Doug Clark

Fuming postal workers say the vehicle maintenance shop was a nasty place to be even before their boss murdered the marmot. But Joe Holub's alleged critter clubbing has substantially upped the chaos level here at the U.S. Postal Service's sprawling Spokane annex on Trent Avenue.

Darren Balch sits in the same seat he had back in 1981 to see a Van Halen concert. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

A few words of wisdom to the Jensens: Stay in your house! Lock the doors! Be carefullll! The way things are headed, these Spokane residents may want to consider putting on crash helmets during nighttime forays to the bathroom or refrigerator. Some very sour karma appears to have settled on these good folks. All four members of the Jensen clan have been the victims of accidents involving three different modes of transportation in the last month. The odds of something so bizarre happening to one family are, um ... Well, you figure it out. I'm a columnist not a dang mathematician.

Nightfall in Atlanta found Larry Parsons sitting on an iron bench, trying to tune out the steady roar of the always bustling Centennial Olympic Park. Parsons, who loathes crowds, focused his attention on a commemorative brick bearing the name of his only daughter. Lindsay Parsons died of cancer last September, exactly one week after her 16th birthday.

A pickup. A woman. A yeller dog. Add three chords and a twangy guitar and you can turn George Carter's troubles into one of those maudlin, sobbing-in-your-Budweiser country tunes. Suggested title: "You May Muzzle My Pride, Babe, But Take Your Paws Off My Mutt."

It's a rare teenager with the patience and skill to tear apart a watch, clean the delicate inner workings and put them all back together in smooth running order. This is how Matt Vahlstrom often entertains himself, hour after hour at the jeweler's bench in his bedroom. Clocks and watches have fascinated Matt since he was 3 years old. Back then, he would grab at an adult's wristwatch and put the shiny ticking object to his ear.

Bob Woehrlin still manages to enjoy his work at age 75. He is retiring from the shoe repair business after decades in his location on East Fifth Avenue. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Big-time wrasslin'. While many sports fans were home watching the Olympics on TV, more than 5,000 turned out Wednesday night to watch the World Wrestling Federation at the Spokane Arena. Photographer/The Spokesman-Review

Custom T-shirts, custom score cards, flags fluttering above every hole ... The eighth annual Nesbitt Open has everything the discriminating duffer would demand at a golf tournament.

Jeff Dissell is dressed and ready for the '96 Aryan World Congress. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

Despite his team's exclusion from the Special Olympics, Charlie Englert belts one into the field during Mead Pride's practice Wednesday. Photo by Dan McComb/The Spokesman-Review

Blue lights winking on a seamless summer night. Muttering and agitated, Sgt. Ken Lofquist hauls his imposing 6-foot-4 frame out of the Crown Victoria with surprising speed for a guy whose next birthday strikes the half-century mark. The 24-year veteran of the Washington State Patrol strides toward the drunk and his pal who nearly broadsided us as we turned west onto Trent. These fools would be in big trouble - if they weren't on bicycles.

Forest Long's first name is spelled incorrectly in the caption. It should be Forest with one "r" (verified by Doug Clark). Forrest Long, 58, and two other stackmen are restoring Spokane's 250-foot steam plant stacks.

Anyone who thinks Addy, Wash., will dry up and blow away over a few lousy layoffs probably never set foot in the former stagecoach stop, 60 miles north of Spokane. Forget the sensationalized TV reports. Residents here aren't shaking in their boots over news that 130 workers will lose their jobs at the nearby Northwest Alloys magnesium smelter. Addy, they say, has weathered threats of financial ruin before. Practically since storekeeper E.S. Dudrey christened in 1890 the tiny Swiss dairy settlement in honor of his beloved wife, Adeline.

It's 5 p.m. at the Sunset Bay Bar on Long Lake and one of Spokane's original rockers is back on stage. But Dick Baker, who helped form the "Blue Jeans" in 1954, isn't banging on the drums like the good old days. The portly man in the blue ball cap and Bloomsday T-shirt perches on a stool surrounded by racks of high-tech electronic equipment.

This poor place has one identity crisis after another. Last winter, the caffeine-pushers at Java City were bouncing off the walls fielding a flood of calls meant for the Toys for Tots hot line. So similar were the telephone numbers that java jockeys spent more time taking requests for Holiday Barbies than orders for double mochas.

Whiners are as common to sporting events as intestinal parasites are to Third World countries. Which is why I hop, skip and jump away from weekend warriors who beg me to write about bum calls, raw deals and all the other so-called outrages they suffer on the playing fields. When I heard what happened to members of The Great White Hype, however, I stepped up to the line. Their beef against Hoopfest is so measurable.

It is one of those Kodak moments claustrophobic Californians dream about. Clean skies. Pine trees. Cold beer. ... Four family members relax around a front-yard picnic table, swatting mosquitoes and swapping yarns in the waning light of a glorious July day.

Tex Nixon, who turns 75 on Monday, drives an 18-wheeler seven days a week and has passed the 5-million-mile mark. He's driven for 52 years without an accident. Photo by Kristy MacDonald/The Spokesman-Review

In a bizarre videotape that aired during Monday's Spokane City Council meeting, Chris Anderson explains why he abandoned the voters to drive an equipment truck on the "Dante's Peak" movie set. "The $18,000-a-year salary paid to council members isn't enough to support a family," sniffs the councilman, who says he'll be working in Wallace for the next six to eight weeks. But is this really what's going on? Thanks to my extensive contacts within the Hollywood community, I was able to get copies of all 29 of the other videotaped excuses Anderson dreamed up to explain away his disappearance.

Spokane has certainly arrived as a sports mecca. One weekend we get Olympic wrestlers. The next weekend it's world-class ice skaters. And on Sunday, had you a mind to, you could have gone to the smoky Valley Eagles hall to watch some true legends of the game slug it out in the finals of a nationally ranked tournament.

Above the highs "I call 'em animals," says Hal King, manager of the Alberta Hotel, who watches drug dealers ply their trade from a window above Madison Stree. Photo by Dan McComb/The Spokesman-Review

I once covered a John Birch Society meeting where a paranoid speaker insisted world events were actually orchestrated by a vast Masonic conspiracy. These can't be the same Masons that Seattle resident Martin D. Ringhofer is wrangling with. To hear him tell it, the exalted pooh-bahs of Washington's Grand Lodge are a thin-skinned gang of vindictive geezers whose lack of vision and inept leadership contributes to a critical decline in membership.

For years Irene Olin stood guard over an embarrassing secret locked deep inside her heart. She kept it from friends. She kept it from employers. She even kept it from her husband, Mike.