No blood, no foul … and no news
Here’s my conspiracy theory.
The rah-rah Spokane media conspire to downplay coverage of ugly behavior at Hoopfest.
See for yourself. Keep your eyes and ears open next weekend and then compare reality to the reporting.
“Today’s shoplifting suspect apprehension story: “A few years ago my daughter, Mary, was selling Girl Scout cookies at a local grocery store,” wrote Jill Wakeling. “We were sitting at our card table topped with boxes of cookies just inside the store by the automatic doors. We had our nice plastic tablecloth, extra cookies under the table and a cookie sale poster taped to the table. We were good to go!”
Then things got interesting.
“A man with a basket walked by us on his way out of the store and he was suddenly grabbed from behind by another guy. I thought it was just two buddies goofing around until they fell into our table. Another guy got into the fray and I quickly grabbed Mary and our cash box and jumped against the wall between the pay phone and the lottery machine.
“In the struggle, the men fell into the automatic doors and knocked them out of whack. The fight then spilled out onto the sidewalk in front of the store.”
Eventually order was restored. Wakeling took the opportunity to remind her daughter that stealing is a bad idea.
“Other than selling a whole case of cookies to one person, cookie sales don’t get more exciting than that.”
“R.I.P.: “It was certainly a shock to see Billy Rae’s obituary in the paper,” Lisa Thompson wrote last week. “Anyone who was living in Spokane in 1968 will remember two things: the long winter and its most noted casualty, Billy Rae.”
Rae, then 12, had fallen while crossing an icy North Market Street and was hit hard by a car as he tried to get up. He suffered a devastating head injury.
The newspapers provided exhaustive coverage of his struggle for survival. “Everyone in Spokane was touched by his story,” wrote Thompson. “Everyone knew who Billy Rae was.”
At the time of his death, he was 51.
“Slice answers: Most respondents to the question about how Native Americans think “Spokane” should be pronounced said there never should have been a complicating “e” added to the end of the name.
And in the matter of knowing when the squirt-gun arms race has gotten out of control, one Slice reader said that a line has been crossed when the stream of water threatens to lift you off your feet.
“Summer rerun: The Slice hasn’t asked for snapshots of dogs in wading pools since 1996. Is it time for another round?
“Today’s Slice question: What word would best describe your approach to drawing up and subsequently consulting a grocery list?
A) Meticulous. B) Methodical. C) Scatterbrained. D) Stoned. E) Haphazard. F) Other.