Washed It!

Iowa’s rejection of three state supreme court justices who ruled in favor of same-sex marriage underscored the growing electoral vulnerability of state judges as more and more are targeted by special interest groups, legal scholars and jurists said Thursday.

“It just illustrated something that has been troubling many of us for many, many years,” California Chief Justice Ronald M. George said. “The election of judges is not necessarily the best way to select them.”

The three Iowa high court justices were ousted in the kind of retention election California uses for appeals court judges: They face no opposing candidates and list no party affiliation, and voters can select “yes” or “no.” Legal scholars have generally said that system is among the most effective ways of avoiding a politicized judiciary.

But a report by the Brennan Center for Justice this year found a “transformation” in state judicial elections during the last decade throughout the country. Big money and a campaign emphasis on how a judge votes on the bench has become “the new normal,” the report said.

“For more than a decade, partisans and special interests of all stripes have been growing more organized in their efforts to use elections to tilt the scales of justice their way,” said the report, which examined 10 years of judicial elections. “Many Americans have come to fear that justice is for sale.”

Although Iowa’s vote will have no immediate effect on marriage rights there, it sends a signal to other judges that voters are watching.

“It will pressure judges, or some judges anyway, perhaps even subconsciously, in their decision-making by what would be popular or what might meet the political preferences of the moment,” George said. “And the judge’s loyalty has to be first and foremost to the rule of law, and not to the political or social or economic pressures or personal preferences.”

Several jurists cited recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that they believe will further politicize the bench. One ruling permitted judges to take political positions during judicial races, and another overturned campaign contribution limits.

Anti-abortion forces targeted George and California Supreme Court Justice Ming W. Chin for removal in 1998 after they voted to overturn a state parental consent law. Both raised money and mounted campaigns to save their seats.

More dramatically, voters ousted the late California Chief Justice Rose Bird and two colleagues in 1986 after a campaign that charged the court was failing to uphold death sentences.

“The Rose Bird situation is now being replicated throughout the United States,” said Justice J. Anthony Kline of the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. What happened in Iowa is likely to happen in other states, including California, where the Bird election generally has been seen as an aberration, he said.

“The independence of California courts has never been seriously challenged, ” Kline said. “But those days may be numbered.”

Most states elect judges, whereas federal judges receive lifetime tenure. Judges for Superior Court in California can be challenged.

A group opposed to gay marriage targeted the Iowa justices, who were on the ballot for their regular retention election, after last year’s unanimous Iowa Supreme Court decision to lift a ban on same-sex marriage. Even though a new governor will now appoint their replacements, the recall is not expected to affect same-sex marriage rights in Iowa.

“It was an attempt to intimidate judges,” said Dean Allan W. Vestal of Drake University Law School in Des Moines. “It had no immediate practical effect.”

The justices who were ejected from the bench blamed “an unprecedented attack by out-of-state special interest groups.” They included the Mississippi-based American Family Assn., the Washington-based Family Research Council and the New Jersey-based National Organization for Marriage.

Liberty Counsel, one of the groups that has been fighting gay marriage, praised the results.

“The justices crossed the line when they played the role of a legislator and abandoned judicial restraint,” said Mathew Staver, founder of the group.

George said pressure has come from both the left and the right in California judicial retention elections.

Rejection of Iowa judges over gay marriage raises fears of political influence

By the time the 5-year-old boy was rescued from a dark closet in San Bernardino County last year, much of his body had been burned by a glue gun and hot spoons. Johnny had been starved and sodomized, taunted and punched, forced to eat soap and crouch motionless in corners.

Child welfare officials across the county line, in Los Angeles, might have spared him this. More than a year earlier, they had dismissed allegations that he had been abused as unfounded and determined that the “child [was] not at risk.”

A recent internal review by the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services concluded the finding was wrong — the result of a shallow inquiry in which the agency misjudged what little information it collected, according to records reviewed by The Times.

The department’s involvement in the case might never have come to light but for the decision by the supervising social worker on the case, Roc

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The military is accepting openly gay recruits for the first time in the nation’s history, even as it tries in the courts to slow the movement to abolish its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

At least two service members discharged for being gay began the process to re-enlist after the Pentagon’s Tuesday announcement.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in California who overturned the 17-year policy last week was likely to reject the government’s latest effort to halt her order telling the military to stop enforcing the law.

The Justice Department will likely appeal if she does not suspend her order.

The Defense Department has said it would comply with U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ order and had frozen any discharge cases. Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said recruiters had been given top-level guidance to accept applicants who say they are gay.

Recruiters also have been told to inform potential recruits that the moratorium on enforcement of the policy could be reversed at any time, if the ruling is appealed or the court grants a stay, she said.

Gay rights groups were continuing to tell service members to avoid revealing that they are gay, fearing they could find themselves in trouble should the law be reinstated.

“What people aren’t really getting is that the discretion and caution that gay troops are showing now is exactly the same standard of conduct that they will adhere to when the ban is lifted permanently,” said Aaron Belkin, executive director of the Palm Center, a think tank on gays and the military at the University of California Santa Barbara. “Yes, a few will try to become celebrities.”

An Air Force officer and co-founder of a gay service member support group called OutServe said financial considerations are playing a big role in gay service members staying quiet.

“The military has financially trapped us,” he said, noting that he could owe the military about $200,000 if he were to be dismissed.

The officer, who asked not to be identified for fear of being discharged, said he’s hearing increasingly about heterosexual service members approaching gay colleagues and telling them they can come out now.

He also said more gay service members are coming out to their peers who are friends, while keeping their orientation secret from leadership. He said he has come out to two peers in the last few days.

“People are coming out informally in their units,” the officer said. “Discussions are happening right now.”

An opponent of the judge’s ruling said confusion that has come up is exactly what Pentagon officials feared and shows the need for her to immediately freeze her order while the government appeals.

“It’s only logical that a stay should be granted to avoid the confusion that is already occurring with reports that the Pentagon is telling recruiters to begin accepting homosexual applicants,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group based in Washington that supports the policy.

The uncertain status of the law has caused much confusion within an institution that has historically discriminated against gays.

Before the 1993 law, the military banned gays entirely and declared them incompatible with military service. There have been instances in which gays have served, with the knowledge of their colleagues.

Twenty-nine nations, including Israel, Canada, Germany and Sweden, allow openly gay troops, according to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group and plaintiff in the lawsuit before Phillips.

The Pentagon guidance to recruiters comes after Dan Woods, the group’s attorney, sent a letter last week warning the Justice Department that Army recruiters who turned away Omar Lopez in Austin, Texas may have caused the government to violate Phillips’ injunction. Woods wrote that the government could be subject to a citation for contempt.

Military recruiters told to accept gay applicants, as gov’t appeals court decision

It was just before 11 a.m. when Isabel Marroquin Tambriz once more began to cry. Her wails were so piercing they rose above the brass band. They traveled down the dirt paths of the village, which grew ever more crowded with mourners.

“Walijoq caewaj!” she yelled over and over in Quiche. Wake up, my love. Wake up, my love.

In a casket outside her cinder-block home lay the body of her husband, Manuel Jaminez Xum. He was dressed in a pinstripe three-piece suit, finer than anything he’d worn when he was alive.

Following Maya tradition, his family had filled the coffin with the few clothes he owned so his spirit would not return to haunt them. For protection in the afterlife, near his right arm, they tucked a sword carved out of wood.

Los Angeles police say the 37-year-old man, whom acquaintances in California had identified as Manuel Jamines, was drunk and threatening two women with a knife when an officer shot him Sept. 5 in Westlake. Word of the shooting prompted protests in the neighborhood, where angry residents threw things at police.

In Guatemala, too, his death was news. Political leaders spoke out in his defense. And the day before his funeral, a throng of media lined up in Guatemala City for the arrival of the day laborer’s body, flown back from Los Angeles, where he had lived for seven years.

Five hours to the west in his damp, lush village on the steep slope of a small volcano named Xac, or Charred One, the Maya community of 2,000 reacted to the shooting with shock and indignation. In the decade or so since they began sending their men to the United States, Jaminez Xum was the first to have died there.

Like many of the 6 million Mayas who make up nearly half of Guatemala’s population, the people of Xexac have little to do with the outside world. They speak to each other in the Maya highlands language of Quiche. They cook with firewood. Converts to Christianity, they have six churches in the village but only two cars. Some of the young boys have skinny jeans and spiky hair, but the women dress in traditional knitted skirts and cotton shirts embroidered with brilliantly colored flowers.

Ten years ago, many in Xexac had never seen Guatemala City, let alone the United States.

“We didn’t know what Los Estados Unidos meant,” said Diego Guarchaj y Guarchaj, a childhood friend of Jaminez Xum.

Then a man from the village followed his wife’s relatives to Westlake and changed everything.

Diego Ixquiactap began to make money, hundreds of dollars each week. He started buying village land and built something never before seen in this world of wooden shacks: a white-washed, concrete block house with arched windows and doorway.

“It was beautiful,” Guarchaj y Guarchaj said. “Everyone saw it and knew we had to go too.”

In the years that followed, 60 to 70 men left Xexac, most of them to join brothers and cousins as day laborers in Westlake. They borrowed $3,500 to $5,000 from private lenders in nearby towns to pay their smugglers. And they agreed to pay 10% to 20% interest on the loans each month once they got to Los Angeles.

It was a risky decision.

Those who found steady work soon paid off their debt and began to construct their houses in Xexac — hacienda-like structures in pastel colors with Spanish colonial-style columns, spacious porches and wrought-iron windows. Those who struggled saw their debt climb and only seemed to worsen their families’ plight.

Jaminez Xum, an orphan raised by an uncle from the age of 2, decided to take his chances in 2003 when he realized that the $15 a week he was making in the coffee plantations would never be enough to properly care for his wife and his three young sons. Tired of living in a dark, cinder-block room with a dirt floor, no bathroom and nothing but wooden planks to sleep on, he wanted a real home with a garden and a porch.

His wife imagined it too as she walked past the nice homes built with money from America.

“It’s good,” Isabel told him. “You should go.”

Protests over police shooting resonate all the way to Guatemala

Long before Arnold Schwarzenegger began a routine of heavy legislative lifting in Sacramento, the governor popularized the sport of bodybuilding in his 1977 cult classic film “Pumping Iron.”

And when the paparazzi descended on Schwarzenegger and fellow celebrity bodybuilders in the film’s wake, the place where he went to work out in private was World Gym, the no-frills Santa Monica haven founded by weightlifting guru Joe Gold. The place became a second home for Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno and other famed iron men.

On Wednesday, the three-story building at 2210 Main St. is slated to go to auction through AuctionPoint, an online outfit. In addition to World Gym, the building for a time housed Schwarzenegger and Ferrigno in an apartment with a surprising amount of girlie-man pale pink tile.

The starting bid for the former weightlifting den: $3.1 million.

“I think this is the right time because we’ve seen the value go from $6 million to $4.75 million,” building owner Jerry Breeden said recently. “Quite honestly, I have many uses for the profit margin we’ll derive.”

Until about three years ago, the building held the offices and sample rooms for Breeden’s Aviva Group, a manufacturer of pricey handbags and Swarovski crystals. It also was home to Breeden and his wife, Maggie, who shared the ocean-view penthouse that Gold occupied for many years. Their daughter’s family lived in Schwarzenegger’s former quarters on the Main Street side. And their son and his family occupied a second-floor apartment. (Breeden is now based in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.)

Gold, a close friend and mentor of Schwarzenegger, died in 2004 at age 82. He served in the Navy during World War II and was badly injured when his ship was torpedoed in the Philippines. After the war, he joined the merchant marine and sailed the world, lifting weights and building a remarkable physique.

He became a Muscle Beach regular and opened Gold’s Gym in Venice in 1964, developing workout machines that went beyond dumbbells and barbells.

“In 1968, when I first came to America, Gold’s Gym was the gym where I first went to work out,” Schwarzenegger wrote in a public statement after Gold’s death. Although the Austrian by then had become the youngest Mr. Universe at age 20, Gold nicknamed him “Balloon Belly” and put him to work toning his abs. “Joe looked after me and encouraged me,” Schwarzenegger said.

Gold sold Gold’s Gym about 1970, but got back into the business in 1976 when he opened the first World Gym at 2210 Main St. The chain grew to more than 300 locations. The machines and buff bodies of Main Street are long gone, replaced in part by Alchemy Wellness, which offers “raindrop therapy.”

Tom Corte, the agent handling the listing, said Schwarzenegger’s love of Santa Monica was fostered at the location. Schwarzenegger later bought a building nearby.

martha.groves@latimes.com
Former Santa Monica weightlifting haven up for auction

The woman identified as the leader of a small religious group was being held for questioning after a 22-hour search sparked by fears of a suicide pact, officials said.

Reyna Marisol Chicas, 32, who has been identified by family members as the leader of the group, initially gave authorities a different name when approached by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in a park east of Palmdale, authorities said.

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore called Chicas “disingenuous” about her identity.

The other 12 members of the group, including Chicas’ children, voluntarily agreed to be transferred to the Palmdale sheriff’s station, Whitmore said.

The group was found around noon at Jackie Robinson Park, east of Palmdale, sitting on blankets laid out on a lush green lawn in the shade of a pine tree. A resident who had seen news reports on the missing group spotted them at the park and called the Sheriff’s Department about 11:30 a.m.

When deputies arrived at the park, Chicas was playing with some of the children on the swings, while the others sat on blankets praying, said Capt. Mike Parker. “They seemed shocked,” Parker said. “They said we are Christians, and we would never harm ourselves.”

When deputies told them that notes and gathered personal belongings they left behind had made relatives suspect otherwise, they reponded by saying, “It’s sinful to have [worldly possessions] when you’re praying because they bring evil,” Parker said.

The group had spent the night at the home of Chicas’ friend, he said.

Parker said the department devoted “a huge amount of time” to the manhunt.

“Could these people benefit from better communication with their family? Certainly.” Parker said.

Family members reported the group missing at about 2 p.m. Saturday, after finding they had left behind farewell notes, mortgage statements, cash and cellphones in a purse. The group was known for previous forays into desert and mountain areas, apparently related to belief in an imminent biblical “rapture,” when believers would be transported to heaven.

Whitmore promised extensive follow-up on the case, saying the county Department of Children and Family Services would be involved.

The letters left by the group have been reviewed again, and they read like “a will and testament,” he said.

They were addressed to parents and other loved ones and included phrases like “Please take care of, Don’t worry, Here’s some cash,” he said.

Two of the letters written by two 14-year-olds were identical, which Whitmore said may indicate they were coached.

Ricardo Giron, a former neighbor of Chicas’, said he was relieved, and not very surprised, to hear the group was safe.

“She’s always very careful with her kids,” he said. “I couldn’t believe she would hurt them.”

Chicas used to baby-sit Giron’s children, and their families vacationed together, he said. However, she had recently severed social ties with him as she grew increasingly religious and began spending more time at church, he added.

No criminal charges were pending against Chicas, Whitmore said, but she will be subject to psychological evaluation before she is released.

Whitmore said the Sheriff’s Department response, which included helicopters and volunteers on horseback, was warranted given the presence of children in the group.
Religious group’s alleged leader held after search linked to mass-suicide fears ends

A Sunday service at a historic church in eastern Turkey underscored both the desire for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and the hurdles that remain nearly a century after a violent massacre of Armenians.

It was the first service held in the 1,100-year-old Armenian Church of the Holy Cross since 1915, when a wave of violence largely destroyed one of the largest Christian communities in the Middle East.

Many Armenians in the diaspora and the neighboring republic of Armenia boycotted and denounced Sunday’s service on Akdamar Island after Turkish authorities did not allow a cross to be raised on the dome of the church, allowing it to be placed on the church grounds nearby instead.

Still, hundreds of Armenian pilgrims attended, many coming from the relatively large Armenian community in Istanbul, Turkey’s main city, but also from Iran, Germany, France and from as far away as the United States. They flooded local hotels and traversed Lake Van by boat to get to the site as they sang hymns.

“There is a village far, far away,” one group sang. “It’s my village even though I never go or I haven’t seen it.”

Most visited the small church for a few minutes and watched the ceremony via giant television screens set up in the gardens outside.

“I feel bittersweet about being here, because I grew up hearing about the life in Van from my parents,” said Paul Shahinian, a 58-year-old visiting from New Jersey. “I always had images in my head about Van. I never imagined I could come here because Turkey didn’t welcome Armenians.”

The church, surrounded by verdant mountains and hills, is decorated on the outside with carvings of different animals such as peacocks, goats and owls, which are common in Armenian iconography. Painted figures inside are meant to represent the heavens.

“This church, which is a valuable piece of art, is a cultural monument that belongs to the whole of humanity,” Archbishop Aram Atesyan of the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey said during a two-hour service he led, according to Turkey’s semi-official Anatolia News Agency.

The 8-year-old government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has strived to heal the wounds of the past by reaching out to Armenians in Turkey and abroad in an attempt to bolster its international reputation and smooth out obstacles to possible Turkish entrance into the European Union. In 2005, Turkey began a $1.5-million restoration of the church, opening it as a museum in 2007. It will host an annual religious service from now on.

Some critics in both Turkey and among Armenians have denounced the handling of the church opening as an attempt by Turks to whitewash a violent history. But others describe the Sunday’ event as an important gesture by an activist Turkish government that appears more ready and able than previous political elites to address the country’s domestic and international sore spots.

But attempts at reconciliation between Armenians and Turks have often faltered, as much over misunderstandings of gestures as substantive differences, the latter including Turkey’s refusal to abide by the widely accepted description of the killings as genocide.

The cross controversy underscores the sensitivity of relations between Turks and Armenians, even over relatively minor matters. Turkish officials blamed the church’s Italian architect, saying the dome could not handle the 440-pound cross. The provincial governor of Van has promised that a cross would be mounted on the church within six weeks.

But many Armenians suspect continued chauvinism by Turks, who are governed by a political party that has roots in the country’s Islamist movements. “The cross wasn’t there because of the fears of the governments,” said Rafi Altunkeser, a 40-year-old Armenian Turk visiting from Istanbul.

But other Armenians called for reconciliation. Harry Parsekian, a Boston resident, said his family originally hailed from eastern Turkey but was driven out. He first returned to the Van region in 1985 and has since returned many times.

“When I was young I never imagined I would have Turkish friends,” said Parsekian. “But I do have really good Turkish friends now. And I believe this is a good step for the Armenians and Turks.”

daragahi@latimes.com

Saracoglu is a special correspondent.
Armenians worship in eastern Turkey, and for some it’s a bittersweet moment

Mexican marines captured Sergio Villarreal Barragan, a presumed leader of the embattled Beltran Leyva cartel who appears on a list of the country’s most-wanted fugitives, in a raid Sunday in the central state of Puebla, the government said.

The alleged capo known as “El Grande” did not put up any resistance when he was arrested along with two accomplices, a navy official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy told The Associated Press. The President’s Office later issued a brief statement confirming the arrest took place in Puebla, capital of the state of the same name.

Villarreal’s capture is the fourth major blow delivered to drug cartels by Mexico’s government in the past year. First came the death of Arturo Beltran Leyva on Dec. 16, 2009. Then soldiers killed the Sinaloa cartel’s No. 3 capo, Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, on July 29. And on Aug. 30 federal police announced the capture Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias “La Barbie.” The two men are not related.

Villarreal, “El Grande,” appears on a 2009 Attorney General’s Office list of Mexico’s most-wanted drug traffickers, with a reward of just over $2 million offered for his capture.

He is listed as one of the remaining leaders of the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose top capo, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a raid by marines outside Mexico City.

Villarreal’s capture comes about two weeks after the arrest of Valdez Villarreal, another alleged capo linked to the Beltran Leyvas.

The once-powerful Beltran Leyva cartel split following the death of Arturo — known as the “Boss of Bosses” — which launched a brutal war for control of the gang, involving mass executions and beheadings in once-peaceful parts of central Mexico. The fight pitted brother Hector Beltran Leyva and Villarreal against a faction led by “La Barbie.” Hector Beltran Leyva remains at large.

The Beltran Leyva brothers once formed a part of the Sinaloa cartel, but broke away following a dispute. An indication of the problems facing the cartel is that three of the four main blows dealt to drug gangs in the past year involve Beltran Leyva leaders or operatives.

More than 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against the cartels soon after taking office.

In the central state of Morelos, police discovered nine bodies in clandestine graves Saturday in the same area where four more were recently found. The Public Safety Department said in a statement that all 13 victims were believed to have been killed on the orders of “La Barbie” in his battle for control of the cartel.

On Sunday, the military announced that it filed charges against four troops for the Sept. 5 shooting deaths of a man and his 15-year-old son along the highway linking the northern city of Monterrey to Laredo, Texas.

Authorities have said soldiers opened fire on the family vehicle when it failed to stop at a checkpoint, though relatives who were also in the car say they were shot at after they passed a military convoy.

The mother and wife of the two victims was also wounded in the shooting.

A captain, a corporal and two infantrymen are in custody in military prison and have been charged with homicide, the Defense Department said in a statement.

Mexico’s military was already under scrutiny for this year’s killings of two brothers, ages 5 and 9, on a highway in Tamaulipas, a state bordering Nuevo Leon.

The National Human Rights Commission has accused soldiers of shooting the children and altering the scene to try to pin the deaths on drug cartel gunmen.

The army denies the allegations and says the boys were killed in the crossfire of a shootout between soldiers and suspected traffickers.

The scandal renewed demands from activists that civilian authorities, not the army, investigate human rights cases involving the military.

More recently, soldiers killed a U.S. citizen Aug. 22 outside the Pacific coast resort city of Acapulco.

In a statement to police, an army lieutenant claimed that Joseph Proctor, who had lived Mexico for several years, shot first at the military convoy on a highway between Acapulco and Zihuatanejo.

The Defense Department says it is investigating the claim, which Proctor’s father, William Proctor, says he found hard to believe.
Mexico catches a suspected leader of Beltran Leyva drug cartel

He’s watched the cheap Chinese toys come in, a flimsy, mass-produced onslaught. That’s of little concern. He’s doing something more meaningful, something that will last.

Balwinder Singh slowly works the sandpaper around the cargo bay of the miniature wooden truck, one of dozens in his roadside store. Horse carts are the most difficult, he says, with their rounded staves. Then there are the John Deere tractors, the combines, the gasoline trucks, reflecting the rich agricultural land that is Punjab, India’s breadbasket.

You play with what you see, and this is what children see.

For 17 years, the former furniture maker has been selling his diminutive wooden wares along the roadside, carefully arranged in lines, orderly, never honking or cutting each other off, in contrast to the real versions rumbling by a few feet away.

Over those years, the town of Dhanaula became locally famous for the brightly painted toys, and soon shopkeepers started coming from miles around to buy wholesale.

“Chinese toys have cheap electronics that break within a few days,” says Gurpreet Singh Bagga, who buys for his shop 50 miles away. “And it’s good to have things made in India for Indians. People get jobs.”

As business grew, the 32-year-old Singh drew in his family members, employing his brother to cut the wood, his wife to sand and buff, his children to paint, producing an average of five a day. “It’s good — now the family can work together,” he says.

He even got his father to leave his day-laborer job and become chief salesman, although truth be told, he’s no Dale Carnegie, never suggesting the customer buy a second one, take the more expensive one, consider starting a collection.

“No, we wouldn’t do that sort of thing,” says the polite, distinguished Beant Singh, 50. “They just buy what they want.”

These days their biggest customers are city dwellers, nostalgic for a rural India they no longer know, and the occasional truck driver looking for a replica of his own belching truck, minus the dents and dirt. For locals, his toys seem too much like everyday life, the younger Singh reckons.

Singh is part of a long tradition of Indian toy makers, some of whom have passed on their craft from generation to generation. Archaeological evidence records ingenious Indus Valley playthings dating back 5,000 years.

One of India’s most famous toys, ordered by an 18th century king, Tipu Sultan, and now in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, features an almost life-size mechanical wooden tiger mauling a British soldier. The sultan, who was no fan of the British colonizers, designed it so that when a small crank is turned, it emits a roar, and then the sound of a (British) moan as the soldier’s hand covers his mouth.

As potential customers slow down for a look, Singh says, he’ll size them up. If they’re in a posh Mercedes and don’t know the value of a rupee, he’ll add a little onto the price, up to 50% on the toys, which sell from $1.50 to $6. Occasionally, a high-end collector will request a special-order model with plush seats and working doors, which he’ll sell for upward of $60.

This love affair with all things small earns the family $150 a month, not bad for these parts, and it sure beats the hard work of day laboring.

Most of his customers see his wares on the roadside and stop for an impulse buy. His best allies are children, who make such a ruckus the parents are forced to turn back. Two kids in the car, even better for him, especially if the parents don’t want to suffer miles of backseat fighting.

But the parents control the purse strings. “They’re very colorful and I wanted to buy one for my child,” says Prem Deep, a lawyer from New Delhi who stopped to take a look. “But they’re a bit expensive, so I’m going to wait.”

The way Singh sees it, his wooden toys are a lot better than those computer games and virtual world pastimes that leave children overweight, distracted, harboring a distant gaze. These make kids move, run, exercise and let their imagination do the work.

What about his 10-year old son, who paints the orange, blue and green markings on the toy trucks after school and on weekends?

“He’d rather play with anything but trucks,” he says. “He sees so many of them, he gets sick of them.”

mark.magnier@latimes.com

Anshul Rana in The Times’ New Delhi Bureau contributed to this report.
Fit for a miniature Indian highway

Some architects reach the point where even a minor or obscure example of their work becomes significant. That may be the case with architect John Lautner, whose underdog individualism has propelled his reputation skyward.

Supporters hope Lautner’s prestige can help save one of his earliest commissions, a 1951 house north of Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills known as Shusett House. The current owner, Enrique Mannheim, wants to knock it down and build a new place to live. The demolition could come in the next few days.

Mannheim says he’s tried to make the place work for his family, but after 23 years, he’s reached the end of his patience with the structure – as well as with Lautner fans.