Some Motorists Primp on the Go

Jim Caballero of L.A. was driving on 26th Street in Santa Monica when he glanced to his right and noticed a young motorist who “appeared to have some kind of stainless steel appliance attached to her face.�

He looked away but confessed that “at the next red light, my curiosity overwhelmed me. I looked more carefully, expecting to pity her because of some horrible disfigurement, her face being held together with steel screws and braces.�

He was in for a surprise.

“What I saw,� he said, “was that she was curling her eyelashes while driving.�

Alan Brown of Manhattan Beach spoke of seeing another driver using the same type of contraption, “possibly invented by the Marquis de Sade.�

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TALK ABOUT CUTTING THROUGH TRAFFIC: My request for strange motorist sights also prompted Robin Frasier to write:

“I was driving south on the 405 at about 30 mph in moderately heavy traffic when I noticed that the man in the car ahead of me was cutting his hair. When he finished that, he began to work on his beard and mustache. He was using the rear-view mirror to check his progress.�

Added Frasier: “I changed lanes.�

(Tomorrow, in this series: The man with no windshield.)

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IS THAT WHAT CUSTOMERS SAY? L. Tremont of Long Beach spotted a truck with an interesting title (see photo).

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SPEAKING OF STORMS . . . Well, I’m guessing you were. Fifty-two years ago, about one-third of an inch of snow fell at City Hall.

That’s the last time the white stuff fluttered to earth here, though in December 1987 a worker in a Bunker Hill high-rise phoned The Times to allege he saw one flake float by his window.

Before 1949, the last snowstorm arrived Jan. 15, 1932, when L.A. was blanketed (well, almost) with 2 inches. Snow fights were reported among students at UCLA and Pasadena College.

And before that? Nothing in the 20th century.

One old-timer interviewed by The Times in 1932 declared that an inch of snow fell in L.A. in November 1879.

Another resident gave a slightly later date, “his memory sharpened by a spanking he says he received in 1882 when he lived on Alpine Street and ran away to go sledding.�

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DANGEROUS DINING: Eirik Haenschke of North Hills noticed a cut of beef in which the letter “T� had been unfortunately substituted for an “H� in the last word on the label (see accompanying).

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NOT A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE IN . . . In case you were wondering, the two signs spotted by Michael Bird of Calabasas (see photo) do not pertain to the same business.

miscelLAny:

So another ex-L.A. football team--the Oakland Raiders--has a chance to make it to the Super Bowl.

In his new book, “Flashing Before My Eyes,� Dick Schaap recalls asking the Washington Redskins’ Russ Grimm before their 1984 Super Bowl meeting with the L.A. Raiders what he would do to win? “I’d run over my mother,� Grimm said.

When Schaap apprised the Raiders’ Matt Millen of Grimm’s comment and asked Millen what he would do to win, the Raider responded: “I’d run over his mother too.�

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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 [email protected].