100 years ago in Spokane: World-renowned cellist Pablo Casals gets lost in the beauty of Spokane

World-famous cellist Pablo Casals and his wife took a sightseeing tour of Spokane prior to his concert at the Davenport Hotel.

“It was such a fine morning that we wanted to get out,” Casals told a reporter. “We got out somewhere and had the grandest view of all these mountains. It was so fine that we lost our sense of direction and had a hard time getting back to the hotel.”

Casals, from Spain, had been on tour for years. He said he learned that the public can be “really childish” in the music that it wanted.

“Today, we have so many artists who have made their careers just by getting the applause of their audience,” Casals said. “People don’t know they want the good old works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn, but they do. And when they hear them as they should be played … they know they have found something that they can’t get anywhere else.”

Casals is still regarded as one of greatest cellists of all time.

From the juvenile beat: Two boys escaped from Spokane’s notoriously porous juvenile detention center.

Lloyd Lafferty, 17, and W.C Frahm, 16, were in the center’s office at night, “doing some work,” when they noticed the officer’s back was turned.

So they ran out the door. Neither had been seen since.

Frahm was being held on a petty larceny charge for stealing copper wire. Lafferty’s offense was not specified.