The delights of maturity on the road

Without looking, do you know when your driver’s license expires? Trish Gannon, the owner/janitor of the River Journal mag, does – now. Seems Trish was opening an account at a Sandpoint credit union when she was asked for her license. That launched a sequence of events, climaxing with her failure to pass her written driver’s test. You see, Trish’s license expired in October – ah, October 2007. So Trish decided to drop by the DMV next time she visited Sandpoint from her Clark Fork home. Only to discover that she had to take a written test as required by Idaho law when a license has lapsed for more than a year. The eye test wasn’t a problem. Afterward, Trish paused to ask others in the waiting area whether she should read the driver’s manual before proceeding because, she said, “I guarantee, I won’t get any of the distance questions.” She was right. She missed the distance questions by a country mile. And was forced to ask her brother to act as a personal chauffeur for the three days she had to wait to take the test again. Go ahead and laugh, Trish told readers of her Politically Incorrect column, but remember “one of these days I’m going to be back out there on the road, with all of you who laughed at me.” You’ve been warned.

Smacked Down

North Idaho had not one but two mentions on that, ahem, fine television show “Most Daring: Senior Smackdowns” on the cable channel truTV recently, according to colleague Meghann Cuniff, who reports: “I was in the waiting room at the downtown Spokane Les Schwab when dash cam footage from Post Falls came on the TV screen.” Seems an old-timer had been pulled over for speeding. (He said he was going 45; the officer clocked him at 52.) The Seasoned Citizen lit into the officer with a mouthful of profanity that’s impossible to capture here. He screamed that he just wanted to go to the store and got out of the vehicle at one point, only to be ordered back inside. Remarkably, Meghann continued, the officer let him go with a warning. The very next clip was a police chase in Lake City involving three cop cars and a 75-year-old driver. An officer can be heard yelling “Stop your vehicle! Stop your vehicle before you kill somebody!” Old codgers are funnier on “The Muppets.”

Huckleberries

Poet’s Corner: “The nutrients/are rich and rare,/and yet it’s much/like chewing air” – The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Reflections on a Tofu Entrée”) … Poll: 65 of 76 respondents – a whopping 86 percent – gave the 2009 Idaho Legislature Ds or Fs in a recent Huckleberries Online poll. Only five respondents awarded lawmakers As or Bs. In other words, the solons should all stand in the corner rather than collect paychecks and dinner money … BTW, my Merry Hucksters judged the District 4 reps (Goedde, Chadderdon & Sayler) as the best North Idaho delegation – and the District 5 reps (Hammond, Nonini & Henderson) as the worst (overwhelmingly) … Until The Joker pointed it out on a Huckleberries Online thread, the Kootenai County Demo Web site had misspelled the name of the lone county Demo in the Legislature: Rep. George Sayler, D-CdA … Bumpersnicker (spotted by Kevin Taylor/Inlander on an old Ford pickup – blue body, green tailgate, spray-painted orange bumper, sagging wooden side racks): “Keep On Truckin’ For Jesus.” Must work, reasons Kevin. “The miracle is the truck is running!”

Parting Shot

Don’t look now, but the hatemongers who inhabit the Coeur d’Alene Press online comments section were in such a lather re: the downtown CdA slaying of Coeur d’Alene Tribe member Tim Wolfe, 21, that they drove a volunteer moderator to cover. A Berry Picker followed the action: First, the moderator deleted all posts from last Sunday morning (“not just the offending ones but the others as well because he didn’t have the time to ‘nitpick’ ”). Then, the moderator ignored a racial slur at 7:41 a.m. that was aimed at the Honduran murder suspect. Finally, the online traffic cop left the following post at 7:52 p.m. Sunday, May 10: “Screw all of you.” Two days later, another racist comment popped up on the same comments thread: “White folks have been killing Indians for a long time, probably time to give some other race a shot at it … ” Where it stayed for hours. Before the Press finally pulled the murder story and comments. Huckleberries hears that the tribe is monitoring online comments at the Press closely. Stay tuned.