Bill went to Spokane with his friend Lynn to attend the Gonzaga-Pepperdine game at the Arena.
Not long after he left for Spokane, Debbie came by and picked me up. We were ultimately going to Willie's game against Lake City at Les Rogers Gym.
Before the game, however, Debbie had planned to meet friends at a downtown establishment called Barrel 33. Bill and I had talked about where it was. He said Washington Water Power Building. All I could think of was Earl Shrake's Second Hand Store.
I learned later that Bill, the Louisiana transplant was right, and I, the Sandpoint native, was wrong.
I also learned that I knew the building a whole lot better than I thought.
That happened when I needed to use the restroom and asked where it was.
Down the hall . . . and at the end, she said, telling me where to turn. Well, I walked down the hall and didn't felt a bit confused about her directions.
So, when the hallway ended, I turned left and suddenly burst into excitement while seeing an employee taking a break.
"This is where I worked," I announced. "Over there . . . that was where my desk was and Dean Miller sat over here." I motioned to a spot by a window overlooking Sand Creek and the boat slips.
Yes, Bill was right about Washington Water Power, now known as Avista, but he hadn't remembered when the building was occupied by the Spokesman-Review newspaper, which had a Sandpoint office for a number of years.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I worked for the paper as a correspondent and mainly a feature writer. I sat at my desk overlooking Sand Creek and wrote stories about Greg Parker graduating first in his class at Annapolis, Cindy Wooden jetting around with the Popes, Cliff Martz, the student who studied weather, etc.
Dean, the Cornell grad and staff reporter for Sandpoint, sat to my right. While typing my copy on what now seems like a strange little laptop and sitting in the very chair where I now sit (when the office got new furniture, I was told that I could take my chair home).
I listened to all kinds of scuttlebutt as Dean researched his stories via phone calls. And, I learned a lot about journalism from Dean as well as how colorful the language of journalists can be and how much intrigue there is to putting together investigative journalism.
It was a great and busy time in my life as I would leave school after a full day of teaching and head on down to the Spokesman office to work on my stories.
So, last night to walk into that room and see, what, in my life and that of other full time Spokesman reporters like Dean, Kevin Keating, Susan Drumheller and Betsy Russell, had served as the spot where we crafted our stories turned out to be a powerful, unexpected moment on Memory Lane.
Oh, and we had a good time visiting over wine, cheese and crackers and flatbread.
Then, it was off to the game where I found out that, indeed, part of the Thompson clan aka "outlaws" were coming after all.
Their presence had been questionable, but they had rearranged previous dinner plans into lunch plans and came to join us. We had a great time visiting and catching up with each other's lives.
The final score for the game was not what we all would have preferred, but Willie's squad, without one of their stars who is out for the season with a knee injury, played a good game and significantly decreased the point span from their earlier loss to a strong Lake City team.
So, it was a moral victory of sorts. Tonight, again at Les Rogers Gym, they'll take on Lakeland in the league opener.
Meanwhile, off in Spokane, Gonzaga handily won their league opener last night, so spirits were high at Spokane Arena.
Let's hope for a Bulldog victory or two at home tonight.
I read in this morning's paper that the boys varsity plays at 5:30, while the girls play at 7 AND the games will be broadcast with Bob Witte on KSPT-97.1 FM
GO, BULLDOGS!!!
Happy Friday.
Standing the spot where I wrote feature stories for the Spokesman-Review more than 30 years ago.
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