Golden Staters have feelings, too

My niece in California is bringing her family to Spokane for a visit.

That prospect had me thinking about how people here tend to view the Golden State and its inhabitants.

Anyone who has lived in the Northwest can’t help but be acquainted with California-bashing. Much of it is joking. After all, regional rivalries are inevitable.

But some of it isn’t good-natured. And that has always puzzled me.

For decades, California has been America’s Second Chance, a place where anyone could start over. But let me get this straight. Californians don’t have that same right to pack up and try for a better life elsewhere?

Resentment of Californians who move to our area and buy expensive homes can usually be chalked up to jealousy, I suppose. But the simmering hostility that greets at least a few transplants isn’t just class tension. It has to do with the fact that, for some in our area, California symbolizes a scary vision of America’s future.

Stereotyping that state’s residents is ridiculous, of course. It is a population far too diverse for simple labeling.

But it strikes me that Californians do have one thing in common. And I think it’s something that rubs certain small-minded folks here the wrong way.

Even if they don’t always like it, Californians understand change.

It doesn’t take much imagination to guess why certain Spokane area residents wouldn’t want people like that in our midst.

•Slice answers: Wendy Marshall mistakenly sent a check written to The Spokesman-Review to AT&T.

AT&T deposited it in its account.

Carol Woodward once sent her house payment to the phone company and vice versa. “The phone company cashed the check and credited my account with a huge credit,” she wrote.

But the mortgage company returned the errant smaller check and directed Woodward to cough up a new one posthaste. “I had to really scramble to come up with the mortgage payment,” she wrote. “But I didn’t have to pay a phone bill for about three years.”

•Possible reasons why there’s a picture of supermodel Heidi Klum in today’s Slice when there’s actually nothing about her in the column: A) It’s a salute to bait-and-switch advertising. B) Same reason Parade magazine runs pictures of her. C) It’s a cynical, desperate bid to attract more male readers. D) It is an illustration of what can be done when space isn’t wasted on a column mug-shot. E) Page designer just wanted to say, “Made you look.” F). Other.

•Slice answers: The downside to our lack of humidity? “Nothing,” said Phyllis Rollins, just back from a trip to Washington, D.C., and Branson, Mo. “Absolutely nothing.”

On the other hand, Ina Redd fears that eventually all her skin is going to flake away.

•Today’s Slice question: Who is your workplace’s champion when it comes to the frequency, intensity and duration of on-the-phone arguments with his or her spouse?