Annual Slice question: Which is it? Spokane is big enough to offer cultural amenities without big-city hassles… or …Spokane doesn't offer much in the way of cultural amenities but it's big enough to pose all the usual urban problems? 

(I have written to the sender of the following email, asking permission to use his note and name on my blog. But while I wait to hear back from him, I will share this with you sans name.)

This is in response to today's print column.

“Rarely read you, but today's headline/teaser re: weather caught me. For YOU, of all people, to call someone's, anyone's presentation, 'witless banter' is surprising to say the least. Good heavens, you fill space probably 300 days a year, with what is best described as 'witless trivia'. You have NO room to criticize anyone else. Yes, their on air banter is very predictable; so is your daily print 'banter'.”  

Multiple choice: Which subjects do newspaper features sections care about way more than you do?

A) Chamber music. B) The plight of independent bookstores. C) Audience support for art films. D) Inner lives of unhappy women. E) Celebrities. F) Pets' favorite Web sites. G) Quirky cuisines. H) People who aren't like you.

Today's Slice question: Who has the most moronic laugh in the Spokane area?

Smells of summer: One reader said he knows warm weather is on the way when he finds himself mowing mint.

Today's Slice question: What smell tells you summer really is on the way?

“This is in answer to your question about the age when we passed our parents in height,” wrote Peggy Jeremiah. “I never did. I'm short (5'3”) and my parents are both taller than that. I am the shortest adult in our immediate family.”

She said she has had grandkids pass her in height already. And the ones who haven't yet are all 5 years old or younger.

Gail Cory-Betz shared this. “My dad, a six-footer, was the middle child in a family of five boys. While I never caught up with him, I was taller than my 5'3” mother by age 14 or 15.

“Dad's next eldest brother, my beloved Uncle Jimmy, was only about 5'4”. When we were growing up, our grandpa (who was quite the kidder) would ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our response, of course, was a resounding, 'Taller than Uncle Jimmy!'”

Tom Rogers told about how, in his wife Trudy's extended family, growing to be “taller than Aunt Trudy” has become an accepted rite of passage. “That tends to happen relatively early due to her height of 4'11”.     

Today's print Slice briefly refers to how children of military officers got along with children of enlisted personnel. Here are a few actual excerpts from readers' submissions.

“I was a military kid my entire life but only lived on a base once as an older child,” wrote Hank Greer. “It was Dyess AFB, Texas, just outside Abilene and we were there from '68-'72. My experience there was that it was the parents who were more concerned with separation of officer and enlisted.

“The biggest difference I saw was between the military kids and our civilian counterparts. Being bused to school in town, it was the base kids effecting social change at the junior high and high schools much to the consternation of the local parents and authorities. Sometimes we did it just by being who we were and sometimes it was more direct. Girls violated the dress code by wearing pants. Boys grew their hair long. Although imperfectly, we military kids were accustomed to being integrated. There were behaviors and attitudes from the non-military kids and/or school authorities we worked to change either by our actions or our voice. We looked at the officer/enlisted thing as something that applied to our parents' work and not to us personally.” 

Jacque Sanchez remembers it the same way. “When I was 10 and riding my bike all over the historic post (Fort Monroe) I never ever heard any kid say, 'What rank is your dad?' We all just blended together — same school, same bowling alley, same movie theater. It was the best.”

Bob Douthitt, a former Army brat, put it simply. “It just wasn't cool to ask people what rank their fathers were. It was like asking how much money your parents make in the civilian world.”

Bill Stickler, who grew up in an Air Force family, added his voice to the chorus. “I never once witnessed, heard or heard of any animosity — not even a hint of such — regarding what rank someone's father was. …I'm not so naive as to believe there might not have been feelings of resentment regarding parental rank differences, but I wasn't aware of any.”

Of course, not everyone was rank-blind.

“I remember on Halloween when we went to an enlisted house we said 'Trick or treat,'” said Jim Gyarfas, who lived on a Navy base when he was little. “When we went to an officer's house, Mom told us they were officers and we had to say 'Happy Halloween.'”

Tim Yeager remembers being 11 and arranging to walk to a movie with a girl he liked. But when he got to her house, her officer father opened the door and informed Tim that he didn't want the girl being escorted by a sergeant's son.

Linda Angel offered a blunt assessment somewhat at odds with most responding readers' take on this. “Officers' brats treated all the enlisted brats like we were dirt. The enlisted kids stuck together and the officers' kids stuck together.”

But Karen Swanson, whose officer father was known to say “If the Air Force wanted me to have a family, they would have issued me one,” saw a different defintion of Us and Them.

“Civilian kids were much more difficult.”

The one way life really has changed: Relatively few high school kids take showers after gym class these days.

“Hey, Paul, what's wrong with creaking floors?” wrote Lawrence Killingsworth. “I live in a 100-year-old house and I don't trust any floor I can't hear.”

www.oldwoodworkshop.com

Today's Slice question: Which of your co-workers has the best smile?

Two things we could live without: TV weathercasters who feel a need to decide for the rest of us what is or isn't a pretty day. And people who think big band music and easy listening are the same thing.

If you were to refer to Spokane as a “seething caldron” of something, what would that something be?

It isn't really about this. But I wondered about something while writing that column on Friday.

Who around here has the oldest baseball glove? Does it still get used?

Today's Slice question: You know those people who habitually blame Spokane's real and imagined shortcomings for every little personal bad mood and disappointment, never pointing a finger at themselves? Well, are they happier than the rest of us because they're in denial?

Today's Slice question: What's something you can find almost anywhere in the Spokane area in 1995 that will be a collectible some day?

Tomorrow's column is an insignificant bit of fluff, spun from the approach of Earth Day.

I am not mocking Earth Day. I'm just trying to entertain readers for 90 seconds.

But it's a virtual certainty that I will arrive at the office Monday morning and find at least one angry email or text. It will be from an earnest person who felt the need to lecture me about the importance of saving the planet. It will rebuke me for lacking gravitas. Or something.

So how should I respond?

A) “Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I will try to do better.” B) “Did you write that email while having coffee Saturday morning with a girl you are trying to impress?” C) “I was not aware that The Slice column trying to have a bit of fun precluded The Spokesman-Review from addressing these issues elsewhere in the paper.” D) “Look, kid. I'm sure you regard yourself as a big deal greenie and all. But I used to live in Vermont. I have seen major league progressives up close. Trust me, you're still wading in the kiddie pool. For one thing, by writing to me you are acknowledging that you spent some time with mainstream media, for God's sake.” E) “The truth is, I have total respect for the goals of Earth Day. Always have. What I don't respect is unsigned mail.” F) “As performance art goes, indignation isn't all that captivating.” G) “At least your spelling is better than what I see in angry notes from radical conservatives.”  H) Other.

This seriously limits a kid: A first-grader we know was talking about a school assignment. She had to write something about rabbits. “It has to be nonfiction,” she said.

There ought to be a local legend about what happens when a pinecone falls from a tree and strikes you.

Maybe there already is one. But we've never heard of it.

So we decided to make up our own. The problem is, we couldn't stop at just one. Please choose for yourself.

1. From that moment on, you'll never have another sinus headache.

2. Henceforth your lawn will obey your every command.

3. Suddenly everyone will think you look fetching in snug jeans.

4. You will be able to speak and understand the language of robins.

5. You'll have the strength of 100 squirrels.

6. People who, without invitation, stare at certain parts of your body shall temporarily be struck blind.

7. From that day forward, your Bloomsday time will appear as “41 minutes” in the newspaper listings.

8. When you decide to drive on Division, all other motorists will chant “Hail the Pine Prince/Princess” and pull over to let you by.

9. Anyone who tries to talk to you about golf will turn into a marmot that other marmots shall shun.

10. All your children will be able to do chin-ups with ease.

Upon hearing that his family was going to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory, 7-year-old Wilson Webb got an unhappy look on his face.

“Yuck,” he said. “I hate old spaghetti.”

You know how kids are. Chances are, he's never even tried it.