Lunch date: Cobb salad and a very rich dessert
Harold Cowan, 82, went to lunch with his 64-year-old girlfriend at the Claim Jumper in Valencia last fall, and the tab topped 600 bucks.
The Cobb salad and diet soda they shared cost about $20.
The other $600 or so was for the tickets that followed.
"It's one of the most outrageous tickets you'll ever hear about," Cowan said in a message he left on my answering machine.
Cowan is a retired advertising man who lives in Universal City. He says he came up with the Squirt soft-drink promo: "The drink that's in the public eye"; and with the Helms bread jingle: "Here comes the Helms man. Toot, toot. Save a trip to the store, just go to the door."
His girlfriend, Louise Levanti, is a medical transcriptionist and lives in Sylmar. She says she met Harold nine years ago at Priscilla's Coffee Shop in Burbank. They spend lots of time together, but both value their independence at the end of the day. It's the perfect relationship, the happy couple told me.
When I met Harold and Louise at the Claim Jumper on Monday, they were in their Sunday best, Harold in a coat and tie.
A waitress told me they're among the restaurant's most frequent customers -- definitely in the top five. They decided to share another Cobb salad and talked me into one too.
"Get the cheese bread with it," Harold advised. "It's terrific."
Then he launched into his story. After lunch Sept. 29, they were on their way back to Louise's house in the 1989 Mercedes she bought a couple of years ago for $4,000. That was when a CHP officer pulled them over on Interstate 5, south of Santa Clarita. They said they had no idea what was up until the officer pointed out that Harold, the passenger, wasn't wearing his seat belt.
Harold and Louise explained that it had jammed earlier that day, but Officer Bejar began writing tickets for both of them.
Was the cop kidding?
Harold was OK with his ticket, but why should Louise be punished for his transgression? "I got out of the car and went to tell him it was cruel to give her a ticket too," he says.
While arguing his girlfriend's case, Harold reached into his pocket for the little root beer candy that comes with every Claim Jumper meal. He popped it into his mouth and walked back to the car in a huff, only to have the officer follow him with an unpleasant surprise.
