The Slice Just Another Pat On Frank’s Back

This could get confusing.

Frank Comer’s wife is named Patricia Comer.

His son’s wife is named Patricia Comer.

And his sister-in-law is named Patricia Comer.

As if that’s not enough, the soon-to-retire Spokane mail carrier has a woman on his route whose name is, yes, you guessed it. Patricia Comer.

People try to put ‘em down: The STA bus was full of teenagers just out of school. As always, it was interesting to observe the time-honored patterns of interaction.

We were wearing small earphones and listening to the radio, switching from station to station. Then The Who’s “My Generation” came on.

Hearing that old song and watching the kids laugh and flirt led to a scientific discovery. Time travel is possible after all.

Terrific parents are visible even when you can’t see them: We were going into a South Hill pizza place at the same time a little girl who was maybe 5 or 6 was headed inside. She must have run out to get something from the car. Anyway, we held the door for her. “Thanks,” she said.

Then she raced ahead to a second door and held it open for us.

Twelve reasons to watch “Twelve O’Clock High” (on KSPS at 8 p.m.):

1. Best-ever segue to an extended flashback. It’s early in the movie. (Listen for that first cough of a B-17 engine.)

2. Gregory Peck.

3. The fact that it’s halfway over before you see the first combat scene.

4. There is no absurd love story.

5. The film doesn’t glamorize war.

6. You can try to spot mistakes in the spliced gun-camera footage. (Look for the brief appearance of American fighter planes that would not have been part of the early missions depicted in this movie.)

7. Dean Jagger’s Oscar-winning performance. (Lawyers will love it.)

8. B-17s are Spokane history.

9. No commercials.

10. The scene where Dean Jagger outlines how he intends to delay the pilots’ requests for transfers.

11. The scene where the nurse tells Hugh Marlowe what the general said.

12. At a time when “courage” is used to describe baseball players who stay in a game when they are tired or to characterize an actor’s ghost-written recollections of battling pills and booze, it’s nice every now and then to become reacquainted with what the word really means.

Today’s Slice question: In what narrow-focus places rated list would Spokane be ranked No. 1 nationally? (Use your imagination in coming up with the perfect category.)

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: The Slice appears Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; fax (509) 459-5098. Didn’t that picture of the little boy and the hockey team on the second page of Monday’s sports section just kill you?