The Slice If Traditions Are Heading South, Idaho Faces Northern Influence
Traditions are under fire everywhere.
So here’s our prediction.
Sometime in 1997, the use of “northern Idaho” will supplant “North Idaho.”
“It Came From Spokane”: About a dozen readers - Art Bradley, Sam Tremaine and Bob Beare among them - agreed that, if there were a movie by that name, the featured monster would have sprung from the oil beneath the Davenport.
Joy Slaven suggested that the last living salmon somehow found its way under the hotel, learned how to breathe in oil and mutated as a result of exposure to radon. It then grew to massive proportions and became a land-walking creature that went around cracking open engine blocks to breathe from even more oil. “He was last seen heading toward Hanford,” wrote Slaven.
Jim Mullen proposed that the interaction of oil beneath the Davenport, radon and down-deep heat from the dormant South Hill volcano worked together to create an intelligent “biomist” entity that could be seen only with those old-time 3-D glasses.
Diane Evans said the monster could result from a genetic experiment involving sperm donated by the descendant of a greedy developer. The experiment, in her script outline, goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Pat Shelley wrote that the monster might spring from a smoldering grass field. Others spun their stories around causal factors ranging from caffeine to the coroner.
You can remind yourself that there are a lot of Catholics and former Catholics in Spokane: By starting workplace conversations about the most ridiculous things given up for Lent during childhood. (Chances are, a fair number of people will chime in.)
Clarification: OK, our favorite Code of the West (Monday’s Slice) was not original. But to be fair to the reader who submitted it, he didn’t really present it as such. In any case, thanks to all those who called and wrote to say “John Wayne said that.”
Of course, John Wayne didn’t actually author those lines either. But that’s another matter.
Today’s Slice question: What percentage of Spokane area businesses would support the idea of a weekly Dress-Up Day?
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
MEMO: The Slice appears Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098.