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Wrong numbers and a puzzling press release

By News-Sentinel Staff
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 12:18 AM PDT

WRONG NUMBER: We all get wrong numbers, but a recent Sunday produced two that were rather odd.

"I thought this was the Micke Grove Zoo," a woman told a News-Sentinel reporter.

It may seem like a zoo at times at our newspaper office, but it's certainly not the Micke Grove Zoo.

Later in the day, the same reporter got a phone call from someone asking for Galt resident Pat Maple, who once served on the Galt Joint Union High School District board.

The caller said he looked up Maple's name on the whitepages.com Web site, which listed Maple's number as (209) 369-7035. That isn't his number. It's the number to the News-Sentinel's newsroom.

Curious about how Maple could be listed with the wrong phone number, the reporter checked the Web site, and sure enough, the caller was right.

Not only that, the but Web site gave Maple's address as 125 N. Church St., Lodi. That's the News-Sentinel's address. Maple doesn't live or work at our office, last we checked.

ONE LONG MEETING: The San Joaquin County Board of Education recently held its monthly meeting. But according to its Web site, it began at 12 a.m. and ran through 1 p.m.

Just goes to show how important those little two letters are after the numerals when designating times.

TRAFFIC AND A TICKET: One of our readers shared with us a strange sight recently witnessed in the Target parking lot.

Apparently, there were two Lodi Police Partners writing a ticket for a car that was parked in a handicap space, but didn't have a placard displayed.

Our tipster said that as she watched the partners, two older women came running out of the store, yelling and claiming they had forgotten to hang the sign.

As the four of them got to talking, our unidentified reader noticed that the volunteer police car was not only parked in a red zone in front of the store, but was causing a traffic back up in the parking lot. She said there were five cars tied up because the police cruiser was in the way.

As for the owner of the car that caused the commotion in the first place, she was last seen with a slip in her hand, so we're assuming she wasn't able to talk the volunteers out of the ticket.

LONDON CALLING: We get a lot of press releases at the News-Sentinel, and bless our friends in public relations, because we love every last one.

Some, however, appear out of the blue and just don't make much sense to us here in little ol' Lodi.

Take, for example, the one that dropped into our e-mail box, entitled: "Michael Eavis's Old School Buddy Celebrates 100 Years of Glastonbury's Favourite Fish and Chip Shop."

Hot news! We're sure our good readers are eager for more news out of rural England, especially news concerning fish and chip shops.

Well, maybe not Lodi, but we do get a lot of calls out of Lockeford for more England-based news, although they seem to hanker for more Devonshire gossip.

Granted, the Glastonbury music festival and its founder Michael Eavis have become quite the pop phenomenon, but we just don't understand if the folks at an English PR house actually thought they'd garner some local press in San Joaquin County.

And, it seems in light of this column, they actually did.

"The Glastonbury Festival will dwarf into insignificance compared with the party-to-end-all-parties expected for the 82-seat Knights Fish and Chip Shop," reads the press release.

We hope the party went well.

Items in Grapevine, which runs on occasional Mondays, are written by various reporters on the staff.

Reader Feedback

Whoa Nellie! wrote on Jul 7, 2009 11:04 AM:

" I've seen those same Parking Nazi's blocking two handicap stalls while writing a ticket, and totally oblivious to the disabled folks waiting to park in the blocked spaces.

As I walked by I mentioned, "You're blocking those stalls and people are waiting." I was RUDELY told, "They will have to wait, we have a job to do."

Sounds like someone has a self-esteem problem. "

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