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The Slice: This furry envoy has bite
So you want to entice distant friends or relatives to come visit during the holidays, but you aren’t sure how to close the deal.
The Slice has a suggestion. Send a marmot.
The tourism promotion folks at Visit Spokane have plush-toy marmots ready for purchase/adoption. You could mail one to California or Pennsylvania as an invitation-carrying furry ambassador from Spokane.
Call (509) 747-3230 to find out how to begin the adoption process.
What message should the toy marmot convey?
“Accompany me back to Spokane or I will dig up your garden.”
Or “I’ll sleep on your car’s engine until you’re ready to take me back to Spokane.”
Or “Take me back to Spokane for Thanksgiving or I’ll bite.”
Or, well, I’m sure you can come up with your own message.
Favorite Bugs Bunny expression: JoAnn Gemmrig, Gary W. Smith and others are longtime admirers of “What a maroon.”
Les Norton enjoys saying “What an ultramaroon.”
Where the streets have new names: Anita Lamp lives on South Ballou Road. To make her address sound more Western, she came up with the idea of changing it to Cat Ballou Road. “It’s not very rugged, but still involves some outlaws and a great story,” she wrote.
And even though she thinks it might be slightly redundant, Carrie Webbenhurst imagined changing her North Lowe Road address to North Lowe Flats Road.
Remembering punching the clock: “It was my very first job after turning 16 for the summer of ’61,” wrote Vicki Nolting. “I worked at S. H. Kress (dime store) in downtown Spokane. I had a time card with my name on it to put in the gray machine. And I, too, remember the clunk it made.”
It was certainly different than swiping a coded card in front of an electronic eye that beeped.
David Michaelson remembers. “Ah, time cards and clocks – when one’s closest work friends ask you to ‘punch in’ for them. And the boss often moved the minute hand a bit forward before opening and backwards near closing.”
Today’s Slice question: How would you rate the Spokane area as a land of second chances?