The Slice: It came up in Hart-to-Hart exchange

Tim Wink got a good deal on a set of Robert Mitchum movies.

And he was watching one, 1958’s “The Hunters,” when something unexpected happened.

One of the characters in that Korean War air combat story, played by a young Robert Wagner, alluded to having family in Spokane.

Now that, by itself, wasn’t all that mind-blowing. But what amazed Wink is the fact that the actor just said “Spokane” — not “Spokane, Washington” or “Spokane, that’s a city in the Northwest” or whatever.

It’s almost as if, in 1958, people were expected to know their U.S. geography.

Back to the future: When he was growing up in the 1960s, Jim Cameron’s parents bought furniture at a North Side place called “House of Tomorrow.”

He wonders. “What would that store sell today?”

Slice answers: A majority of responding readers said a kid need not attend any particular Northwest college to learn how to become a zombie. Simply providing that youth with any one of a number of electronic-screen devices should do the trick, readers said.

Encouraging driver safety: Marsha Lilienkamp survived her early driving years in part because her tattletale grandmother sometimes rode along and ratted her out any time Marsha even contemplated something iffy.

One report she remembers: “Marsha was going so fast around that corner that her ponytail was just swaying and swaying.”

Slice answer: A friend in North Idaho saw the question about kids falling for that thing where an adult tells a child that if you hold a seashell up to an ear, you will hear the ocean. “After many years of rock ’n’ roll, gunfire and heavy equipment, I don’t need the seashell anymore,” he said.

Not trying to sound flippant, I said I hoped that did not test his sanity.

His reply: “Well, speaking of sanity, the tinnitus does seem to drown out the voices.”

Today’s Slice question: To what extent has working online altered the landscape for the trailing spouse’s employment prospects when a couple moves to a new city?