HUCKLEBERRIES: Counting the days

Gone is the venerable foursome who illustrated “The Old Man and the Sea”: Jim Shepperd, Elmer Jordan, Bill Wood and Ace Walden.

Gone, too, are the matriarchs in the “Little Women” scene: Louise Shadduck, Ruth Burch, Marie Whitesel and Jeri Robideaux.

But nonagenarian Mary Lou Reed and her friends are back to reprise their roles as messy pie eaters in a whimsical re-enactment of “Huckleberry Finn.”

“Mary Lou stays the same; she’s a rock,” said former Coeur d’Alene Public Library director Bette Ammon. “She was an impetus for us to publish the calendar now.”

Bette spoke to Huckleberries after the Coeur d’Alene Public Library Foundation unveiled a new fundraising calendar, following a 20-year hiatus, at the Vantage Point Brewing Co. on Monday.

The 16-month calendar mimics the 2005 version produced by the library foundation to raise money for a new building. In both, local celebrities acted out scenes from classic books, like “The Old Man and the Sea,” “Little Women” and “Huckleberry Finn.”

On the 2005 calendar cover, for example, actors Patty Duke and Dennis Franz, with their spouses, were cast as characters in a playful depiction of “Great Expectations” — Franz and Duke’s husband, Mike, as pregnant men.

But there is a difference between the two calendars.

The new one, Bette Ammon said, is “dedicated to intellectual freedom and everyone’s right to read,” adding: “The timing seemed right with the flurry of book challenges, particularly in this area.”

She is proud that Mayor Woody McEvers and all six Coeur d’Alene councilors readily agreed to participate — the four males acting out “Of Mice and Men” for the month of November 2025 and the three women cast in “The Handmaid’s Tale” for February 2026.

“That’s significant,” Bette said. “The council is 100% in the library’s corner.”

The 2025 calendar features banned or challenged books and includes explainers why censors objected to them.

Published in 1900, Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz” was decried because it included the supernatural and talking animals. “Huckleberry Finn” was challenged for “racial slurs and controversial depictions of race.” And "A Wrinkle in Time" for combining religion and science.

The 2025 calendar replicates the “Huckleberry Finn” scene found in the 2005 one, with nearly the same cast, featuring former legislator Reed. Faces and T-shirts stained with juice, the six models are shown at the Third Street dock on the waterfront, gobbling huckleberry pie.

Mary Lou told Huckleberries on Monday: “It’s nice to be honored while you still can enjoy it.”

Copies of the calendar are available for $35 at the library, Well-Read Moose, or by contacting the library foundation ([email protected]).

Star power

First, you should know that “Hennessey” was a moderately successful TV comedy-drama (1959-62), set at a naval base, starring Jackie Cooper and Abby Dalton.

Now, onward.

Abby Dalton, who, as nurse Lt. Martha Hale, played Cooper’s (Lt. Chick Hennessey) love interest, brought star power to the 1960 Diamond Cup hydroplane races.

She and Miss Diamond Cup III Petty Runge toured the old Atlas Tie plant with owner John S. Richards. They attended Go-Kart races at North Idaho College. And they planted kisses on winning Diamond Cup driver Dallas Sartz.

The 1960 races (July 23-24) attracted a total estimated weekend crowd of 130,000, the largest one ever to attend an event in Idaho, according to the Coeur d’Alene Press.

Described as “sleek and striking,” actress Dalton later filmed two more seasons of “Hennessey,” earning an Emmy nomination. In the 96th and final episode, her character married Cooper’s. And then she appeared days later as Joey Bishop’s wife in “The Joey Bishop Show.” Also, she starred in another 1980s series, “Falcon Crest.”

She was a hit with TV audiences — and the 1960 Diamond Cup crowds.

No smoking

Lifeguard Derick Taylor, then 19, was annoyed by more than second-hand smoke when he began his crusade to ban smoking from Honeysuckle Beach on Hayden Lake.

The wave of cigarette butts littering the sand annoyed him, too.

On July 26, 2005, Derick persuaded the Hayden City Council, which included his mother, Nancy, to begin steps to outlaw smoking on the beach. As props, he brought three plastic bags of cigarette butts culled from Coeur d’Alene’s City Beach and Honeysuckle Beach.

Also, he produced a photo of a beach towel, where he sat and picked 26 butts from the surrounding sand in a few minutes. Said he: “That means every time you sit on your beach towel, you’re sitting on cigarette butts.”

Young Taylor and friend Emily Christensen took a similar complaint to the Coeur d’Alene City Council in 2004. But they encountered indifference.

Said Taylor: “We want our beach to look like a beach, not an ashtray.

Huckleberries:

• Poet’s Corner: On weekends I ride at the head of the pack/on my big black Hog with a chick on the back;/I’m bad to the bone so don’t get in my way,/I’m wild as they come for a CPA — The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Part-time Outlaw”).

• Sweet Deal: On July 25, 1975, Mayor Ron Edinger made a final city payment of $195,000 on 34 acres of private land on Tubbs Hill. That boosted public ownership of the hill to 97%. In his 2008 booklet, “The Treasure Called Tubbs Hill,” attorney Scott Reed said 134 acres of Tubbs Hill had cost the city $300,098, not including matching or private money. In 2005, the hill was appraised at $177 million.

• Faithfulness: Small things matter in building community. For years, the Johnston family supervised Sherman Square, the small downtown park that was a venue for free Tuesday concerts. And the late Fern Johnston and her husband, Mayor Don Johnston, managed the park by picking up trash and watering flowers. On July 26, 1995, the Coeur d’Alene Press published a photo of faithful Fern performing her labor of love.

• Chilling Out: Google the term “relaxed,” and you may find that a Coeur d’Alene Press photo from July 24, 1980 – the one that showed Katie Kuetemeyer keeping score for a Church League softball game. Nothing strange there — except Katie, in flipflops, followed the softball action while sitting backward on her grazing horse.

Parting shot

Coeur d’Alene’s skyline is shifting again, as huge cranes help build three new downtown high-rises: 18-story Thomas George, 15-story Sherman Tower and a six-story Marriott brand hotel.

 When completed, the new structures will join existing towers: 20-story Parkside, 18-story Coeur d'Alene Resort, 15-story McEuen Terrace, and nine-story Coeur d’Alene North.

In 1975, however, Duane Hagadone’s 10-story Lake Tower Apartments was the talk of the town. When it opened July 1, 1975, The Lake Tower was the tallest building in North Idaho.

The Coeur d’Alene Press touted the $1.5 million high rise as “a dream come true” and Duane Hagadone’s “concept for pleasurable living.”

Now owned by a Spokane company, Lake Tower has lost its 180-degree view of the Coeur d’Alene waterfront.

Like it or not, however, it was a trend setter.

• • •

D.F. (Dave) Oliveria can be contacted at [email protected].

    Coeur d’Alene councilors enacted a scene from “Of Mice and Men” for the new library calendar. They are, from left, Dan English, former councilman Mike Kennedy, Mayor Woody McEvers, Dan Gookin and Kenny Gabriel.
  

    Fun-loving former library director Bette Ammon helped produce the 2025-26 Library Foundation calendar.
  

    Television actor Abby Dalton, right, and Miss Diamond Cup III Petty Runge kiss Diamond Cup driver Dallas Sartz of Miss Seattle Too, while the hydroplane’s owner, Milo Stoen, holds the winner’s trophy in 1960.
  

    Miss Diamond Cup III Petty Runge, left, and television star Abby Dalton were a hit at Go-Kart races at North Idaho College in 1960.
  

    Billie Carrico smokes on Honeysuckle Beach on Hayden Lake while still legal to do so in 2005.
  

    Mayor Ron Edinger signs a $195,000 check as final city payment for 34 acres of Tubbs Hill in 1975.
  

    Fern Johnston waters flowers at the downtown park, then known as Sherman Square, in 1995.
  

    Scorekeeper Katie Kuetemeyer watches a Church League softball game on horseback in 1980.
  

    Duane Hagadone’s Lake Tower is shown two-plus blocks north of the North Shore Motor Inn and Hagadone Corp. headquarters in 1975.