The Slice: Repurposing a piece of Spokane history

Re: finding a home for that Spokane Daily Chronicle delivery boy’s bag mentioned in The Slice Oct. 13.

Jim Clanton suggested donating it to the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture for inclusion in some future exhibit depicting a slice of bygone America.

Jim McPherson made this offer. “I teach media history at Whitworth University, and have my office decorated with an assortment of media-related objects: a 1953 television, a 1940s radio, old newspapers and magazines, old cameras, coffee mugs, old ads, etc. I share many of them in class.”

He said he could give the canvas bag a good home.

And Shirley Dicus detailed how it could be turned into a planter, to be home to black, white and red flowers. “What is black and white and read all over?”

To be continued.

Slice answers: A couple of readers weighed in on the mention of Spokane in TV shows that most surprised them.

“I moved to Spokane on a job transfer in 1973,” wrote Joe Kramarz. “It was before the world’s fair and I had never heard of it before coming from Michigan.”

So anyway, Joe was watching a late-in-the-series episode of “My Three Sons” starring Fred MacMurray as the single dad.

“In that episode Fred had gotten engaged and he and his fiancee and, I think, his kids were discussing where to go on their honeymoon.”

Fred, as the character Steve Douglas, said he wanted to go someplace different, someplace other than, say, New York City or San Francisco.

“He named a couple of other places and then said SPOKANE, WASHINGTON.”

Joe remembers it prompted him to have one of those “What did he just say?” moments.

John Graham recalled a moment in “The Andy Griffith Show.”

“Episode 88, ‘The Darlings are Coming,’ has a funny mention about Spokane,” he wrote. “The Darling family is picking up daughter Charlene’s fiance, Dud Wash, as he returns from military service. As he steps off the bus, he presents Charlene a gift and declares ‘A tiger-eye ring right out of Spokane, Washington!’”

The price of being cool: “As a teenager, I was one who liked to display my macho prowess by lighting stick matches with my thumbnail,” wrote Rocky Curtiss. “I showed off my talent frequently, until one match head fought back by breaking off when lit and wedging itself under my thumbnail. The pain seared itself into my memory even to this day, 50+ years later.”

Today’s Slice question: What’s the best/worst thing about the Spokane area’s distance from larger cities?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Eavesdropping gets confusing when you think you heard “Yoda” and it was actually “yoga.”