The Slice: Some names just don’t fit

SPOKANE PARENTS COULD salute our area’s retail heritage by naming babies after department stores.

Just imagine.

Crescent Jones.

Bon Smith.

Frederick and Nelson Wilson.

OK, maybe not.

“ Appalling cigarette butt sightings: Norma Jean Elber has seen carelessly discarded butts at JFK’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery and at the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach.

“I could not believe that someone could be so callous,” she wrote.

“ Fill in the blank with the name of a TV show: “I’ve got to admit that I take a certain amount of pride in being able to say that I have never once watched (_________).”

“ Gentlemen, start your speeding: “Now that the Indian Trail paving has been finished, the city needs to rename it Indy 500,” wrote Dick Mellor.

“ Quick quiz: A national survey found that the most prevalent cause for people leaving their jobs is …

A) A desire to steal office supplies somewhere else. B) Utter disdain for the products and services provided by the business. C) To get away from their immediate supervisor. D) The dress code. E) Co-workers kept poisoning lunch. F) The smell.

The correct answer is C. To read more, check out www.badbossology.com.

“ Slice answers: This is what Ritzville’s Bob Tracy would say to someone suggesting that most successful people around here could not cut it in a large city: “It’s better to be a big fish in a little pond than a little fish in a big pond.”

And Kathy Fleming’s reply would be “Who cares?”

She went on. “Most Spokanites are happy here and aren’t interested in going to one of those unfriendly larger cities anyway.”

“ Just wondering: Who around here owns the most sweatshirts?

“ Tip of the hat: Robert Fairfax (known to Slice readers as the guy who lost 16 wedding rings in his first 14 years of marriage) wants to thank the stranger who alerted him to a fire outside his Five Mile Prairie home.

The twentysomething good Samaritan helped rescue some chickens, save a boat and generally kept a bad situation from being worse. Then he disappeared.

“I never got a chance to thank him,” said Fairfax.

“ Know your Lilac City trivia: In which of the following was Spokane never mentioned?

A) “The Andy Griffith Show.” B) “The West Wing.” C) “Double Indemnity.” D) “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” E) “Housekeeping.” F) “Memphis Belle” (1944 version). G) “Say Anything.” H) Mad magazine.

The correct answer is C.

“ Warm-up question: What if, to honor his girlfriend’s hometown, sociopath mobster Bugsy Siegel had decided to invest in Spokane instead of Las Vegas?

“ Today’s Slice question (finish this sentence): You can’t really say you have done fall in the Northwest until you have …