THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Adapting to a pandemic, more than four decades ago

Our neighbors in that state to the West are a little behind us as far as reopening during this COVID-19 pandemic.

Sure, you can walk on their trails, and we’re grateful for that.

But if you need to stop along the way — well, you’d better be able to stomach porta-potties.

We will not go into detail here.

Anyway, with the uncertainty over when or if Washington will advance to the next phase of reopening, we thought about paying dad an early Father’s Day visit.

It would have had to have been an in-person visit; somehow, a virtual visit wouldn’t have been quite the same.

We went with an imaginary visit instead.

DAD HASN’T been around for nearly 40 years, but maybe he still has some idea what’s been going on in the world during that time.

We’ll never know.

Like this year.

I wonder how his life would have been during this pandemic, had he still been working.

His job was that of a sales rep for Morton Salt, driving all around Eastern Washington, North Idaho and perhaps western Montana, calling on stores and building relationships.

He spent a lot of time in his car, accompanied by country music (the twangy kind) and, for a while, a CB radio.

He actually did work from home a bit during that time, so maybe he was a little ahead of his time there. He would spend Friday afternoons at his desk in our basement, catching up on paperwork and getting the occasional visit from Dick the Cat.

(Editor’s note: Dick was the cat’s nickname.)

But what if dad was stuck at home for weeks, or months?

There wasn’t the virtual technology back in the mid- to late-1970s that there is now, so he probably would have spent a lot of time on the telephone — thank goodness we had a lonnnnnnng cord on the wall phone.

When there wasn’t work to be done, he probably would have kept pretty busy around the house.

After all, during the time he was working and traveling all over the place, he still found time to build a nice deck on our back yard, as well as dig a drain field in the back yard and, if we remember correctly, put a new roof on the house.

(Editor’s note 2: One reason for having kids is to increase the workforce in the home. So us sons were also part of the drain field-digging crew. The neighbor lady witnessed the commotion and thought we were putting in a pool. Dick the Cat saw all the holes and thought something completely different. Also, we had to make sure Casey, our wiener dog — notice a trend? — didn’t accidentally fall into one of the holes.)

Also, if I remember correctly, our house in Spokane originally had a basket on the back of the carport, where we had a small cement slab. Dad moved it to the front, where a few thousand baskets were shot over the years.

Our driveway sloped a little bit toward the street, so what would have been a 3-point shot in those days was actually hoisted at a rim perhaps 11 feet high.

But in general, the driveway worked well for hoops.

For years after that, when we would drive through neighborhoods, I used to judge houses on how good a basketball court the driveway would have made. To heck with how the driveway drained into the street! Though few people these days would dare “de-value” a home by attaching a basket to the house.

I DO remember dad would have been able to adapt to wearing a mask.

We have photos of him wearing a makeshift covering for his nose and mouth in 1980, scraping ash off our deck when Mount St. Helens blew.

Dad would have been disappointed to hear that Pete Rose, his favorite baseball player, was still banned from the game.

And he also would have been saddened to learn that Sun Dance, one of his favorite golf courses in Spokane, has closed down.

With brother Steve the golf pro, we played that course many times over the years.

It was the last course dad ever played, and he parred the final hole he ever played.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.