You’ve no doubt heard of a fire sale
Sure, Huckleberries Online knows the name of the last guy to buy a door from Ugly Duck before the big fire July 10: Rick Price of Sagle. In fact, Rick was visiting the building supply liquidator in Spokane for the first time when a salesman mentioned that the lights in the main show room had strangely gone out a half hour before. So it might be hard to find that one in 30,000 doors that Rick wanted. But the salesman did – a stunning mahogany door with eight small windows on top. As the salesman was writing up the ticket, Rick continues, someone ran up to the counter and said that the building was on fire. The salesman dialed 911 – and then asked Rick if he still wanted the door. By then, black smoke was rising from the back of the building. But Rick replied: “I guess.” The salesman pocketed the check – in case the building burns down, he said prophetically – and together with Rick fetched the door. “Although it sounds daring to say we went into a burning building to get my door,” Rick told Huckleberries, “the reality is that there was no smoke, nor any sign of flame inside the building just the honk of a fire alarm.” By the time Rick and 13-year-old son Hunter left, a police officer was directing traffic and the first firetrucks were showing up. “All in all, Rick said, “it was quite the big-city experience for a pair from Sagle, Idaho.”
Hagadone’s desert manse
The 32,000-square-foot mansion that Coeur d’Alene tycoon Duane Hagadone built in the Southern California desert is still causing a commotion. As you may know by now, Sun Desert in 2007 banned houses on the mountainous viewshed surrounding the town after Hagadone built his mega-mansion on a ridge to a chorus of community boos. On July 10, David Nelson discovered he wouldn’t be allowed to follow suit, although he’d purchased his hillside property in 2002. In fact, he invoked Hagadone’s name and what is now known as the “Hagadone House” in arguing for permission to build. A story in The Desert Sun quotes Nelson as saying: “Comparing this to Hagadone is like comparing apples to an apple orchard,” Nelson told the council. “This home is just not to the same scope.” Nelson also muttered something about the city buying his property if it didn’t allow him to build where he wanted. Once bitten, the council rejected Nelson’s appeal and suggested that the resident build at a second, unobtrusive site on his property instead. Nelson said that it would be too expensive to build on the second site. And left unrequited.
Huckleberries
On Wednesday, CPD Blue spokeswoman Christie Wood announced on Huckleberries Online that the Police Department would make no more statements to the national media about infamous Fourth of July spanking citation issued to Melissa Farrell of Post Falls. She added, however, that “I am willing to help them make the correction that the Police Department is in Idaho not Iowa” … Hat Tip – to Virginia Cole, a Sandpoint stay-at-home mother, who’s featured in a profile under the outstanding art quilt/stitch section of the August-September edition of Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion. Virginia’s quilt weaves old-fashioned postcards into collages … In the “no doughnuts for this cop” department, your Huckleberry Hound heard the following scanner exchange between two local patrolmen Tuesday: “Are you somewhere grazing?” – Cop No. 1. “Affirmed, new diet” – Cop No. 2. “Just checking” – Cop No. 1.
Parting shot
Gimlet-eyed Fred Glienna spotted a snafu in that Northwest Boulevard billboard for The Spa at the Resort that probably went over everyone else’s head – you know the one that stands just south of the Riverstone turnoff (or at least it did when Fred e-mailed Huckleberries). Featuring an airbrushed, beautiful woman, the billboard announced in a proud caption: “We restore the effects of Father Time.” Comments Fred: “Am I the only one to notice that this conveys the precisely opposite meaning to what is intended?” You’ll get it if you think about it for awhile.