In tooth, it's all about the money

At age 5 1/2, Ozzie Drake already is handling life’s challenges with “brutal efficiency.”

Case in point? Her first loose tooth.

Ozzie has spent her life to date watching older siblings shed teeth — and being rewarded for their losses by the Tooth Fairy.

She knew it was her turn to cash in when she awoke earlier this month with a wiggly tooth. But the lower front tooth barely moved when her mother, Jennifer, tested it.

Undaunted, Ozzie left for school where she worked from bell to bell to extract the incisor. By the time she returned home, the tooth was “pretty loose,” her mother told Huckleberries. Determined, the little girl gave it a yank, and out it popped. No tears. No howls. A little blood.

Twenty minutes later, Ozzie, with dollar signs in her eyes, approached her mother claiming that she had another loose tooth. Mom told her emphatically, “No!”

“She’s the kind of kid who would systematically go at her teeth just to get repeat visits from the Tooth Fairy,” Jennifer explained.

And why shouldn’t she? The Drake Tooth Fairy pays off in silver dollars.

In the blood

You may know that retired attorney Steve McCrea published a bio about Thomas Kerl, a World War I conscientious objector from Coeur d’Alene’s Fort Grounds. But did you know the grandfather of the former, three-time Coeur d’Alene councilman is memorialized at the Kootenai County Courthouse?

In 1926, J.W. “Wil” McCrea was chairman of the county commission when the old courthouse was built. His name is one of four engraved on the courthouse cornerstone. He was first elected commissioner in 1919 and re-elected five times. As owner of a livery business and manager of a grain and milling company, Wil was popular with farmers.

Wil was 26 and operating a livery stable with brother Arthur on Nov. 2, 1895, when he married Clara Leonardy on her 18th birthday in Post Falls. They then rode a livery rig to Spokane for their honeymoon.

All this according to the late Louise Shadduck’s local history, “At the Edge of the Ice.”

One last thing, in 1925, Wil was one of the businessmen who paid $250 each to buy the Bozanta Tavern and golf course (now the Hayden Lake Country Club) from Great Northern Railway.

Seems Steve McCrea, now Library Board chairman, inherited Grandpa Wil’s penchant for public service.

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner (with apologies to Joyce Kilmer): I think that I shall never see/a stump as lovely as a tree,/and if more windstorms come to call/perhaps I’ll see no trees at all — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Trees”).

• Bumpersnicker (on a white rig near Kootenai Health): “I will keep my gun, my freedom, and my money; you can keep the change.”

• Quotable Quote: David Townsend, who retired from the Coeur d’Alene Library last fall, laments: “I guess our hippy days are over. The futon frame we have been using in the living room for more than 20 years went to the dump today. Now we will have a couch like other middle-class people.” Does this mean the bell bottoms go, too?

• Coeur d’Alene’s Chili’s means business when it limits parking for take-out. Signs outside the restaurant’s take-out counter announces a 10-minute limit. And, tongue firmly cheeked, warns that vehicles belonging to dawdlers “will be crushed and melted.”

• I’m sorry that the massive power outage, caused by last week’s windstorm, forced Huckleberries to the sidelines last Friday. But I’m amazed by the work of Avista to get most of us up and running quickly afterward. Salute.

Parting Shot

If you’re a Coeur d’Alene Press subscriber, you know that “Big Bertha” — the 258-year-old, 137-foot ponderosa at Military Drive and Sherman Court in the historic Fort Grounds — fell during the windstorm Jan. 13. Former city finance officer John Austin puts Bertha’s life-span into perspective: “When that tree was a seedling, George Washington was a 30-year-old slave owner in Virginia. At 100, Gen. Sherman was burning down Atlanta on his way to (Coeur d’Alene) and the fort named for him. And at 200 (Bertha) saw I-90 built north of downtown, making the Fort Grounds much quieter.” The Fort Grounds are quieter, indeed — unless a tree, like Big Bertha, falls on your house.

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You can contact D.F. (Dave) Oliveria at dfo@cdapress.com.