Downtown brain farts

I felt like a fish out of Sand Creek yesterday. One more time I played sucker. Our job was to walk the folks in Leadership Sandpoint around town and tell them how it used to be in our town. Alice Woolsey Coldsnow asked me to join her. I was third choice on Alice's list. First choice was Ernie Belwood. I don't know what he's supposed to know about old-time Sandpoint. Didn't Honest Ernie grow up in Priest River?

Second choice was Penny Nelson Armstrong. She would have been good---even better than Alice, the head tour guide. That's cuz she's older and has been around longer---ten years longer than I and two years longer than Alice. But, as Penny told me the other day, she's turned 70 and the body has started falling apart. Since her sciatica or slipped disks have been making walking hard, she bowed out.

So, at last resort, Alice called me a week ago and said, "All we've gotta do is go down there, eat lunch and then take 'em around town." That sounded easy enough to me, so once more, I said yes. Well, the night before Alice called and said, "She told me to have an outline, " adding that whoever "she" was got told by Alice there'd be no outline. We'd just talk.

Alice and I planned to meet at the Cedar Street Bridge Market where the group was having their all-day class. I got there first but thought I'd found the Bonner Mall. I saw that same guy who hangs out, always looking busy, at the mall, and then I saw the same cleaning lady with the expressionless face and the mop.

I also saw a couple of store clerks so bored with no customers that they were walking up and down the bridge commons. I walked around and looked at the stores, talked to Pradreep who, along with his wife Jennifer, own that Nepalese store down at the end. Pradreep seemed a bit depressed with the lack of activity.

I checked out my favorite bathroom stall, there at the end by the window, that same one I've written about in the past with the magnificent view of Sand Creek. Since renovation, they've blocked out a significant portion of the view by installing metal lattice. Maybe this is to satisfy their liability insurance and ensure that nobody tries to commit suicide by breaking through the window and jumping into Sand Creek. I don't know the reasoning, but I'm disappointed that one of Sandpoint's most wonderful features has been dulled. It's almost as bad as the Byway!

After bathroom duty, I went back to the Bridge entrance and sat on a bench waiting for Alice. Again, I saw the cleaning lady. Again, I saw no shoppers. Was this deja vu? Was I really at the Bonner Mall of two years ago? After all, that place has come to life, thanks to the Dollar Store. The cleaning lady was up on the second floor by the railing, and it was still deafeningly quiet, so I said, "You get around, don't you?" She informed me that she's doing a double gig---at the mall and at the Bridge.

Later, Alice came, and we headed up the spiral staircase where we met our hosts, Erin and Lisa. We were just outside the old coffee bar where Bob Gunter was inside talking to all those people. Erin and Lisa told us they'd introduce us to the group in a few minutes when Bob was done speaking. Then, some guy came out and told us to be quiet. So, we complied and waited to be ushered into the room.

We were introduced, ate our lunch and then started "mingling," as we'd been told to do. I think I mingled better than Alice did, but she was the head tour guide so she had things to think about. Finally, after listening to that guy I always see working at Bonner Mall talk about what's happening at the Bridge, Alice and I assumed our assigned duty. Take the group around town and tell them how it used to be.

Our job wasn't so bad over by the railroad depot except Alice and I had our first dispute about the correct name of that bottling company where I used to take my gunny sacks full of "Marianne's" as my dad called all those beer bottles I picked from ditches. On those days, I could have some money to buy one of Hayworth's Bakery 5-cent maple bars, but I couldn't tell that story cuz I'd already talked too much telling the story about Mother, Mike and Peggy. I knew to tone it down because Alice had already told me about Honest Ernie on past tours who got on her case cuz he thought she hogged the show.

So, I tried to keep my mouth shut, but it was hard to zip, until we reached First Avenue. I think both Alice and I suffered from a series of serious brain farts all the way down First Avenue. Heck, the all the store fronts have changed so many times in the last ten years, we could hardly figure out what had occupied each while we were growing up in our hick town. Our job challenges intensified as at least 400 big trucks roared past our eager-to-learn group strolling down the sidewalk.

Somebody said they couldn't hear at the back of the pack, so why didn't we just stop every so often and talk in general. Well, we couldn't even hear each other, so I don't know how that was gonna help. We did shout out a few highlights, and Alice scored a perfect 10 with her story about the old Lake Theater where the bowling alley was down below. I could tell that they seemed to really enjoy my story about my classmate, the late Ron Sipes, former owner of the 219 Lounge, who starred in the Godfather's Pizza ad where the bowling ball rolls off the roof and hits the sidewalk in front of him as he's scratching his lottery card. Then Ron, wearing a pimp hat, says, "I guess I hit my lucky day."

Speaking of luck, Alice and I finally really looked good when we dragged Dann Hall out of his gallery and made him talk. Then, we made the group go inside Dann's gallery where he talked and talked some more. They were all really impressed, but I was stunned during Dann's presentation to learn that "heifer dust" was not a Cap Davis original. Dann says his dad Ross, the famous photographer, brought it up from Texas where he grew up out in the middle of nowhere and where they created their own vernacular. Still, Cap used the word, and that's where I first learned it. So, I'll give Cap credit.

After the Hallans Gallery finale, we parted company. Some of the group---all strangers, except that Methodist minister, who's earned the Helen Newton seal of approval---told us thank you and seemed genuinely pleased with our attempt to educate them.

Actually, come to think of it, I think Alice and I got the biggest education, and that was learning that we don't know a heckuva lot about our hometown any more. Oh, heifer dust!