Huckleberries: Stink eyes overruled in favor of cold beer

The assignment was simple: Go to Costco and buy a gray cooler on wheels so your husband could carry your 4-year-old while rolling the device, with his brewskis chilled to a perfect 45 degrees inside, to the Festival at Sandpoint this month. Only Maryellen Garasky hadn’t figured on a close encounter with Costco’s “The Cooler Nazi.” The problem started when she discovered that the coolers were blue instead of gray. So Maryellen whipped out her cell phone to text a photo to her husband, to see if the color mattered to him. Only to hear the Cooler Nazi shriek: “You can’t take pictures in Costco!” Maryellen said she tried to explain her dilemma, but was admonished twice more: “You can’t take pictures in Costco!” So Maryellen backed off, bought a $10.26 bottle of Columbia Valley wine and munchies, and headed to the checkout counter – only to see Cooler Nazi, stationed by the blue coolers, giving her the stink eye. Not one to be treated like a “petulant child ready to grab a Tootsie Fruit Lollipop from the penny row candy at 7-11,” Maryellen went in search of a manager. She found one. Explained her situation (colorblind husband, Michael Franti concert, grub, beer, Cooler Nazi). Received a sympathetic roll of the eyes. And was escorted back to the blue cooler to take a photo. Ere I leave this tale, I’ll allow Maryellen the last words: “Our beer was mighty chilly last night.”

What, no chauffeur?

I was as surprised as OrangeTV, a regular Berry Picker, that Lola Hagadone, 69, of the Casco Bay Hagadones, was involved in a two-vehicle crash at Third and Coeur d’Alene at 4:30 p.m., Aug. 18. Seems Lola, in her Lincoln Navigator, was cited by Coeur d’Alene police for an unsafe lane change that resulted in a crash with a 2001 Subaru station wagon. The Navigator sustained $2,500 damage, according to a police report. The Subaru suffered $3,000 damage. Neither driver was injured. All of which prompted OrangeTV to comment on my Huckleberries Online blog: “Oh, Lola, Lola, dahling … driving yourself around town? How gauche! Why didn’t you simply clap your hands and summon up an attractive and shirtless young man to chauffeur you to Jack-in-the-Box in a frosted pink limousine?” To which Cindy Hval responded with a sigh on my blog: “You can summon an attractive, shirtless man simply by clapping your hands?”

Huckleberries

At Bleacher Report, columnist Daniel Wolf names S.F. 49er (& former UI Vandal star) Mike Iupati as No. 4 on a list of 15 NFL football players “destined for greatness” … Hucks Online poll: 253 of 412 respondents (61 percent) said they didn’t support construction of a mosque/Islamic center near Ground Zero … In the “How Have The Mighty Fallen” Dept: Some business near Hayden City Hall used an old yard sign from state Sen. Mike Jorgenson’s unsuccessful re-election campaign as a back drop for smaller signs advertising the sale of a pile of discontinued cement blocks for $1 each. … Kevin Richert, Idaho Statesman opinion editor and a Facebook pard, is trying to decipher the fashion statement he saw while dropping his son off at UIdaho recently: “At a Moscow restaurant, we saw a kid wearing a Vandal hoodie and a BSU camo baseball cap. Not sure what to make of it. Maybe he’s a born mediator. Maybe he lost a wager” … Isn’t it ironic that four unruly females were kicked out of The Torch bikini bar for torching a napkin shortly after midnight on a recent Tuesday? … John Austin reports that a friend who occasionally visits Sun Meadow Resort, near Worley, says nudists there aren’t totally nonchalant about nudity: “When a good-naked person comes in, they’re universally looked at like a donkey staring at new gate.”

Parting shot

Councilman Mike Kennedy tells of a new family euphemism for a delicate part of the male anatomy. It all started when son Jack, 3, declared: “Don’t touch my pirates!” after his little brother accidentally “hit him in the part of the anatomy that makes all men cringe,” according to his father. He meant to say “privates,” of course. But, pop says, “I like his new word better.”