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The Slice: Lack of street smarts calls for presidential pardons

We all know Spokane has an abundance of streets that share names with past presidents.

And in the case of Washington and Lincoln, most of us even know something about the men in question.

But what if you went out to other presidential streets and randomly asked people about those historical figures?

With an eye toward Monday’s celebration of Presidents’ Day, that’s just what photographer Jesse Tinsley and I did last week.

The first stop on our stupefyingly unscientific survey was a business called 2nd Watch Monitoring – “The Leader in Alternative Sentencing” – at 815 N. Monroe St.

I asked a friendly woman named Kim Holbert if she knew anything about President Monroe.

“Not necessarily,” she said.

She apparently didn’t know his name was James or that he was famous for the Monroe Doctrine. (Well, maybe not famous.) Still, she at least believed me when I said there had, in fact, been a President Monroe.

Others in her office weren’t initially convinced that there had been a chief executive by that name. One good-natured woman admitted that she had wondered if the street might have been named after Marilyn Monroe.

“Don’t print that,” she said.

From there we went up to Taft Drive, near Indian Trail.

Seeing remodeling contractor Marc Martyn pulling into his garage, I waited for him to emerge from his vehicle.

What came to mind when he heard a mention of President Taft?

“Big,” he said. “Huge. I think they had to build him a special bathtub.”

I shook Martyn’s hand, for he was absolutely correct. In everything written about the prosperous-looking William Howard Taft, the most commonly used word might be “girth.”

Next stop, Jackson Avenue.

Spotting a woman getting out of her car with some plastic shopping bags, I called to her as she headed toward her porch.

I asked if she could tell me anything about President Jackson. I can’t recall if I used his first name, Andrew.

“No, I can’t,” she said. “Sorry.”

So much for Old Hickory.

She looked like she might be in her 30s or 40s. She said her first name was Leslie. I asked her if she would be willing to tell me her last name.

“Not if I’m going to look stupid,” she answered.

Fair enough.

Staying on the North Side, we next flagged down a couple of Mormon missionaries near the corner of Madison and Cleveland – Adam Bertoch of Texas and Barrett Ford of Tennessee.

Though good sports about being ambush-quizzed, neither could come up with anything about either president. (OK, Cleveland might be named after the city in Ohio.)

They knew nothing about James Madison’s wife, Dolley, or about Grover Cleveland having been our 22nd and our 24th president.

“We know about Jesus Christ,” said one of the young men.

Sorry. No points.

Not far away, I hailed a young couple heading toward the front door of a modest house on Jefferson.

Upholsterer Chris Miller knew that the street was named for Thomas Jefferson, but that was it.

Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Louisiana Purchase came up in our short exchange.

Oh, well. All that was a long time ago.

I was chopping, but no chips were flying. So we opted to move on to another part of town. In fact, to get to Polk Street, we dipped outside the city limits. (It’s not far from the Garden Springs interstate exit.)

The street was unpaved and ultra-quiet. No one was outside, so I knocked on a door.

Chiropractor Loyd Jacob said he couldn’t remember anything about President James K. Polk, though he said he has read about him at one time or another. Then he told me a joke about a guy who has a terrible memory.

Polk was instrumental in the United States acquiring what are now Washington and Idaho. But what has he done lately?

From there, we climbed up the South Hill and ducked into the cozy Rocket Bakery at the corner of Adams and 14th.

Does “Adams” ring a bell?

“President John Adams,” said Ellen Stone, a 21-year-old barista who cheerfully played our game.

She added that she thinks her coin-collector dad has been looking for a John Adams dollar. Such a coin does, in fact, exist.

When I mentioned that Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, also was a president, she nodded in a way that made me believe she would have remembered that on her own eventually.

Next we checked out an upscale stretch of Garfield. Seldom have I been more certain that I looked like a burglar in action. Seeing no creatures stirring, we crossed 29th and I approached a couple of people waiting at the bus stop just east of the Super One parking lot.

I tested their street smarts.

A young woman named Sheila politely urged me to go away at my earliest convenience. And a sixtyish guy named Fred said he knew there had been a President Garfield but that was about it.

On nearby Arthur, I repeatedly called after a fortysomething couple having an intense conversation as they walked in the street. I don’t know if it was an argument. But it was animated.

Anyway, their looks of incredulity went from pronounced to red-zone when I started explaining why I wanted to talk.

So let’s just say it appeared that neither Shari nor Alvin had ever heard of Chester Alan Arthur, the man who became president after James A. Garfield was assassinated.

I told them that no one has, which was a lie. But it would have seemed surreal to tell them that I had personally visited President Arthur’s rural Vermont birthplace once upon a time.

Heading back downtown, I approached a woman who was leaning into her car, getting a child safely situated in the back seat. This was right across from the Discovery School, on a short block of Grant.

“Right away, the first thing that comes to mind is his first name – Ulysses S.,” said Alison Collins.

She was less certain about his administration’s accomplishments.

I urged her to not worry about it.

Before calling an end to our campaign, we drove down to Peaceful Valley. I started knocking on doors on Wilson.

The first person to answer was a woman who said Wilson was president before she was born and that she really knew more about Franklin D. Roosevelt.

She didn’t want to give me her name, which was OK. By that point, I was tired and the last thing I needed was an extended debate about Woodrow Wilson and the League of Nations.

The next day, I looked through a file on Spokane street names at the downtown public library. There was a copy of a letter to The Spokesman-Review from 1923. The writer suggested that High Drive be renamed after President Warren G. Harding, who had just died while in office.

That didn’t happen, of course. But if it had, I wonder if people driving or walking along that scenic overlook today would have any idea why the street had that name.

•Today’s Slice question: What president really should have a local street named after him?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098; e-mail pault@spokesman.com. For previous Slice columns, see www.spokesman.com /columnists. Thanks to all the city of Spokane employees who cheerfully responded to my queries about the origins of street names.

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