The Slice: Perception often depends on place you call home

Don’t suppose there is a way this could be measured, but still I wonder.

You know how a car or truck sounds when it backfires? Sure.

Well, do you think those of us who live here are more apt than people in other cities to wonder if what we heard was a gun shot?

How about when someone sets off a big firecracker in a residential area?

Just wondering: Does the store where you bought most of your comic books as a kid still exist?

Slice answers: After asking the other day about renaming generations, I mostly heard from readers who were born near the end of the 1946-1964 baby boomer span and say they refuse to self-identify as boomers.

Just wondering 2: What did you learn about life from trying to sell things door-to-door as a child that today’s young people do not learn because they peddle cookies or whatever while sitting next to a parent at the entrance to a grocery store?

Reader challenge: You might recall in “Field of Dreams” when the ghost of a long-ago baseball player asks “Is this heaven?”

He is informed, of course, that he is in Iowa.

Well, here’s your task.

Come up with a question that might appropriately be answered “No, this is Washington” or “No, this is Idaho.”

Doesn’t need to have anything to do with visitors from the afterlife.

Warm-up question: What did you call soft drinks when you were growing up? A) Soda. B) Pop. C) Coke. D) Cola. E) High fructose slurry. F) Adipose juice. G) Sugar water. H) Other.

Today’s Slice question: How many “highest points” of the 50 states can you visit before the climbs start to require technical mountaineering expertise?

As I have noted before, my own high-points tally has been stalled out since the 1970s at two – Vermont and Arizona. (Unless I happened to unwittingly drive over the highest point in, say, Delaware or Rhode Island.) But I never tire of hearing people talk about their summertime obsessions with adding to their own lists.

I wonder if anyone tracks hiking to the various top spots in Inland Northwest counties.