Rochester, Wash. (pop. 300) is a flag stop 60 miles from Tacoma. Rochester is also the home town and laughingstock in trade of Dave James, 30-year-old Tacoma News-Tribune humorist, whose sly exaggerations are as American as roasting ears, would have tickled Artemus Ward, Mark Twain or Will Rogers.
A country correspondent for a string of six Northwest papers, James once did a piece about Carroll Kjellman, Rochester citizen who said he had seen a robin tugging at a worm in the ground. The worm stretched until it snapped out of the earth, knocked the robin cold. Wrote Dave James: "Faced by a...