The Slice: Figuring out who is the driving force

If there is disagreement about who is the best winter driver in your family, how do you decide the issue?

A) Dance-off. B) You can’t. It’s too subjective. C) Put it to a vote. D) Demand recount. E) Recall who has been quoted as saying, “Traction? I don’t need no stinkin’ traction.” F) Other.

Peace, love and other things: Jim Cole shared this.

“The Christmas season of 1970, I was assistant manager in a jewelry and gift ware department, which was adjacent to the music and records department.

“It was customary to play the most popular albums that were being sold at the time. So, as the ‘Woodstock’ album was a popular gift, it was on the speaker system in that department.

“All was going well until the Country Joe and the Fish song came on. As those from that era know, it starts with ‘Give me an F…Give me a U…’

“There must have been 20 people headed toward the stereo system at a dead run. I was laughing too hard to participate in that track meet.”

Christmas screw-ups department: “We mailed a bunch of Christmas cards to ourselves one year,” wrote Mark Slater of Spokane Valley. “Wasted a bunch of stamps. After our eggnog hangover cleared, we mailed them correctly.”

My Aunt Mary had this as a child: “When I was 4, I contracted scarlet fever,” wrote Bill Mahaney. “Our home was quarantined and only my grandmother and I were in it. A formal notice was put on the door. It was most inconvenient to my family. My mother was not allowed to come home from the hospital with my new baby sister. My father could not conduct his funeral home business (we lived on the second and third floors, and the business took up the first floor and the basement). And my parents, grandfather, and an aunt had to find someplace to live. Obviously I survived.”

But here is Bill’s question.

“How many of your your readers have ever been quarantined?”

Speaking of a different era: The Slice asked readers if they could recall when passenger trains stopped in Spokane in the middle of the day. Eric Johnson is one who can. He can remember back in the early 1960s, when he was in ninth or 10th grade, riding his bike to watch Great Northern and other trains arrive.

Today’s Slice question (finish this sentence): The best thing about Spokane’s considerable distance from a larger city is …

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. “Everybody knows the Center of the Universe in in downtown Wallace,” wrote Jay Broderick. “Go see for yourself.”