The Slice: Now you see it, now you don’t

I thought I was the only one.

But after mentioning opening a car door and thrusting a foot onto the ground as a way of solidifying one’s claim to having been in a certain state during a road trip, I heard from readers who had done just that.

That got me wondering how many transplanted Inland Northwesterners had visited our region long before moving here. You see, Idaho was my foot-on-the- pavement state.

It was in the summer of 1966 or 1967. My Air Force officer father was to spend a year at Osan Air Base in South Korea. He would depart from McChord Air Force Base over by Tacoma.

My parents decided to make a family vacation out of driving him to Washington from back east. That’s how I learned that the mountains in the West did not really have peaks pointy as sharpened pencils.

Befitting his status as a father in that era, my dad was all about making good time. So one leg of our trip extended from Roundup, Mont., to Moses Lake, where I think the plan was to stay a night at about-to-close Larson Air Force Base.

We crossed the Idaho Panhandle that day. And I’m guessing I officially added the Gem state to my “have been in” list at a stop light in Wallace.

We probably cruised through Spokane at 80 mph. After that, I remember how entertained we all were by the way Tacoma smelled.

On the way home, my mother wanted to visit the Custer battlefield. But my older brother, who was doing much of the driving, talked her out of stopping.

About 20 years later, when my wife-to-be and I drove out to Spokane from the middle of the country, we made the short side trip to the Little Bighorn site before getting back on the road and spending the night in Coeur d’Alene.

I probably mentioned to her that it wasn’t my first time in Idaho.

Today’s Slice question: What’s a good, sincere way to observe Veterans Day?