The Slice: Northwest accent out of the

OK, now Slice readers insist there is a Northwest accent. “Creek becomes crick and bag becomes beg,” said Kecia Sandusky, who moved to Moscow from Texas.

Hailey Foster grew up in Spokane and Cheney, but she has been going to college in California. And while away at school, she has been informed several times that she has a “Canadian” accent. She said her pronunciation of words such as bag and wagon seems to have prompted this observation.

Spokane’s Paul Tanners is originally from the Northeast and he said there’s definitely a Northwest accent. One sign, he said, is the local tendency to pronounce the word “height” as if it ended with a “th” sound.

Several readers said it’s true that some natives do pronounce the name of the Evergreen State in a special way. “I can still remember coming home from school in first grade the day we learned how to spell Washington and asking my parents, ‘Why did they leave the r out of Warshington?’ ” wrote Mike McKeehan.

Today he is a grade-school teacher himself. And every once in awhile, that childhood pronunciation of Washington slips out. His students are usually quite willing to call him on it.

Finally, Spokane’s Maria Washington said her husband occasionally inserts an r-sound into the name of their state even though he’s had more practice than most when it comes to saying that name.

“Getting here from there: A Slice reader in Spokane recently advertised his collection of approximately 200,000 postcards in a couple of national publications. Then he got a call from a guy on the East Coast.

As the conversation progressed, it became apparent that the caller was thinking of coming to check out the postcards in person. But he was thinking of doing so by flying to Seattle.

The owner of the collection provided a quick geography lesson. Then the caller had a question.

“Does Spokane have an airport?”

“Slice answer (mistakes made by operators of lemonade stands): Judy Layton told about a sign her grandson Brad had at his stand. It said, “Lemonade 10 cents. Two for a quarter.”

“Get your motor runnin’: Joe Kramarz had some advice for the 50-year-old man considering getting a bicycle. “Skip the interim years from 50 to 62, and go straight to a motorcycle,” he wrote.

“Casting the roles of Toby Steward and Barb Beddor in a movie: David Saraceno said Allison Janney of “The West Wing” should play Barb while Toby would have to play himself.

Kris Crocker said Laura Dern should play Barb while “the guy who plays Bulldog on ‘Frasier’ ” might be just right for the part of Toby.

“Boris and Natasha,” suggested another reader.

“Terry Bradshaw and Nicole Kidman” was still another answer.

“Today’s Slice question: What did you have to do to accommodate a bird nest that sort of got in the way?