Post Falls Fire Station Hosting Santa Claus
Most people who’ve lived in Post Falls for any length of time know that on a Saturday morning in mid-December you could count on being awakened by the sound of a fire truck’s loud speaker with a booming voice calling out, “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas.” Children would come out of their houses to say hello to Santa and receive a candy cane treat.
But now our town’s grown too large for the volunteers on the red trucks to make their way through all of the neighborhoods in a single Saturday. Listen for Santa on Saturday, but if he doesn’t come to you, come down to the fire station and visit with good old Saint Nick and his helpers. There are plenty of candy canes to go around.
About a dozen years ago the Post Falls Beautification Committee arranged for the steel-lettered Post Falls signs at the I-90 on/off ramps on Spokane Street to serve to welcome people entering town. A few years later, landscaping was completed with spotlights, flower beds and shrubbery. Now the elves at City Hall have bedecked the signs and nearby pine trees with Christmas lights.
Covered in a blanket of snow, the signs are reminiscent of the “Welcome to Bedford Falls” sign in that Christmas movie classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It really is, isn’t it?
I’d like to present the first ever Main Street Best Business Card Award to Litehouse Foods of Sandpoint. Last week at an Idaho Department of Commerce meeting in Coeur d’Alene, Roxie Lowther, vice president of marketing at Litehouse, handed me one of her cards, which was unremarkable except for the fact that it was attached to a perforated coupon good for a free jar of salad dressing or container of dip.
I love a good advertising gimmick and while remarking as such to Jerry Jaeger, he pocketed my card/coupon and headed out the door. So I asked Sandpoint Chamber director Eldona Gossett for her card/coupon and made off with hers.
No clever idea goes uncopied or uncoveted.
The weather outside would be considered frightful if one lived in the desert, but as winter snow and cold sets in, I always marvel at the number of people who express surprise that winter in North Idaho includes snow and cold temperatures. Isn’t winter one of the four seasons that we all claim as the reason we choose to live here?
As a North Dakotan by marriage and survivor of several northern plains winters with common temperatures 20 to 30 degrees below zero without a windchill factor, my best advice is throw fashion to the cold winds and dress for the weather, not the Paris runways. Keep your gas tank filled, keep a change of clothes, including dry socks, shoes and coat in the car. A couple of good old Hershey bars in the glove compartment in case you get stranded, and most importantly, remember this cold, hard fact - driving safely and staying out of the ditch has more to do with the common sense of the driver than with the size and sticker price of the vehicle you’re driving.
Could there be a more perfect time of year to recognize “Cool Women?” Heather Hosford of Coeur d’Alene is one of 175 women throughout the country to be honored by the Romance Classics network and Adelphia Communications.
Nominated by her mother, Sherry Adkins, Hosford was presented with her award recently at the Coeur d’Alene UpBeat Breakfast which was also taped for a promotion on the network.
Check out the very cool Heather Hosford on Channel 18.