I was returning to my car in downtown San Bernardino when I heard vigorous honking — and not from an angry motorist.

Six geese were swimming in the reflecting pool outside San Bernardino City Hall.

“They’ve got a nest atop the elevator shaft in the parking structure,” Jeff Kraus, a city spokesperson, told me. “The mother stays with the nest. The father goes out on patrol.”

Monday morning, Kraus continued, “we saw the whole family in the reflecting pool: mother, father and five goslings. It’s the first time we saw all of them together.”

I was visiting that afternoon. By the time I walked from the surface parking lot to the pool to investigate the honking, the geese, which were in the pool or seated around it, were quiet.

One gosling was alternately swimming and flapping its wings, under the watchful eye of an adult. I suspected one of them had been honking. The excited son or daughter, perhaps. Or the proud father.

(For all I know the parent was honking a warning in geese language: “You can’t go in the pool yet. You ate those grubs less than an hour ago.”)

Where was the seventh goose? I walked across the lawn toward the parking structure.

Gazing up, I saw one lone goose, possibly the mother, outlined against the sky as she stood nobly atop the elevator shaft, marked with a giant 5 for the fifth floor. The sight, in the middle of the urban downtown, was both comic and majestic.

“She’s very protective. A number of us had been doing a walking loop that included the top level of the parking structure,” Kraus said. “She’d be looking at us with a keen eye.”

Geese, perhaps the same two adults, have migrated there the past two years, Kraus said, and are a welcome sight for city employees and visitors who pass by.

Last May I photographed a goose that was swimming laps in the pool, to the delight of children.

Kraus joked that City Hall should set up a webcam on the nest — akin to the popular Big Bear eagles, who have an online following — and seek sponsors.

Until that day, we will have to content ourselves with an in-person view of the geese. Or the TV broadcasts of San Bernardino City Council meetings, which train a camera on eight silly gooses.

Metro links

For Earth Day, which was Tuesday, transit agencies offered free rides. How could I resist? After knocking off for the day, I took Metrolink into downtown L.A. to visit the Central Library and eat dinner at Grand Central Market’s Thai food stall Sticky Rice.

Somewhat hilariously, KCAL did a short advance segment on the transit perk that, oops, used B-roll footage not of our heavy rail Metrolink but of the similarly named St. Louis light rail line, MetroLink.

AI at work? In the footage, the trains displayed their destinations as “Lambert Airport” and “Fairview Heights,” which you’d think would have been a tipoff.

SoCal train nerds were sharing the link and smirking. As a former Midwesterner, it was nice to know I wasn’t the only Southern Californian familiar with the St. Louis train system.

“I may be from there originally,” one person commented on the station’s YouTube post, “but I’m not going all the way there from L.A. for a free ride.”

Paging Dr. Kildare

Reacting to recent news here about the death of “Dr. Kildare” heartthrob Richard Chamberlain, a Pomona College alumnus, I noted that the show, which went off the air in 1966, was before my time. Some of you remember.

“I started nurses’ training at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital in 1961,” recounts Arlys Veen of Ontario, “and every Thursday night at 8 p.m. for three years we gathered in the TV room to swoon over Dr. Kildare.”

“I used to joke with patients before I would do a procedure on them in my office,” confides Richard Armour, a general practitioner in Upland. “If they asked me if I’d ever performed the procedure before, I would reply, ‘Well, not really, but I saw Dr. Kildare do it and I’m sure I can remember how.’ Hey, laughter is the best medicine!”

Joe(s)

Here’s an unusual postscript to my column about the late Joseph Wambaugh, the crime writer who died Feb. 28 and who grew up in Fontana: His father was a plumber in that city.

In the 1960s, “Joseph Wambaugh Sr. was the man who repaired our washing machine,” recalls Michelle Tacchia. His unusual surname stuck with her, even at age 10.

Michelle’s husband, Michael, says his mother-in-law later talked about Wambaugh Sr. too. “She was floored,” he says, “as the son of her plumber gained international fame as a great writer.”

The younger Wambaugh’s first LAPD novel, “The New Centurions,” was published in 1971 and became the first of many bestsellers.

That both men were named Joseph Wambaugh may have likewise floored more than one plumbing customer. Father and son were both working Joes.

David Allen plumbs the depths Friday, Sunday and Wednesday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.