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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

U.S. Sen. Charles E. Townsend was on an investigating trip to the Colville and Spokane reservations when his car got stuck on a steep grade. The senator approached a “portly old rancher” and asked for help, adding that he was a senator and in a hurry.

The skeptical rancher said, If you “are a United States senator, I want to see the color of your money before I go.”

The senator gave him $5. After the rancher and his team pulled the car free, the rancher confided in someone else that “I have seen bunco men, horse thieves, cattle thieves and ‘sooners,’ but this is the first attempt to work the ‘United States Senator’ racket on me.”

“That may be all right in Washington city,” the rancher added, “but it won’t work on the Spokane Indian Reservation.”

From the fashion beat: A young woman startled shoppers downtown by wearing the latest fashion sensation: a monocle.

“It was no easy feat to walk in a tight-fitting skirt along the avenue amid shoppers, keeping that stunning monocle in place and still maintain one’s poise of sophistication and hauteur,” said the paper. “But the young woman accomplished all and then a little.”

The monocle fad was introduced by actress Alice Lloyd in a recent stage appearance in Spokane.