Shawn Vestal

A conclusion to the Muzzy Mansion saga may be on the horizon, but you wouldn’t call it a happy ending, exactly. Mike Schultz and Steven Sanford spent years and around $70,000 trying to restore the historic, 121-year-old West Central landmark as a bed-and-breakfast inn. They left town in August, embittered by a battle with city officials over code issues, with Sanford’s finances in a wreck and the house headed for foreclosure.

A year ago, Mikey Squires thought her van was gone for good. Now she’s planning a welcome-home party for the 1965 Volkswagen microbus that’s taken her on the ride of her life. Unless there’s another twist in this much-twisted tale, Squires has her hands on the van at last – 36 years after it was stolen from a Spokane parking lot and 13 months after it was rediscovered by customs agents in California. Since then, it’s been a year of wrangling over what must be the most-contested question of ownership outside the Falkland Islands.

Floyd Brown runs the kind of restaurant that’s supposed to be punished by the minimum wage. But in 30 years owning the Thrifty Scotsman, a Spokane Valley hamburger institution, Brown’s taken the opposite view of most people in his business.

Good fences make good neighbors, says the cranky man in the Frost poem. But he was wrong, of course. Snowblowers make good neighbors.

Alana Brown-Clutter was driving her nice, newish Pontiac G6 out of her apartment complex in August when she was rocked by a loud explosion. “I thought someone had shot me,” Brown-Clutter said. “I pulled into the median and I was, like, sobbing.”

The kids at Southeast Day Care Center likely aren’t very tuned in to the economic woes threatening their next-door neighbor, the East Side Library. But they were sure tuned in Thursday to “How Do Dinosaurs Say Good-Night?” And today they’ll make the short walk across the parking lot for their weekly trip to the library. Every Friday – unless the Library Board closes the branch.

Sometimes, the refs make the right call. First, the owners of Evergreen State Towing, in collaboration with two property owners, set out to tow scores of cars parked downtown for Hoopfest, charging people several hundred bucks each to get them back. Then, faced with court challenges from some of those people, the company caved and wrote off their impoundment fees.

Did Spokane just lose its greatest man? Terry Corrigan’s son thinks so. And you have to grant that Corrigan – who died Saturday in a heart-rending accident – cleared a massive trail in Spokane. He grew up here, graduated high school and college here, started one business and developed another, helped raise four kids, was active in his church, kept close ties to childhood friends, kept especially close ties to his best childhood friend – his wife of almost 50 years – and then, faced with an explosive personal tragedy, he chose the path of greatest resistance: He took up the fight against the church that had been his religious home for more than 60 years.

Sara Kerbs-Ridenour is a schoolteacher working on a master’s degree in special ed. She’s 24, with three years of experience in the classroom. A Spokane native, she returned to Eastern Washington University for her graduate degree after teaching in Oregon. Since she’s lost her in-state residency, at least for now, she’s facing a tuition bill of some $6,500 per quarter – more than double the in-state rate.