuch as Charles probably said 'Hi' for five minutes before his mother caught up with him, Mrs. Guevara fears it will probably come to $15 to $25.  She is getting a lock for the phone.

 

 

     ONLY IN L.A. — Bill Boeckman addressed a letter to Nuestra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula — el peublo's original name — but it was returned with the notice "No such city."

 

 

    GET LOST!

 

 

    RADIO RIPOSTES — A KMPC newscaster giving a business review quoted a National Airlines official as saying, "Despite recent accidents, traffic between New York and Miami is booming."  Made Don Welty wince . . . Pat McGuirk of CBS asks friends, "Did you hear about the fellow who bought an overcoat in Hong Kong.  Two hours later he was cold."  They don't get it.  It's a switch on an oldie, "The only trouble with eating Chinese food is that two hours later you're hungry again!" . . . Disc jockey Bob Gage of KBIG, Catalina, received a fan letter stating, "You're good enough to be promoted to Hollywood.  And the walk would do you good."

 

 

    A NICE MAN named Joe Glaston, who hangs out in Palm Springs but pretends to issue hot bulletins from the Mt. Kenya Safari Club in what used to be darkest Africa — he works for Ray Ryan and William Holden, who own it — thus describes an evening at the club: "The atmosphere is electric with excitement . . . Slowly the fascinating wildlife ambles to the fringes of the club's beautifully landscaped grounds . . . Suddenly one is transported from the atomic age back to ancient times.  It's the haunting, irresistible call of the East African wild. Elephants and excitement.  Lions and liqueurs.  Cheetahs and coffee.  Rhinos and rumors.  Hippos and happiness.  Monkeys and memories."

 

    And man and typewriter.

 

    I'VE BEEN refuted, which incidentally is not hard to do.  Two gals stormed into the office and announced soberly that the liquor chain letter, scoffed at here, was on the up and up.  They'd received copies and done what the letter instructed — phone the person at the top of the list, given him a fifth of whisky, and put their names and phone numbers at the bottom.  Result:  One received 16 bottles, the other 13.

 

    I don't understand it but there it is.  Wonder if it would work with egg foo yong.

 

 

    AT RANDOM — Someone is circulating tiny printed tabs stating, "Protest Bus Fair Raise.  Pay Fair in Pennies."  That, unfortunately, merely makes it tough on the busy drivers . . . You know the TV commercial that inquires if you are "smoking more and enjoying it less?"  Ray Southworth knows an absentminded fellow who, instead of changing brands, switched to smoking less and enjoying it more.