COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

You can crawl but you can’t hide. It’s an old adage, slightly modified, that the Newport Beach police wish Leon Ettensperger would embrace. My bet is that it’s not going to happen. It has to do with a question you don’t hear every day — when is a golf cart a golf cart? Apparently, it’s complicated.

Meet Leon Ettensperger of the West Newport Ettenspergers. Leon has totally bonded with his golf cart. It’s like he is a part of it, and it is a part of him. In fact, he can’t live without it. Leon thinks his golf cart is the perfect ride for tooling around his West Newport neighborhood. He can feel the breeze in his hair when the streets are empty and skillfully thread his way through traffic when they’re not.

And there, in a nutshell, or a golf cart, lies the genesis of a long-running dispute between Ettensperger and the NBPD. That’s long running as in four years running. It was November 2004 when Newport Beach Officer David Darling saw Ettensperger tooling along 32nd Street in his golf cart free as a bird and as happy as a golf ball lost in the rough.

When Officer Darling saw Leon and his electrified cart cruising right smack down the middle of the street, he lit him up, pulled him over and explained to him the intricacies of California Vehicle Code 21716, which states, and I quote: “…no person shall operate a golf cart on any highway except in a speed zone of 25 miles per hour or less.” As far as Officer Darling was concerned, this was a pretty simple bust as busts go. You got a person, a golf cart, a highway and a speed more than 25 mph. It’s over, done, finito, sign here please. But Leon tells Officer Darling that he and his golf cart didn’t just fall off a turnip truck, which is good, because that wreaks havoc with both your body and your golf cart. Has anyone ever actually seen a turnip truck by the way? And why are things constantly falling off them? Is there some kind of little hatch back there that turnip truck drivers never close? I don’t get it.

“I argued with him,” Leon told the Orange County Register, “…because it’s not a golf cart.” The Ettensperger Theorem is that while a golf cart averages about 15 mph, Leon’s “golf car” can blow past that without even breathing hard because it’s had thousands of dollars of upgrades and modifications, including a way more manly motor, seatbelts, rear view mirrors, bumpers and turn signals, among others. More importantly, all those doodahs mean that Leon’s ride is in fact a “Low Speed Vehicle,” which is covered in another section of the vehicle code, which says it’s OK to drive on the street, which means the ticket he just got is worth about as much as Pia Zadora’s autograph. Well, maybe a little bit more. Officer Darling is unimpressed — the ticket stands. Leon is not pleased. He aims his pimped out golf car toward the Orange County courthouse where he explains the stuff about “Low Speed Vehicles” versus golf carts and the relevance of 25 mph or more on highways versus private right-of-way, etc., until the judge says OK fine, I got it, made your point, not guilty, next case.

Flash forward nearly four years, until last June 7, when Leon and his magical electrical golf cart/car glide into the Newport Pier parking lot where they run into, of all people, Officer Darling, who has his ticket book out before Leon comes to a complete stop. Sign here please, tell it to the judge, back to court, more “golf cart” versus “golf car” demonstrations — got it, you’re boring me, not guilty, next case. This gives a whole new meaning to Yogi Berra’s line about déjà vu. Is Leon still humming through West Newport on his golf car? Like they say in Alaska, you betcha’.

What is to become of Leon E. and his electric golf-car-low speed-vehicle thing? Impossible to say. But it does raise some interesting issues. Golf carts are popping up everywhere. Case in point. My son and daughter-in-law live in Mesa del Mar, a nice neighborhood next to the O.C. Fairgrounds. People in Mesa del Mar are bonkers for golf carts. The place is crawling with them. Get it? Crawling with them? It’s like a joke. My son’s golf cart, which is totally tricked out with rear-view mirrors, brake lights and seat belts, gets him and his wife and an assortment of wee people around the neighborhood to parks and stores and even the Fairgrounds just as well as any Mercedes CLS550. OK, a little slower maybe, but just as well and about 75 grand cheaper. But here is the larger point that goes beyond either Leon Ettensperger, or Nick and Tarra Buffa. At a time when the world is going greener by the hour, and I’m not talking about Killarney or expired Gouda, maybe we need to take a closer look at golf carts and their tricked out mutant quicker cousins. No fuel, zero emissions, a little electric charge, done. It’s not like you’ll be going to L.A. in a golf cart any time soon, although I have nothing against going to L.A., but to go 500 yards for a quart of milk, or more importantly, some Slim-a-Bear 100 calorie Klondike bars, it’s darn near perfect. I think it is anyway. And I didn’t just fall of a turnip truck you know. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected].