Bill Mann

Our quest today: Can several items be extracted within a quarter-mile radius in PT?

Challenge accepted!

First, we go to the corner of 19th and Kearney, where the Recovery Cafe has just opened. Great charity, (Dove House), but ... who designed the north side of the building, on 19th? It looks askew, like it’s experienced subsidence from a big quake. Check it out.

Going further up 19th, turn left, into the golf course, and we see a sign warning, “Look Right for Wild Golfers.” This would be duffers hitting off the 5th tee, and not even wildly. (I was once a “wild” golfer; one tee shot broadsided a passing mail truck. A federal felony?).

But barely 10 yards away, downhill and right across the road, there’s an even bigger hazard. Someone has, recently and inexplicably, installed a bench, dedicated to two women golfers. It faces downhill, and looking away from the nearby tee. You can yell “Fore!” on the tee, but hitting someone who’s looking away from you sitting on that bench, will result in much worse grief than a two-stroke penalty. And why would anyone want to risk sitting there? It’s like strolling through a driving range.

Keep going north toward the pro shop, and on the right, you’ll see a lovely field of wildflowers, a prairie garden. My wife often checks whether the camas there are in bloom. Exiting the golf course, I now look left for any “wild golfers” teeing it up. Isn’t a “wild golfer” someone who refuses to wear bright green pants?

Speaking of golf, here’s a joke Bob Hope once told me during my yearly NBC-arranged phone interview with him: “Know the advantage of golf over sex?” Do tell, Mr. Hope. “You score more often, and you can usually get a start time.” Thanks for the memories, Bob.

— Now we cross 19th to the recently re-opened Mountain View Pool, which is full of happy (and preternaturally patient) swimmers these days. Short-staffed head lifeguard Jon Plueard needs more lifeguards. “We will certify them,” he says. So if you’d like to get paid to watch over some of the most buoyant people in town, call Jon at 360-385-7665. Get in the swim.

Back on the street, another penalty to the high school kids who, while driving down 19th along that 5th fairway, like to yell “Fore!” during golfers’ backswings. Possibly the only “fore”play these lads get.

— Funny coinage posted on Twitter. Q. What’s it called when you exit a building and take your mask off? A. An airgasm.

— More newspaper namedropping: I once shared an office with Lou Grant at the Oakland Tribune — yes, the real one, not Ed Asner’s gruff-but-loveable news director on the popular series of that name. Lou was our editorial cartoonist, and he told me CBS paid him to use his name.

— More droppings: You get a lot of promotional interviews when you write a TV column. One I remember was breakfast in San Francisco with Bill Kurtis, the stentorian-voiced announcer on NPR’s “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” He was promoting a PBS science series, and he asked his new female friend to join us. ‘Twas a pleasant meal.

Shortly thereafter, the publicist set up another breakfast — at the very same table at the St. Francis hotel with ... a costar of “Baywatch,” Gina Lee Nolin.

— Happy Cinco de Mayo! Reader question: Is there a single mariachi band to be found in western Washington? If not, our loss, amigos y amigas.

— From my photographer friend F-stop Fitzgerald: “Trump thinks climate change takes place when the sun goes down.”

Finally, this well-targeted line from Twitter humorist Middle Age Riot after a recent slayfest: “The media calls them mass shootings. The NRA calls them product demos.”

(Besides working at the Oakland paper with Lou Grant, PT humorist Bill Mann was also a columnist for dailies in Montreal, San Francisco, and ... Honolulu. Email Bill at Newsmann9@gmail.com.)