The Slice: Fellow Lumberjack? What a Shock

So the starting quarterback for the Spokane Shock went to the same college I did.

Am I supposed to be proud?

I can’t decide.

Let’s move on.

“My bad: Saturday’s column featured a reader noting that John Steinbeck disparaged the appearance of an old Spokane brewery in his early ‘60s book, “Travels With Charley.”

I read that many years ago and couldn’t remember many details. But this sounded like something that would have been included.

I went online and confirmed that Steinbeck had indeed come through Spokane on his trip. And it appeared that there were several mentions of this city.

But it wasn’t until another reader politely questioned that item after it ran that I actually tracked down a copy of the book and attempted to pinpoint the reference in question. That was a mistake.

For now I have to report that I can find no such allusion to the ugly brewery. Maybe it’s in there and I’m just missing it. But I think the more likely scenario is that the reader submitting the item was honestly confused about where he had encountered that observation.

The fault is mine. I should have checked more thoroughly before printing that.

“Slice answers: Lots of readers remember telephone party lines.

Many said listening in on the conversations of others was rampant. That was known as “rubbernecking.”

“It was really the first reality show,” wrote one reader.

“Every once in a while, while on the phone, I flash back and think I hear that creepy next-door lady breathing as she listened in on my conversation,” wrote a reader in Bonners Ferry.

Then there were people who routinely hogged the line. “It used to make my dad so mad,” wrote Danelle Crabtree, who grew up on a farm in Montana.

So you see, bad manners existed long before the arrival of cell phones.

Several readers told of flying kites so high that, well, they know you wouldn’t believe them.

But Chuck Boos described a novel technique for bringing kites down. He and a friend used to fly them from an ocean-going boat. “After we were tired of flying the kite we would bring it down within range and shoot it down with a shotgun,” he wrote.

In the matter of what people would miss if they had to move, Ken Stout mentioned access to mountain trails.

And in that finish-the-sentence exercise, one male caller said that “One day…” he would enjoy a conjugal visit with a certain Spokane newscaster.

Uh, I’m pretty sure she’s married. But I’ve never met her husband, so maybe that was him calling.

“Today’s Slice question: What is the most annoying Elton John song?