MONTCLARION: April 26, 2013

Half the country is mad at a groundhog and the rest of us are celebrating spring. Mother nature sure has a sense of humor.

Of course, the weather is one of our drawing cards in California. It’s why we have so many Midwestern transplants. At some point, folks throw up their hands and say “Nine months of winter is too much.” And the other three months make up the second season — called road construction.

Speaking of road work, my inbox is “blowing up” over last week’s column on potholes in Oakland. Reader Mike McAllen overheard someone call the perennial pothole in front of the Montclair Peet’s “Quan Lake.” That’s pretty funny, but hopefully the mayor herself will see that the pit outside Peet’s is paved during next month’s pothole blitz.

Meanwhile, reader Richard Solomon reminds us the squeaky wheel gets the grease, or in this case, the tar. He says Public Works failed to act on his pothole requests two years in a row, until he copied Councilwoman Libby Schaaf on the email. “Amazing how my doing this suddenly got two crews out in front of my house within 24 hours!” he writes. He says the bottom line is to be prepared to be the squeaky wheel.

Vegetable matter: This may come as a surprise, but this is Oakland Veg Week. Never mind if you eat more meat than the Flintstones, here’s a path to redemption. Friday is vegetarian night at Off the Grid, the food truck extravaganza outside the Oakland Museum.Always yummy, the 10-or-so gourmet food trucks will cook up veggies from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday. Wash your squash down with a beverage from the beer and wine garden, and your body will thank you.

Radio daze: I was sorry to miss the recent reunion of old KSFO radio personalities. The Bay Area Broadcast Legends met at Spenger’s in Berkeley to pay tribute to the ‘World’s Greatest Radio Station’ as KSFO was called from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. I joined the news staff in 1983, long after the legendary bad-boy Don Sherwood was gone, but reader David Schwoegler reminds me that KSFO had “nearly a 90 percent market share in many surveys” in the Sherwood days.

Schwoegler and another hills resident, Mike Healy, were part of the reunion crowd that heard Jim Lange, Terry McGovern, Stan Burford and Mike Amatore reminisce about a broadcasting era that can never be replicated.

“Lange — perhaps better known today as “The Dating Game” host — is the last man standing from KSFO’s golden days,” Schwoegler says. “He lives in Marin County, and although a cane boosts his gait, no assistance is needed with an open mic in hand. He reminisced about the day in 1959 when he joined the broadcasting staff for $25,000 a year. And recalled his promotional footrace with Don Sherwood from Stinson Beach to the Ferry Building that managed to attract 150,000 fans — midday and midweek, nearly closing the Golden Gate Bridge!”