Take Time To Trace Your Roots
I’ve thought about my extended family quite a bit this past week. My Uncle Ed’s death last Tuesday focused me. He and I weren’t very close, mainly because he always threatened to cut off my ears when I was a kid. I was 9 or 10 before I was sure he was kidding. Still, his death made me realize how little I know about my parents’ generation and its parents. I’ve forgotten a lot in the 20 years I’ve been in the Northwest. I couldn’t remember all my first cousins. I knew the first name of only one grandparent - and that’s because he had lived with us while I was growing up. Last weekend, I drew up a family tree - with the help of my mother. I got the roots back to the 1870s and the Azores islands on one side and to prize fighter Jack Dempsey’s sister on the other. I want my children to know where they came from. Maybe you should spend some time tracing the roots of your family before a key relative dies and that information is lost. I was going to call my Aunt Mary this week to find out who my great-grandparents were on my late father’s side of the family. But Aunt Mary, who has been fighting liver cancer, was taken to the hospital Monday - “code blue.” She isn’t expected to make it.
Do as we say, not as we do
Sometimes, I wonder if government observes the same rules as the rest of us. Case in point: parking requirements. For years, the U.S. Postal Service provided lousy parking at its Coeur d’Alene post office at Seventh and Lakeside - and got away with it. The situation finally improved recently when the Postal Service moved part of its operations elsewhere. Then there’s the Kootenai County Courthouse. Prospective jurors looking for parking spaces on a Monday morning know the courthouse barely has room for its employees’ vehicles, let alone theirs. Construction of an annex and possibly more 1st District Court space will make matters worse. But do you suppose inadequate parking will limit these courthouse projects? Ahahaha.
County makes mountain out of … airstrip
Why am I not surprised that Kootenai County commissioners are in hot water again over a planning issue? Some Garwood residents are suing the county for not enforcing a clear-cut ordinance that forbids planes from landing within 2,000 feet of homes. For four years, Bar Circle S Ranch residents have asked the county in vain to stop planes from landing at a private runway only 50 feet from their property. Who can blame them? If the strip existed before the subdivision did, as the airstrip’s owners claim, it had been abandoned. Therefore, the owners needed a new permit for the airstrip. They didn’t get one. Next case.
, DataTimes MEMO: D.F. Oliveria’s “Hot Potatoes” runs Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can comment on the items by calling (800) 344-6718 or (208) 765-7125 or by sending e-mail to daveo@spokesman.com.