100 Years Ago in Spokane: A few children’s compelling acting sparked a massive police response, and the city’s orchestra inspired an artist visually — not musically

Motorists on Sunset Highway witnessed an alarming scene — a fight along the road in which shots were fired and two pedestrians “fell to the ground.”

The motorists called the police and soon after, a group of 30 armed officials, deputies and citizens rushed into the area. They spread out and combed the woods near Garden Springs.

As they searched, the situation sounded worse. The group heard “sustained gunfire and screams” from an area south of the freeway.

They soon made their way to a “lonely house” in the woods, which the force quickly surrounded and entered.

And what did you find? Not only the two “armed men”, but also their two “victims”, alive and well.

A quartet of 14-year-olds admitted they were “rehearsing a scene from a movie they saw recently”.

“They admitted their ‘crime’ of ambushing two of their playmates and shooting them with blanks after a fight.”

The cops weren’t amused. They scolded the boys and ordered them home.

From the music beat: An artist named Ralph S. Gordon sat at a rehearsal of the Spokane Orchestra and sketched pictures of three of the main cast: conductor Leonardo Brill, cellist Edward Bruck, and drummer Charles Whitehead.

Whitehead has been described as “a whole dynamo unto himself” who “plays more instruments simultaneously than any other musician in town”. For the orchestra he played drums, timpani, cymbals and “other sudden noises”.