The Slice: Weeding through the confusion

Let’s start on a high note.

A woman who approached a Spokane man in a distant airport thought the “Zags” shirt he was wearing referred to Zig-Zag rolling papers.

Wonder what she had been smoking.

“Keepin’ it real: Model railroading seems like a perfect Spokane hobby, what with the city’s historic connection to trains. But has anybody with a model train layout ever simulated a toxic fuel spill or hideous crossing accident?

“Living in dwellings you built yourself: Kim Tomson said her family – her husband, herself and the children – constructed their log home in Colbert. “Literally built it,” she wrote. “Contracted out for final electric and plumbing. Logs were delivered to the property and we put it together, just like Lincoln logs. Then framed, roofed and finished.”

Betty Schwisow told about a dwelling that’s halfway between Sprague and Ritzville, about three miles south of Interstate 90.

“We built our house 41 years ago by ourselves except for my husband’s brother, Fred,” she wrote. “We started in March of 1965 and moved in in February of 1967. We did everything ourselves except the plastering and the stucco on the outside. We stapled almost two miles of wiring for ceiling heat. Our two teenagers and 3-year-old were much help.

“We are now in our 80s and still love the house we built together.”

North Idaho’s Keith Snider told about an underground dwelling he built out in the country mostly with scrap lumber in 1978. “We had no running water, electricity, or telephone, and for the first winter, not even an outhouse.”

They burned wood for heat.

They now live in Bonners Ferry, in a work-in-progress home Snider has been fixing up for 10 years.

To be continued.

“Slice quiz: I’ll send a coveted reporter’s notebook – as seen in HBO’s “The Wire” – to the first reader who can name the movie in which the actor Tommy Lee Jones refers to Spokane.

“Slice answer (disaster preparedness): “I am probably best prepared for the impending Refreshing Adult Beverage shortage,” wrote Marc Natoni.

“Warm-up question: What Gilbert & Sullivan line is most applicable to Spokane?

(My pick: “As tough as a bone, with a will of her own.”)

“Today’s Slice question: What would be the best way to observe the International Year of the Potato?

(Yes, the United Nations has declared 2008 to be just that. And as potatoes are important to both Idaho and Washington, it seems like we ought to note this designation in some creative ways.)