Glad she held onto that name

First, you should know that Blythe Templin makes a variety of body care and pain management products from hemp oil.

Now, we’ll back track to the day in 2014 when her small business got its name.

Blythe was adding hemp seeds to a salad and discussing hemp products with her mother, Mary, when her father arrived home for lunch. Blanche’s pop is the late restaurateur Bob Templin, who was approaching 90 on that day.

“Wouldn’t it be funny,” Blythe said, “to start a restaurant and call it Hemplin’s?”

Blythe’s mother cracked up. But father Bob listened quietly. Bob, of course, built the old North Shore (now part of The Coeur d’Alene Resort) and Templin’s in Post Falls.

Bob left after eating but returned within an hour. He presented Blythe with the paperwork required to start a limited liability company called “Hemplin’s.”

“I had no idea (how) I would use the name at the time but held onto it anyway,” Blythe said.

Blythe would work for three years in the main operating room at Kootenai Health until, she said, she suffered serious side effects from a flu vaccination. She said she was fired the following year when she refused to get another mandatory flu shot.

That’s when she started tinkering with bath bombs, body butters, analgesic balms and other hemp products with full spectrum hemp oil. “I love making people feel better,” she told Huckleberries.

Blythe designs bath bombs for Global CBD of Sandpoint and Amsterdam Coffee Club of Clarkston, Wash., and bath bombs and body butter for Stephanie & Co. Salon of Coeur d’Alene. Her CBD oil is tested in a Spokane lab to ensure it has no detectable amount of banned THC (tetrahydrocannabinol).

Blythe tells Huckleberries that she has missed her father every day since his death on Feb. 28, 2017. But her fond memories of him live on in the tongue-in-cheek family name that embodies her hemp business.

Readers-Less in CdA

Shelly Robins Zollman, of Coeur d’Alene, has bought 18 pairs of reading glasses to ensure that one will always be near. Earlier this week, she left home on a COVID break to buy take-out. But couldn’t find any readers in the car. Take it away, Shelly: “I wanted to order a pizza from Domino’s but couldn’t see my phone well enough to make the effort worthwhile.” So, instead, she went to MOD Pizza, where “they have a nice, big menu.” Readers, sez Shelly, become necessary “when your arm length is no longer sufficient to read a thing.” Concludes Shelly: “Getting old sucks.” Do we have a second to that emotion?

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner: A tiny bug knocks big men down —/and somehow can divide us./When people choose their politics —/instead of science to fight a virus — David Townsend, of Coeur d’Alene, in honor of The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Bug Bites”).

• Katrina Wright Swaim, of Coeur d’Alene, fears she’ll forget that her face is naked on days she doesn’t wear a mask in public. Her worry? She might stick her tongue out at annoying people.

• Reports Marianne Love, the retired Sandpoint High journalism instructor: “If you can conquer the mosquitos, the (huckleberry) picking is good.”

• Not a Bunch of Bull: Julie Titone, a former editor of this Huckleberries column, suggests that the Washington Post hire some farm kids. Or at least more copy editors. In last Saturday’s newsletter to subscribers, T.J. Ortenzi apologized for a previous item that incorrectly referred to “frozen cow sperm.” It should have said “frozen bull sperm.”

• Kids Say the Darndest Things: My nephew, Bryant Mangless, was teaching daughter Evie how to play chess this week, when the 4-year-old asked: “Does the king ever move or does he just sit around and drink beer all day?”

Parting Shot

First, Christa Hazel, of Coeur d’Alene, drubbed appointed trustee Brent Regan in their 2013 Coeur d’Alene School Board matchup. In 2017, the center-right Republican resigned her precinct committeeman’s post. She was frustrated by the ultraconservative politics of now Chairman Regan and his county GOP Central Committee. This week, Christa quit her party. She, like George Clooney’s character in “O Brother, Where Art Thou,” is now “unaffiliated.” Christa tells Huckleberries: “I don’t recognize the Republican Party as Republican because it isn’t. I can’t defend the actions, statements, or silence of leaders, including ones I’ve previously held in high regard. I need to be able to look my kids in the eye when we watch the news as a family. I’m genuinely worried about the direction we’re headed as a country.” Who isn’t?

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D.F. “Dave” Oliveria can be contacted by dfo.northidaho@gmail.com.