Huckleberries: A bygone day when celebration and hope turned to carnage in the Lake City

July 31 comes and goes each year in Coeur d’Alene, without much remembrance of the terrible accident that killed 17 and badly injured more than 100.

On July 31, 1909, two trains collided head-on at or near Gibbs station (the approximate entrance to today’s Riverstone development, Northwest Boulevard and Lakewood Drive).

The trains were running on a tight schedule, transporting visitors and speculators to and from Coeur d’Alene. The trains of the time also carried a flood of potential homesteaders hungering for cheap land ($1.25 to $7 per acre) opened on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation by the Allotment Act of 1909. All this according to Jon Mueller’s swell new history of Coeur d’Alene’s City Park: “Private Park, Public Park.”

Well, on that fateful July day, mistakes were made in an effort to keep the packed trains running on time. “As it turned out,” writes Mueller, “there was a mix-up in the switching procedures of certain parallel tracks at certain locations and a non-standard departure of one train from Coeur d’Alene.”

The Electric Line never recovered from the crash and subsequent investigations.

Then came the automobile.

Lay me down

English prof Paul Lindholdt of Eastern Washington University says Huckleberries got it right in saying that health concerns caused summer concert promoter Chris Guggemos to “lay low” last year. Here’s Paul’s quick tutorial on lay/lie: “Lay means place. Lie means recline. If you ‘lay low,’ you must be laying something. That something is understood as yourself. Three hundred years ago, people said in prayer, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’ Today, we say Chris chose to ‘lay low.’ That is, Chris lay (himself) low in order to recover. Make sense?” Paul admits the two verbs get “numbingly more complicated” as they change tenses. Readers Jeff Ellingson and Marcie Taylor also emailed advice regarding “lie” and “lay.” And faithful copy editor Megan Rowe notes that Huckleberries got it right because, she says, “I can assure you we aren’t lying down on the job.”

Huckleberries

Poet’s Corner: “If gasoline/ keeps going up,/ I’ll have to buy/ it by the cup” – “The Bard of Sherman Avenue: Poems by Tom Wobker” (“One Grand of Regular, Please”) … My 2 Cents: How goofy was that 20-18 vote by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee opposing sanctions against Mother Russia? The U.S. House, including tea party darling Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, voted 419-3 for the sanctions. Chimed in the Lewiston Tribune: “Since when did northern Idaho Republicans get so chummy with the Kremlin?” Huckleberries’ thoughts exactly … Poll: 58.14 percent of Huckleberries blog readers say transgender people should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military … A blog reader asks Huckleberries: “When you were in journalism school (1970-72), did you ever expect to write a headline that included the three words ‘coach,’ ‘penis’ and ‘stunt’?” The reader, of course, was referring to the penis-in-a-hot-dog-bun stunt allegedly involving former Ferris High football coach Jim Sharkey. Short answer? No.

Parting shot

Speaking of Chris Guggemos, Roberta and Dennis Marolt of Coeur d’Alene couldn’t believe their eyes when they saw Chris spraying for weeds at Sherman Square Park recently. They had taken out-of-town visitors on the obligatory walk around the Coeur d’Alene Resort boardwalk when they spotted Chris. By the time they reached the pocket park on Sherman Avenue, Chris was in the alley cleaning up litter. Emails Roberta: “All this and free concerts, too? Does he also clean up the other concert venues? Not to mention that, he is also battling cancer. Wow! He is amazing!” You won’t get an argument from Huckleberries.