Doug Clark: Perceptive readers still on cutting edge, offer diagnosis

Some people are so doggone considerate.

Joe, for example. He took the time and trouble to snip out and mail me the recent newspaper photograph that showed me repairing one of Spokane’s zillion potholes.

He even included a note:

“Doug, several men in my neighborhood – including myself – agree that this picture of you is a clear indication that you have a bowel problem.”

Why, thank you, Joe. Your deep concern for my alimentary well-being can mean but one thing.

It’s time for another installment of Reeeaaader’s Windbaaag!!!

This is the only forum that allows my readers to act out without fear of being identified, verified, or crushed like a Libyan freedom fighter.

Getting back to Joe …

I’ll be first to admit that picture of me – hunched and straining with a heavy asphalt tamper – is unflattering, to say the least.

But please understand that I was engaged in something completely alien to me.

Manual labor, I mean.

Hmm. Let’s see what other madness might lurk in the ol’ Windbaaag!!!

• “Doug, Mayor Mary Verner has stated that March 11 will be Julia Sweeney Day in Spokane,” writes Wayne. “What will it take to have the mayor designate a day for you?”

That’s easy, Wayne.

It will take waterboarding at the very least to get the mayor to declare a Doug Clark Day.

Heck, the city even eighty-sixed the bus bench that had my column advertisement on it.

Let the record show, however, that I did receive a mayoral day of distinction back in 1989.

It’s true. Mayor Vicki McNeill officially renamed Halloween “Doug Clark Muckraker Journalism Day.”

So who knows? Maybe Verner will see it in her heart to toss me a scrap and name a street after me.

If she does you can bet it’ll be a dead-end.

• My recent reference to a certain male Republican legislator who partied the Spokane nightlife away dolled up in fishnets and a dress caused Jerry to ask, “Why wasn’t he elected mayor?”

Jerry is not the first to believe that Richard Curtis had the right stuff to lead this city.

But being a West-Sider, alas, kinky Curtis just didn’t have the right address.

• The great Hal Holbrook is coming to Spokane soon to perform one of his famed Mark Twain send-ups.

J.S. wrote me recently recalling something the actor once said during a radio interview. Asked by the host to get into his Twain persona, Holbrook rasped:

“I believed in God until I drove through Pullman.”

What a coincidence. The same exact thing once happened to me during a drive through Tacoma with the windows rolled down.

• Speaking of Tacoma, reader Jim has a census question.

Now that Spokane has been reaffirmed as Washington’s second-largest city, “is it true Seatac will now be called Seaspo?”

I’m confident the Lilac City will stay invisible to the West Side no matter what the census numbers say.

If I had my way I’d nickname our airport “SpoMillwood.”

• And, finally, reader Bill asks …

“Did you have a band called the Hot Nuts?”

Sorry, Bill. I am not the leader of the legendary “Doug Clark and the Hot Nuts,” and for two very good reasons.

I am not black and …

I am not dead.

I sure hope Joe doesn’t read this. He’ll turn the band name into another diagnosis explaining my pained pothole-patching posture.