The Slice: A museum tour to remember

When you go to the Titanic artifacts exhibition at the Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, you are issued a replica boarding pass and are invited to assume the identity of one of the famous ship’s passengers.

When you reach the end of the exhibition, you can find out how your person fared.

I don’t want to give anything away. But if your passenger is a priest, don’t get your hopes up for a miracle ending.

Still, perhaps he conducted himself with dignity and honor during those final hours. There’s that.

Anyway, I bring this up because it occurs to me there probably are others out there like me. That is, people who assumed they had heard all they ever needed to hear about the Titanic. And then some.

But I was wrong. There’s something about seeing recovered items that went down with the storied vessel – rivets, china, cash – that is almost surreal.

I recommend it.

Teachers’ Memories Department: Janet Shaffer shared this.

She was reading a story to her class of first graders. “As I read I noticed one little boy intently staring at me and I thought he must be a really good listener. When I finished, his hand shot up at once and he looked so eager that I called on him first.”

Janet expected a question about the story. But the little boy was curious about something else. He asked, “What is that big brown spot on your neck?”

The teacher explained it was a mole. “This started a lively discussion by all the other students and the story was completely forgotten.”

Slice answers: Tara Leininger and her husband were camping on a cold night in the Tetons. “What we need are some new sleeping bags,” she said.

Her husband, Donivan, was ready with a reply. “What we need is a Best Western.”

At that point, Tara realized his zeal for camping was not quite equal to her own.

Then there was this, from Archie Oestreicher.

“You asked about people who claim to have dated Dorothy Dean. I not only dated her, but also married her.”

In 1975, Archie’s wife, Joan, was hired by the S-R as a home economist. She worked under the chief Dorothy Dean at that time, Peg Heimbigner. “Those two were the last Dorothy Deans.”

Today’s Slice question: Ever have your pants fall down when you took off your belt before entering the Spokane County Courthouse?

Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Quite a few Slice readers rode out the 1964 earthquake in Alaska.