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The Slice: One downside of our region’s image
That’s because it can be hard to resist comparing what you are doing in real life with various tourism-brochure activities popular with people who are not spending their Saturday immersed in some household project.
OK, I realize people actually do go hiking and sailing and all that. But not every weekend. Right?
Still, when you are exploring the exciting world of, say, grout, it’s hard not to wonder if everyone else is recreating with abandon outdoors.
Which makes it hard to concentrate on the grout.
Just wondering: Do you have a central location in mind where you and members of your family would try to meet in the event a natural or man-made disaster obliterated your neighborhood and played havoc with all sorts of local infrastructure?
Graduation advice: “Mine would be to take other people seriously, but not yourself,” wrote Susan Bates-Harbuck.
Slice answers: “Growing up in Philly during the ’40s and ’50s, I recall the strict blue laws,” wrote John McTear. “They were artifacts of Pennsylvania’s Quaker founding.
“You always knew where stores owned by Jewish people or Seventh-day Adventists were. Since they closed on Saturday for religious observance, they were allowed to open on Sunday. My parents bought many a quart of milk on Sunday evenings at Sol’s Grocery Store.”
Judi Durfee remembers blue laws from when she was growing up in Massachusetts. “The only stores that were open on Sunday were drug stores that had pharmacies. You could purchase a prescription but you couldn’t buy an ice cream soda or a frappe if the drug store had a soda fountain as well as a pharmacy.”
Slice answer: In the matter of what I should say to the bees when I go visit a friend’s hives, JoAnn Gemmrig had a good suggestion.
“ ‘Thank you’ should cover it all.”
Warm-up question: What’s the best, most tactful way to deal with it when an elderly person you know insists something was stolen and you are pretty sure it was simply misplaced?
Today’s Slice question: What car (make and model) do you refuse to park next to in parking lots because its doors are so long the occupants exiting the vehicle would have to be unusually considerate to avoid hitting your car?
Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. Most of those answering the question about what people who don’t care for Spokane’s climate would prefer were recently returned snowbirds.