Doug Clark

E.T. would never phone home with these rip-off rates. Beverly and Greg Strate wish they hadn't. The couple is levitating over the shocker of a telephone bill that recently arrived in the mail. One two-minute collect call from Post Falls to their North Spokane home 20 miles away: $12.86.

Any judge with his head screwed on tight would have one thing to say before locking up a pervert like Roy "Bubba" Love: "Don't let the courtroom door smack you in the backside on your way to the slammer." In Adams County, however, the judicial attitude toward child rape is still stuck in the sexist Stone Age. Love, 19, showed up at the Ritzville courthouse the other day to be sentenced for having sex with a 12-year-old girl. This prize louse is no stranger to courtrooms. He already has a prior juvenile conviction for molesting a 5-year-old child.

My dear departing members of the Ferris High School senior class. As I mingle among you in the wee hours of graduation night, eating omelets and sipping espresso at 3 a.m., a few words of wisdom come to mind: It's probably downhill from here.

A bat rap Donna Hensley and her pet bat, Sweetie, share a quiet moment Wednesday. Photo by Dan McComb/The Spokesman-Review

Perspiring author Marvin N. Carr formed his own publishing company and then tossed a wad of cash down a pothole printing 17,000 copies of his two novels. Fortunately for Simon & Schuster, attracting readers remains a tough proposition. For all his efforts, Carr says he sold only 300 copies of his first tome, the 567-page "Positively Negative." And, well, three copies of the 396-page second, "Men Are Cruel, but Women Are Dangerous." "I can't buck the big boys," complains Carr, 69, of the publishing establishment.

Her well-hugged brown teddy bear waits expectantly on a corner of the unmade bed. The self-improvement reminders she drew in cartoonish block letters are still taped to the pink walls. "Do All Homework," warns one. "Get Good Grades," advises another.

Local yokel weathercasters got their shorts in a twister a year ago after Bill Hockett put their forecasting skills on a par with carnival palm readers. Today, Hockett offers a heartfelt apology: "I'm sure palm readers have a lot more experience," says the Spokane market analyst, breaking into a belly laugh. Results are in from Hockett's weather challenge that examined the accuracy of our meteorological witch doctors over the last 11 months.

If ever a book were begging for a bonfire, "The Turner Diaries" is it. This goose steppers manifesto will raise more goose bumps than R.L. Stine ever could. It's far more vile than Madonna romping nude in the aluminum-bound pages of "SEX." "The Turner Diaries" is as nasty as any porn.

Brave Mormon pioneers traversed the plains in the late-1840's in search of their promised land. Now comes a band of hardy Mormon Utah Jazz basketball zealots about to embark on their own cross-country pilgrimage. This trek, however, seems a bit out of whack with the teetotaling tenets of Mormonism. These latter-day scamps are risking life and limb on mountain bikes to get from Provo to a Spokane saloon.

Dirk Minatre's so-called pals skewered him with a hoax as fiendishly clever as any "Mission Impossible" adventure. It's been weeks since Minatre endured the most humiliating moment of his life: scammed into picking up litter along a lonely stretch of highway in northwest Spokane. Yet the three medical workers who engineered Minatre's downfall still can't pass each other in the halls at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center without erupting into uncontrollable hilarity.

There's a killer shadowing Jim Williams. It's not what you think. Williams doesn't fear losing his life, just losing his credit rating. Or maybe his sanity.

It figures a herd of graying, nostalgia-driven Baby Boomers would line up to meet the star of a TV show that went out of production 10 weeks before John Kennedy got shot. But teenagers in letter jackets? Jeepers, Wally! How can kids of the 1990's possibly relate to "Leave it to Beaver?" "It's huge. Huuuuge," says 16-year-old Central Valley High School student Tyler Zyph. "It keeps me in touch with what life was like back then." Zyph was one of hundreds of Beaver boosters drawn Saturday to the A Sign of the Times store in Spokane's University City. They came for a glimpse of Jerry Mathers, who played the hit show's impish namesake during its six-year run from 1957 to 1963.

Going with the Flo. Muriel Connerton, right, holds hands with her mother, 104-year-old Flossie Hammer, who made her first airplane flight Tuesday. Photo by Shawn Jacobson/The Spokesman-Review

Dick Heldenbrand, 48, was at a Zip-Trip, grabbing a soda and a copy of Wheel Deals. Dave Halvorson, 39, was driving to Costco with his wife. Rob, 49, who doesn't want his last name used, was filling his car's tank at a self-service gas station.

Corrina Harless, Shawn Hamilton and Pamela Ridley will spend Mother's Day at Geiger Corrections Center. Photo by Colin Mulvany/The Spokesman-Review

The Silver Spurs dancers in 1955. File/The Spokesman-Review

There was one major problem when a funeral director called, asking Sharon Heath when she planned to do something with her son Tim's remains. She didn't know he was dead. Spokane County Coroner Dexter Amend's disaster-prone office is in the midst of another human-relations meltdown.

The letters at the T&A; Housecleaning Service sure don't stand for Tide and Ajax. As further proof that Spokane is no longer the drowsy, Leave-it-to-Beaver city it once was, a topless maid business opened the other day. "The telephone has been ringing off the hook," says Naomi Leong, the 24-year-old entrepreneur who dreamed up this titillating venture.

I know a town in Spokane County where everyone has a good job and everyone tries to get along. Pipe bombs don't explode at City Hall. Obnoxious Hells Angels don't prowl the streets. There are no racist threats aimed at black law students or murders committed with baseball bats and guns. The best part is that you don't even have to leave Spokane's city limits to find this haven of harmony.

There must be an angel looking out for Patrolman Barry O'Connell. Actually, it's more like six angels and the Spokane Police officer is putting out an all-points bulletin to round them up.

Jimmy Novinsky shows his stuff. Photo by Christopher Anderson/The Spokesman-Review

Once upon a time, there was a radio station that beamed nothing but good news and family values to the children of the land. The airwaves bounced with toe-tapping tunes from Disney and the Muppets, educational games and imaginatively told tales of enchantment and adventure. But unlike a fairy tale, the cold, cruel business world is one tough place to find a happy ending.

'Why are people still so fascinated by your criminal past?" Even after selling 3.5 million books, appearing on countless TV and radio shows, being the subject of a Hollywood movie and being paid to speak at hundreds of gatherings, Frank Abagnale still is puzzled by the question.

Lynn Stempniak and her son John Kraemer. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review