100 years ago in Spokane: Fay McDonald got a brief taste of home on her way to prison

Fay McDonald, one of the infamous McDonald siblings, was thrilled to be back in Spokane – although for only a brief stopover on the way to a three-year sentence in Walla Walla for forgery.

“Gee, but Spokane looks good,” McDonald said when she disembarked from the train from Texas. “You cannot realize the feeling of living in a foreign country, longing to come home and afraid to. On the Fourth of July and Armistice Day, I had to get up and sing ’The Star-Spangled Banner’ and it always made me cry. Many times I got so homesick I bought a ticket back to the States, packed my trunk and was almost on my way back to Spokane to give myself up and get it over with, when my courage failed me.”

She finally made her way from Tampico, Mexico, to Beaumont, Texas, but a woman who had been a rival in a Tampico cabaret tipped off police.

From the weather beat: Several thousand boxes of Spokane Valley apples were damaged by a 25-degree frost.

In orchards, even more apples were damaged, since apples were piled beneath trees.

This is exactly what apple growers feared, as a result of the freight car shortage that was causing delays in the shipping of apples.

More damage was on the way, because an apple growers’ spokesman said the freight car shortage was getting worse.

Also from the weather beat: Snoqualmie Pass received 2 inches of snow. Autos were still managing to make it through, but it was set to close in two or three days.

Mount Spokane received its first coating of snow, as well, and the summit road was closed for the winter.