Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Erick Lackso, a 29-year-old Finn, took “three pulls from a Chinaman’s pipe.”

The opium made him feel good. A little too good. He proceeded to bid his companions goodbye, hand a quarter to a man he didn’t know, and roll off the bank of the Spokane River into the water.

When a Spokane policeman encountered him, he was running along Trent Avenue in hopes of catching up with his hat, which was floating downstream.

The officer informed Lackso that attempting suicide was a penitentiary offense. Lackso assured the officer that he had no intention of committing suicide. In fact, he said he was shocked to find himself in the river, which was, to his immense surprise, “wet and very cold.”

The officer arrested him for vagrancy.

From the vaudeville beat: Racy Kilmer, a young Spokane man, made a name for himself on the vaudeville circuit as a member of the “Three Varsity Fellows.” He had been singing and dancing on the Orpheum circuit for a year and half.

But he announced that he was saying goodbye to show business. He planned to return to Spokane and join the family business, the Kilmer Hardware Co.