The Slice: If you’ve got a yard, I’ll bring a rake

It’s time to get serious about reader service.

No longer will I be satisfied to respond to e-mails and occasionally answer the phone.

And it won’t be enough to simply suggest that certain perusers of this column get some therapy.

No, I have a bold, new plan.

Later this fall, I’m going to rake up the leaves in some reader’s yard.

How’s that for serving the needs of a subscriber?

OK, this isn’t an altogether original idea. Longtime Slice readers might recall that I mowed a North Side woman’s lawn about 10 years ago.

Apparently that struck some as slightly bizarre, because the morning team at a Spokane radio station phoned that lady and had her testify on the air that I had, indeed, mowed her lawn.

So, how will this work?

As I recall, I picked the lawn to mow on the basis of the first reader to call me on a certain Saturday morning. But that’s not all that imaginative.

This time around, I’d like to make a somewhat more thoughtful evaluation.

In the 1977 movie, “Slap Shot,” Reg Dunlop (played by the late Paul Newman), the coach of a minor league hockey team, puts a $100 bounty on the head of an opposing player.

One of his own players declares that he wants that money. And Dunlop says, “Ya gotta earn it.”

So it will be with my reader-outreach leaf-raking. You have to earn it.

Precisely how you do that is up to you.

Maybe you could tell me about your social service volunteering or modestly note your contributions to local animal shelters.

Perhaps you could tell about continuing to read this column even after I’ve declined to print your last 116 submissions.

Or maybe you might want to detail how you will have hot cider, a great rake, plenty of yard bags and friendly kids/pets waiting for me on the appointed day.

It’s up to you.

You don’t have to live in Spokane to be eligible for The Slice’s yard-raking program. If the most deserving tree owner lives in Deer Park or Wallace, that’s where I’ll go.

I don’t promise to rake every last leaf on a sprawling estate. If your real intention is to rant at me for two hours about The S-R’s presidential endorsement, I probably won’t stick around to hear it. And I’ll have nothing to do with gas powered leaf-blowers.

But if you think it might be fun to have me rake up your leaves and can make a decent case for why I should, let me hear from you.

I’ll make my selection some time around Halloween.

Of course, if the Inland Northwest is covered with snow by then, all bets are off.

Unless I decide that you deserve to have me shovel your sidewalk.

•Today’s Slice question: What’s the best thing you ever saw at a blessing-of-the-pets ceremony?