HUCKLEBERRIES: Indignity and etiquette

After he hung up his sneakers, basketball hall-of-famer Bill Walton was known for his offbeat, and sometimes caustic, commentary as a sportscaster.

Occasionally, Walton’s snide asides rankled passionate viewers, like Jimmy McAndrew, of Coeur d’Alene, a diehard Gonzaga Bulldogs fan.

While covering the 2017 Pac-12 Tournament, Walton angered Jimmy and Zag fans by saying Gonzaga didn’t deserve a top seed for March Madness, claiming three Pac-12 teams were better.

A Huckleberries column published in The Spokesman-Review on June 27, 2017, provides Walton’s quote: “Gonzaga plays in a truck stop conference. Mop up Sisters of the Poor. (The Pac-12) is the conference of champions.”

At that point, Jimmy, now a Coeur d’Alene school trustee, began mulling what he would say to Walton should their paths cross. And he wasn’t mollified when Walton walked back his comments after the Zags finished as runners-up to North Carolina for the 2017 NCAA championship.

Well, Jimmy did encounter Walton — at the San Diego Airport. And he suffered an “epic fail.”

Jimmy told Huckleberries afterward: “I actually rehearsed for that moment every time Walton slammed GU during the Pac-12 Tournament.”

Instead of a Gonzaga-laced diatribe, Jimmy said respectfully, “Hi, Bill.”

Walton’s response? “Hi, sir.”

Duty came first

Lake Pend Oreille mail carrier Darlene Johnston put the U.S. mail ahead of herself until the end.

Forty years ago (May 29, 1984), Darlene, 45, had just pulled out from the Bayview docks for her regular run to remote parts of the lake, when the unthinkable happened: An explosion rocked her new 24-foot vessel and started a fire in its bilge.

At the time, she and her husband, George, had delivered mail on the massive lake for six years.

Darlene reacted to the danger by throwing her mailbags into the water, jumping overboard, and ordering a passenger, 16-year-old Joe Dory, to follow.

Tragically, neither Darlene nor her friend knew how to swim. A day later, Darlene’s husband lamented that the two hadn’t used the lifejackets.

The dedicated mail carrier — described by a marina owner as “a little woman with 3,000 pounds of heart and spirit” — drowned, while her teen helper struggled back to the docks.

Most of the mailbags made it to shore, too.

Lois and Bandito

Former councilwoman Lois Land-Albrecht didn’t mind being dismissed by Coeur d’Alene’s power structure of the '80s as “a crusty old broad.”

Said she: “Let’s face it: I am old, I am crusty and I am a broad.”

More to the point: She was a crusty old broad with a barking dog, Bandito. And Bandito got her into as much trouble as Lois’s candid comments.

Forty years ago, Bandito’s incessant barking landed his master in the judicial doghouse — again.

On May 29, 1984, Lois was issued a subpoena to appear in court to answer a neighbor’s complaint about Bandito’s barking. It was the second time the mutt had gotten her in Trouble — with a capital T.

In 1982, due to a similar complaint, Lois paid more than $2,000 in fines, plus attorney’s fees, and the cost to relocate.

Two years later, she told The Press that she intended to represent herself: “I’m going to try to behave myself and not end up in the slammer.”

If things got too hot for Lois here, she planned to send Bandito to her brother in Michigan, where between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., she said, “They allow dogs to open their mouths.”

Faithful servant

Dave Walker, a lover of all things Coeur d’Alene, wasn’t kidding during the final week of May 1999 when he said he’d do anything to help his town.

First, he accepted Mayor Steve Judy’s appointment to fill a vacancy on the city council. Said Walker, then 44 and owner of ACE Travel: “This is my hometown. I’ve lived here forever. I love this city. I love this city a lot. If I can play a minor part in it, far out.”

Days later, Dave got his chance to play a minor role — in the old Fred Murphy’s Day Parade.

He was handed a shovel and told to scoop horse poop. And he did his job to sanitary perfection despite an occasional taunt from the crowd.

Said one smart aleck: “Nice to see you finally got a real job.” Responded Dave, smiling: “I’m here to serve my city and this is where I should start.”

Dave performed his duty so well that he was named the parade’s best pooper scooper.

Huckleberries

• Poet’s Corner: On Sherman, life is sweet;/we eat our lunch out by the street/amid the rap songs cars let loose/and watch the tourists pet the moose – The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Downtown in the Summer”).

• Spellbound: “Cyclamen” was seventh-grader Joseph Moran’s undoing. In May 2019, after becoming the first North Idahoan to make the National Spelling Bee finals, the Hayden boy stumbled over the word for “a perennial flower.” But the only youth to win the North Idaho title four times was content with his finish. And that’s supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

• In Mom’s Steps: And the answer is: Evalyn Adams. The question? Who was the first woman to serve as a Kootenai County commissioner? Evalyn earned the job by first winning a four-way race for the GOP nomination in the 1984 primary. And she wasn’t the only one in the family to win an election that spring. Daughter Eva Hallvik was elected student body president at Coeur d’Alene High. Like mother, like daughter.

• Better Than Expo: On May 29, 1984, Duane Hagadone amazed Press readers by predicting that his $40 million rebuild of the old North Shore Motor Inn would exceed Spokane's Expo ’74 in impact. Said he: “The potential is here to move the area up an entirely new plateau.” Fast forward 40 years, and no one can deny that the Coeur d’Alene Resort has radically transformed the Lake City.

• Oopsie: Ruthie Johnson’s husband, Wayne, played football at UCLA with baseball legend Jackie Robinson not her father (as reported in Huckleberries May 19).

• Factoid: After 83 years as an afternoon newspaper, the Coeur d’Alene Press became a seven-day morning one June 5, 1989. The Press, which began as a weekly in 1892 under the direction of publisher/editor Joseph T. Scott, switched to daily in August 1906. The banner headline 35 years ago for that first Monday morning paper? “Cops find corpses in home.”

• Flowery Downtown: One of the summer features of our downtown are flower pots full of petunias hanging from light poles on Sherman and Lakeside avenues. The program has gone on for two decades. And way before that? Members of the Xi Chi chapter of the Beta Sigma Phi placed baskets of artificial flowers on street corners, beginning in about 1959.

Parting shot

Ron Rankin, the old tax crusader turned county commissioner, understood something most politicians don’t: Politics is like horseshoes. Close counts.

Rankin was famous for pushing property tax-limiting initiatives and for losing elections. He ran and lost campaigns for offices from highway commissioner to governor. His One Percent Initiative, which called for limiting property taxes statewide, repeatedly lost.

But the campaigns provided Rankin with a forum for his ideas.

In a Spring 1989 news profile, Rankin told The Press: “I keep losing out by less each time because the public’s getting smarter. You’re not losing if you keep people moving in your direction.”

By Rankin’s measure, mainstream Republicans did well this spring by snagging 30 of 73 precinct committeeman seats from Chairman Brent Regan and his MAGA central committee disciples.

Time will tell if the Ronald Reagan Republicans have Rankin’s drive and persistence.

• • •

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

    The remains of Darlene Johnston’s mail boat after the fatal fire.
  

    Lois Land-Albrecht and her outlaw dog, Bandito.
  

    Councilman Dave Walker wins the Pooper Scooper competition at the Fred Murphy Days Parade.
  

    Top speller Joseph Moran at the regional spelling bee at North Idaho College.
  

    Evalyn Adams receives a congratulatory hug from her daughter, Eva Hallvik, after her 1984 GOP primary election win.
  

    Fred Murphy (seated center) and Duane Hagadone (seated left) sign the contract to build the floating boardwalk at The Coeur d’Alene Resort. Duane predicted the resort’s impact on the community would be greater than that Expo ’74 on Spokane. Watching the signing are (standing, from left) John Barlow, Jerry Jaeger, Loren Murphy and Skip Murphy.
  

    Composing room foreman Dave Walter pastes up the front page of the final evening edition of the Coeur d’Alene Press.
  

    Members of the Xi Chi chapter of Beta Sigma Phi hang artificial flowers in downtown Coeur d’Alene. They are (from left) Mrs. Charles Sears, Mrs. Frank Frampton and Mrs. George McDowell.