The Slice: No, Pavlov didn’t grow up in Spokane

Kevin Hill is 64 now.

But when he hears a whistle, he instinctively recalls being summoned home for meals as a child. “And I start looking for something to eat.”

Let’s move on.

Take off, eh: “We have in our neighborhood a woodpecker who comes every year to work on power poles,” wrote Frank Payne. “His name is Avista.”

But now Frank wonders, in light of the utility’s acquisition by a Canadian power company, if his neighborhood needs to rename the bird. And if so, what?

How about “Don Cherry”? The bombastic Hockey Night in Canada analyst is loud, Canadian and has a Spokane connection (he played a season here in the early 1960s). OK, your turn.

Re: Sunday’s Slice: “On the subject of honesty … years ago we were looking for the best huckleberry patch outside of Newport,” wrote Nancy Kiehn. “On one of those long, dusty, narrow roads, a pickup truck was coming toward us. As we both slowed down, we asked him if there was good huckleberry picking in the area. He replied no, that he didn’t know of any. However, his arms were stained purple nearly to his elbows.”

Slice answers: In the matter of what your name would have been if you had been the other gender, Pat Williams knew the answer. “Charles Michael,” she wrote.

In her father’s eyes, the baby was destined to be an All-American defensive end at the University of Tennessee. “My parents didn’t even have a girl’s name picked out.”

But they took a shine to her nonetheless.

Hayley Lockerbie shared this. In 1977, when her mom had an ultrasound, the position of the baby’s hand (it was later speculated) gave the appearance of boy bits. So when Hayley arrived as a girl her dad had to shelve plans to name the new addition Aaron.

Another question asked, for what cultural attraction or aspect of life in certain other parts of the country would you be willing to trade our survivable humidity or tolerable nighttime insect infestation?

Bill Reichert, who has lived in multiple parts of the country, had an answer. “None.”

Warm-up question: What goes through your mind when you hear The Who’s “My Generation”?

Today’s Slice question: Have your attempts to avoid someone in a store or out on the street ever approached sitcom levels?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. When Chewelah’s Owen Fullmer took his family to see one if his childhood homes in Uravan, Colorado, in 1993, he discovered the uranium mining town, a Superfund site, had been erased.