Huckleberries: Though the end is near, he’ll meet it his way

Larry Justus, who operates the Lakeland RV Park on Bayview Creek with wife, Liz, has a lung disease with a name that friend Herb Huseland of Bayview can’t pronounce. The disease is killing him.

Larry, who is in hospice care, informed Herb as cheerfully as possible that there’s nothing anyone can do for him health-wise. It’s the end of the line. But he asks one thing of his many friends in and beyond picturesque Bayview, on Lake Pend Oreille.

For as long as he can handle it, Larry wants them to drop by the RV park at 3 o’clock on Friday afternoons, per tradition, for his weekly happy hour. He wants to schmooze with as many of his friends as he can before he meets the Reaper. A man who can look death in the eye and smile has lived a great life.

No dance king

A 14-year-old middle-school boy danced the 21st-century version of the proverbial jig on a cruise boat Friday, with visions of summer vacation bouncing in his head. But Coeur d’Alene’s Mr. Bojangles didn’t lightly touch down after he jumped so high. As a result, he broke a leg and was taken back to the Third Street docks for medical treatment. May your summer start better … On the waterfront Thursday, a group of teenagers called Coeur d’Alene PD seeking an officer. Crime at Independence Point? Not this time. They needed a CPD Blue to pose with them and the Mudgy the Moose sculpture. They were scavenger hunters on a mission, with a moose and a lawman on their list … We’ll see Thursday whether work crews finish installing a 36-inch stormwater drain on Sherman Avenue in time for the annual downtown Car d’Lane cruise and show the next day. The work is part of the $20 million overhaul of McEuen Field. Downtown merchants who are already fuming over lost business won’t be happyhappyhappy if the construction workers miss deadline.

Huckleberries

Fun factoid tweeted by reporter Kerri Sandaine of the Lewiston Tribune: “The Asotin County Library is going to let kids borrow fishing poles and tackle this summer. They have to get their own worms.” There’s always a catch … Norm Oss, Coeur d’Alene’s beloved “Stickman,” supplied 65 Sorensen Magnet School students with a walking stick, a shell or a polished rock when they invaded his humble breezeway near Tubbs Hill last week. Stickman has only 15 sticks remaining from the cache of 300 that he began the year with. He’s whittling as fast as he can to restore his supply of free sticks … Quotable Quote: “I would no sooner vote against my brother than any of you would vote against your children” – Councilman Mike Kennedy in discussing one reason for voting in favor of Coeur d’Alene’s new anti-discrimination ordinance. Kennedy’s older brother who lives in New York City is gay … Wonder what that PFPD Blue was thinking when he contacted a male driver who was waiting for his wife in a stalled car along a Post Falls street – to bring a can of gasoline.

Parting shot

On Huckleberries Online ( www.spokesman.com/ blogs/hbo), Coeur d’Alene Councilman Dan Gookin, one of the five who voted in the 5-1 majority to pass the controversial anti-discrimination law Tuesday, commented: “One thing … missing in the overall discussion is the generational difference of opinion regarding equal rights for the LGBT community, Younger people don’t seem to have an issue. (Wednesday) night, my youngest son returned from his Christian youth group (at Real Life Ministries, by the way). I explained to him some of the upset. His response? ‘I have a moral objection to the homosexual lifestyle, but I’m adamant that they not be discriminated against.’ He echoed sentiments of my other boys, who also consider themselves Christian. They support the philosophy behind this ordinance.”