Idaho-ho-ho: Boise, once high on the list...

Idaho-ho-ho: Boise, once high on the list of those places where people were advised to go to get away from it all, is experiencing growing pains. The Idaho city was recently the scene of a rally against the building of a bridge across the Boise River. Protesters wore T-shirts that bore the name “Boisangeles” enclosed in a circle with a red slash through it. As far as we’re concerned, they don’t have a right to take that name till they’ve had a 6.8 quake. Or at least a few Medflies.

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A new strain of Valley fever? Linda Hess of Van Nuys says she came down with it and her theory is that it was caused by the simultaneous closure of five malls in the Valley after the Jan. 17 quake.

She suspects she breathed in “shopping spores that were emitted into the atmosphere.” Hess’ health has improved since the reopening of two malls, which she visited in order to “safely release all the shopping spores from my system.”

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Free Minnie!A lad identified in the newspapers as “barefoot Charlie” saw the creature bobbing in the surf off Long Beach on May 4, 1897. Her body was roped and pulled ashore by employees of a house-moving company.

She became Long Beach’s first tourist attraction. And one of its most profitable--the city paid her captors a reported $600, compared to the millions that have been sunk into the Queen Mary.

The death of Minnie, a 65-foot-long whale, was just the beginning of her career. Her skeleton was on display for more than half a century before she was donated to the L.A. County Museum of Natural History two decades ago. But since then her bones have resided in a storage facility.

“With the 100th anniversary (of Minnie’s arrival) coming up, it would be nice if she could be brought back and put on display,” said Claudine Burnett, a Long Beach librarian who plans to write a book on the city’s early history.

Alas, John Heyning, the museum’s curator of marine mammals, doubts that Minnie could be put back together. “Lots of her bones are missing,” he said. “In fact, before we got her, her skull was sawed up into six or eight pieces over the years so she could be moved through doorways.”

But, Heyning pointed out, visiting scientists still study Minnie. “Because her skull is cut up, you can look at parts you wouldn’t normally see,” he said. “Minnie’s still serving a purpose.”

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Don’t Fed-Ex them, either: Gene Samson of L.A. noticed that a state form for veterans’ benefits “contains an important warning--when you consider the number of veterans who are probably lost in the mail each year.”

miscelLAny:

In reply to our query about the inventor of the double-deck burger, author Chris Hansen (“King of Them All”) says it was Bob Wian, founder of Bob’s Big Boy in Glendale. The epic event occurred in February, 1937, when a bass member of a band came in for a late-night snack and “asked for something different.”