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The Slice: Sometimes honesty isn’t the best policy
The Inland Northwest is home to some of the best liars in the land.
But you can’t blame them. If people here told the truth all the time, pretty soon everybody would know the location of their secret huckleberry patch or fishing spot. And then where would they be?
Let’s move on.
It says here: Every family has a decent story about answering the call of nature outdoors, far from any sanctioned rest stops or other public restroom facilities.
Slice answer: In the matter of things your parents did that other parents did not do …
“We lived in Salt Lake City until I was 10,” wrote Steve Heaps. “There were lots of thunderstorms there.”
Steve’s dad had a phobia about lightning. So when a storm arrived in the middle of the night, he would get the kids out of bed and they would pile into the car in their pajamas. Steve’s dad reasoned it was the safest place to be because of the rubber tires. Then he would drive all over the city, for hours.
“We would sleep and then arrive home in time to get ready for school. Give him a lot of credit though, he did this in a way that his three kids all ended up enjoying thunderstorms as adults.”
Joanie Eppinga also remembers something her parents did that she suspected nobody else did.
“Deliberately didn’t heat their bedroom in northern Minnesota in the dead of winter. You could see your breath in their bedroom. My mom wore a wool facemask to bed, along with fingerless gloves so she could still turn the pages of her book.”
No, they weren’t poor. And yes, they heated the rest of the house.
“They just really liked sleeping with it (very, very) cold.”
Jerry Hilton’s late father-in-law used the dishwasher as his chocolate storage safe.
And Susan Johnson shared this. “My mother washed paper plates for reuse.”
Re: freezing garbage: “Ever thawed out what promises to be a great chicken dinner, only to discover it’s last month’s garbage that never made it into the bin?” wrote Catherine Short. “Labels and husband/wife communication would have helped. More than once!”
Thanks to all. I will be pursuing this next month. Stay tuned.
Today’s Slice question: What were you going to be named if you had been the other gender?
Write The Slice at P.O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 9920: call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. This week at Expo ’74: Jack Benny.