Stefanie Pettit

Once it was just one of 18 one-room schoolhouses serving the rural population in a small region of northwest Spokane County, but today the Central School District No. 49 schoolhouse is the only one still at its original site, as all the others have either been moved or torn down. This one-room schoolhouse, located just west of the intersection of Ritchey and Four Mound roads, several miles north of Deep Creek, began service in September 1900. Now on both the National (1992) and Spokane (1991) Registers of Historic Places, it stands isolated out in the country but in a remarkably well-preserved condition on its stone foundation. Some improvements – new roof, new front porch – have helped keep it intact.

Where did telephone manners go? Silly question, as I know the answer. They went to that place where good manners, civility and general courtesy have gone – out the window for the long fall and inevitable splat on the sidewalk. But allow me to rant a bit just the same.

Sometimes there’s a sadness that’s hard to shake. I find myself there right now, and I wonder how many Baby Boomers find themselves there, too. Others older and younger experience similar things, of course, but since so many of us Boomers are hitting the big six-five now, we are a statistically significant lot, and there may be something of a critical mass gathering here.

OK, I’m mad at the TV again. The list is too long for this space, so just let me focus on three things. Maybe then I can stop talking to the TV. Pay attention, people who run things in TVland. This is important stuff, and I want you to fix it!

A friend recently pointed out something she read in an obituary that just made her mad – and sad. Among the list of surviving family members, several people were identified as children of the deceased and one person was named as the adopted child. “For those of us who are adopted,” she said, “that’s like a knife in the heart, as if we are somehow not quite as good as the birth children. We are separate.”

The house in the Marycliff-Cliff Park National Register Historic District on Spokane’s South Hill is but one of several lovely Craftsman-style homes gracing the neighborhood, but this one, also listed individually on the Spokane Register of Historic Places, has a unique distinguishing feature: It was the childhood home of Marguerite Motie, the first and longest-reigning Miss Spokane.

Most of us are anticipating the upcoming 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States with some trepidation – grateful that there hasn’t been a recurrence on that scale within our borders and worried that there could still be. After all, we have to be successful every time in thwarting a potential attack. The bad guys only have to be successful once when attempting one.

This special group of 10 includes a father and daughter, a nurse, a banker, railroad workers and others, ranging in age from 3 to 63. What they have in common is that they all died in the famous Wellington avalanche in the Washington Cascades in 1910 – and that they are buried in cemeteries in Spokane. That avalanche on March 1, 1910, at the town of Wellington in Stevens Pass caused 96 fatalities in all and is known as one of the worst train disasters in American history and the worst natural disaster (in terms of lives lost) in the state of Washington.

I’m having a problem with prayer lately. As for the act of prayer itself, I’m a big fan, but what troubles me are the current trappings of prayer – making a big noise about it in public, how we’re reporting on it, causing it to be a political litmus test of some sort and more and more, I’m coming to believe (interesting choice of words), that it’s wandered off from what it was meant to be.

Miss Chicken is a mother. It’s funny how this bird remains a part of my life. I truly thought that when we relocated her to a safe new home in Spokane Valley, we’d part ways, each to our own destinies. But it hasn’t worked out that way.

The tall French Renaissance Revival-style building at the corner of Riverside Avenue and Washington Street in downtown Spokane has many elegant adornments – typical of the early 1900s era in which it was built – but none more striking than the reconstructed hipped roof. Amid many red brick structures in the area, its Minnesota sandstone, blond pressed brick veneer and cream-colored terra cotta facades stand out. It’s also hard to miss its inset loggia with its colossal columns and Corinthian capitals on the west side.

My husband and I are celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary this week. When this time of year rolls around, we always joke and say – drawing out the “o” in “long” – that we’ve surely been married a long, long, long time. That presentation, of course, makes it sound like it has been a dreary campaign, which it most decidedly hasn’t been, but it gives us a chuckle.

Nestled among the complex of buildings that make up the Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center is an elegant house dating back to the early days of Spokane’s history. The white, four-story dwelling with the large front porch is known as Mary’s Place. So many questions are asked at Sacred Heart about Mary’s Place that a plaque has been placed along a corridor of windows inside the hospital explaining that Mary’s Place is privately owned and not part of the medical center. Even so, said Dorothy Alex, who resides at Mary’s Place, people often think she is a nun and address her as sister.

I had lunch with a good friend the other day, someone I don’t get to see often enough. We met at noon, lingered afterward and chatted, found ourselves still engaged at the dinner hour, ordered an hors d’oeuvre and continued until about 7 p.m., at which point we decided it might be time to get on to our respective homes to check in with the spouses. I see nothing wrong with that.

There’s a history of military service in the family of Aaron Malm, and the 19-year-old senior at Spokane’s On-Track Academy is already on track to continue the tradition. He’s enlisted in the Army and is set to begin basic training at the end of August. But first, he will earn his high school diploma.

You can always tell when Jacob Irvine, 18, is in attendance at the Riverside Independent Scholars Program. The family’s four-wheel drive stake-bed pickup is in the parking lot. This spring, the truck was even easier to spot due to the ample coating of mud. Irvine, his brother, Josh, and their mother, Susan Mikel, live five miles outside of Usk, Wash., and have to travel their three-mile long driveway to reach a road. When it’s wet, it’s muddy, and the truck was evidence of just how wet this spring has been. “Hard to keep the truck clean when the mud is this deep,” Mikel observed.

Lakeside High School senior Josh Lauderdale knows something about low expectations. When he was 6 and living with his family in Reardan, he was placed in a special-education class because he had great difficulty speaking, making himself understood and trouble with reading and writing. There he met a boy, a neighbor named Daniel Leavitt, and the two became friends.

When Phuong Doan came to Spokane from Vietnam some years back, she was a single parent with eight children. She met and married Bob Glasser, a father of three, and together they had two more children – of whom Tommy Glasser, 18, was born last. Tommy Glasser, the youngest of 13 children, is about to graduate from Rogers High School. A quiet and unassuming young man, only when asked will he mention that yes, he does carry a 4.0 grade-point average, and, yes, he is the class valedictorian.

When Marisa Antoine, 17, was in fourth grade, she attended a powwow at Spokane’s Riverfront Park. It changed her life. Always aware of her culture but never truly involved with it, Antoine was captivated by the dancing and was determined to learn more – and do more. Affiliated with the Colville Confederated Tribes through her mother, Antoine asked her grandfather, Allen Antoine, of Keller, Wash., for help.

I didn’t think I’d be writing about her again, but here I am doing just that. For all of you who still eagerly ask about her, I am glad to report that Chicken is just fine. Not only fine, but fat and sassy – still the first to respond to the dinner bell (she always was a lunch mouth) and happily socialized with her new family. I continue to be surprised, and warmed, by the interest in her, even now, many months after she moved to a new home.

It’s a few days before Mother’s Day, and I’m uneasy again. If you are seeking some warm and fuzzy words about Mother’s Day and what a spiffy day it is, this isn’t the column for you. Although I’ve never actually done it, my inclination on Mother’s Day is to crawl under the covers, pull them over my head, and if I emerge intact the next day, well then, Mother’s Day will have been a success.

On one of the highest rises on the 3,400-acre plateau that constitutes Five Mile Prairie sits the oldest inhabited house there – the J.F. Strong house. Original construction began in 1879. In remarkable shape and with much of its original interior woodwork intact, this Queen Anne-style structure was built by John F. Strong, the man considered to be the first settler on the prairie – that is, his attempt in 1879 was successful after an earlier group of would-be settlers was not able to overcome hardships in their 1872 effort to locate there. By the end of 1879 six other families also settled on the prairie.

A couple of years ago I decided finally to address the pine needles that had been stacking up in my backyard. We had long since corralled the front yard, herding it into something resembling tameness, but the backyard has remained wild for more than 20 years. We were really quite OK with that for most of our time here (my husband still is), but I suddenly felt it had really gotten a bit overwhelming. Not only were there decades of pine needles, pine cones, fallen branches, leaves and more to deal with, but we had added to nature’s plenty by off-loading from other locations even more needles over the embankment and into the back. Portions of the yard held compressed and dense piles many feet thick.

Not all landmarks are statues or buildings or artifacts from an earlier time. Some of them start out their existence as works of art and somehow, over time, become something bigger. Several public art pieces by artist David Govedare fit that model exactly – the much photographed “The Joy of Running Together” metal sculptures by Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane, often festooned in T-shirts for the annual springtime Bloomsday run; the “Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies” metal sculpture above the Columbia River at Vantage, seen clearly from I-90 while transiting the state; and, of course, the larger-than-life eagle and osprey feathers gracing Northwest Boulevard as one drives into Coeur d’Alene (done in collaboration with Grand Coulee artist Keith Powell).