Bottleneck

    It's one of the little ironies of our town that the current event which probably affects more people than any other isn't even newsworthy.  Meaning, of course, the installation of the center divider on Hollywood Freeway from the Benton Way turnoff to the interchange.

    To build it, a construction crew blocks off the inbound center lane with dunce caps and signs daily during working hours, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., so that trucks and other vehicles necessary to the project may park safely in it.

    As a result, four-lane inbound traffic is funneled into three lanes at Benton Way, and during the 9 a.m. rush this can be frustrating, even shuddery, as motorists contemplate the trucks they might have crashed into.  Many of them get disgusted and turn off.  The other day traffic was backed up to Santa Monica Blvd.

    AN IRATE resident of San Fernando Valley wonders why the highway people don't shut off the middle outbound lane during the morning inbound swarm.  He argues that outbound traffic is not as dense as inbound at this time.

     Of course, this would arouse the outbounders and first thing anyone knew they'd come charging across the center strip bent on retaliation. In the middle, caught in the crossfire, would be the helpless construction workers, who now look nervously at the mile-a-minute traffic rushing by, obviously wishing they were somewhere else.

    Everyone better get used to the status quo.  The work will continue until the middle of May.

    PAY NO attention to the groundswell of propaganda designed to nominate Mrs. Florence Aadland as mother of the year.  It originated in a downtown bar.  The irresponsible fellows behind it are the same ones who tried to get a campaign going last year to award the title to Mrs. Elizabeth Duncan.

    AUDUBONBON
The birds chirp sweetly
    every dawn,
Their song is loud and
    clear.
I wish they'd shut their
    big fat mouths,
I've had it up to here.
            ED BOUMA

    LAST AUGUST a severe earthquake hit the Yellowstone Park area in southern Montana, causing a mountain slide which buried a campground, killing an estimated 28 persons, of whom 18 or 19 are still interred.  The slide also blocked the Madison River at this point, creating a body of water now known as Quake lake.

    Howard Williams, who checked the matter, now reports that the forest service, which took over the repair job, has put in a highway on top of the earth dam and the site of the tragedy will be commemorated in June by the opening, inevitably, of a parking lot.  Somehow it seems appropriate.

    A PHILATELIST in Santa Monica who received a block of stamps from the United Arab Republic was disconcerted to discover his young daughter had pasted them in the trading stamp book.  The color was a little off but the size was the same . . . When the LAPD paddy wagon stopped at 3rd and Hills Sts.  the other day to pick up a borracho, Oscar Vidosolo noticed that someone, not the drunk, had written in the dust on the rear, "We give Blue Chip stamps."

    MISCELLANY- A TV newscaster inadvertently called it "income tax invasion" and corrected it immediately to "income tax evasion," but a lady reader thinks he was right the first time . . . Normalcy note:  The Dodger broadcaster has already reported that a player had "good speed."  Again prompting the question, did anyone ever hear of a player with bad speed? . . . Anonymous postcard message from an L.A. hospital, "I landed here due to the stresses and strains of trying to keep up with the Joneses.  I dread being released.  How can I ever keep up with the Armstrong-Joneses?" . . . The fellows at the radio stations are passing along a new definition of death:  nature's warning to slow down.