The Slice: You know you’re not in Spokane when …

I know it brands you as a country mouse.

But sometimes, when visiting a large metropolitan area, it is impossible to resist expressing astonishment at the amazing volume of freeway traffic in the wee hours of the morning.

What’s another example of something we definitely do not see here?

Naming a weather forecasting marmot: “I would call him Hairy Sherry,” wrote Collin Galloway.

Sheila Wood was thinking along the same lines, but offered Tom Hairy.

For the record: Readers said yes, there are women here into restoring old cars.

Come up with a category for a Top 10 list that would include you: Helen Fischer suggested “Sweet Old Lady.”

John McTear proposed “List of 10 people who would never make anybody else’s Top Ten list.”

Identical cousins: “Back in Massachusetts, when we were much younger, my paternal cousin Jack (a year younger) and I looked almost like twins,” wrote Bill Mahaney. “We married a year apart (me first) and each honeymooned at his parents’ cottage in Nova Scotia.”

Mistakenly believing it was the same young man back again with a brand new bride prompted the caretaker there to wonder just what in blazes was going on.

Slice answer: “Who would I pick for a guided tour of downtown Spokane architecture?” wrote Jeanie Hensley. “That’s a no brainer.”

She would select retired architect Joe Hensley.

“He took me on my first architectural tour of Spokane in 1992. He did such a great job the first time, that he became my official architect in 2002, when I married him.”

Your airplane age: “I am older than both the B-52 and the B-36, and am an age peer of the B-29,” said Gary W. Smith of Spokane Valley.

State schisms: Readers noted that cultural divides within states are not just a matter of East vs. West or North vs. South.

It can be The Big City vs. Everyplace Else.

Onetime Illinois resident Tom Tyler said the Land of Lincoln is divided, in multiple ways, between Chicago and the rest of the state.

And Mike Dodson noted that elsewhere in Alaska, Anchorage is known as “Little Seattle.”

It’s not a compliment.

Today’s Slice question: If you had not driven a new car in many years, which of the 2016-style controls did you have the hardest time locating or simply regard as baffling?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Lan Hellie would tell 13-year-olds, “You don’t have to be like your parents, or like your peers either.”