The Bomb That Didn't Go Off

Charles P. Pierce: In 2009, in the city of Spokane, Washington, the Public Facilities District bought a bench. It was metal. It was aluminum, its powder coat a bronze that ran toward brown. It sat three people. The city bought the bench from a company called Landscape Forms in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The bench cost $2,679.46, delivered.

The city placed the bench in the corner of a downtown parking lot at the intersection of Washington Street and Main Avenue, near the Performing Arts Center and tucked between two low brick walls that formed an L shape behind it. The bench faced up Main Avenue, toward City Hall and the roar of Spokane Falls beyond. The bench faced a couple of pawnshops, including Millman Jewelers, which indeed did sell jeweled items, but which, unlike, say, Tiffany's, also had a rack of guitars for sale in its front windows. The bench was directly across the street from Auntie's Bookstore, which takes up most of the bottom two stories of an old brick pile that is still called the Liberty Building.