"The Funniest Thing We Ever Did"

Government's power to declare historical monuments duels with descendents' desire to profit without being stymied by a hated eccentric relative in a very entertaining Los Angeles Times account of the war over a "22-foot stack of crumbling, termite-infested Schlitz beer pallets" on a lot in Sherman Oaks, California.

While the family of its creator, Daniel Van Meter, is eager to get rid of what they call "a rotting vestige of one man's egotism" so they can erect 98 apartments on the site, that rotting vestige is Monument #184 to the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission, thank you very much, in what Commission member Bob Winter calls "the funniest thing we ever did," adding: "Maybe we were drunk."