Hot Off the Press!

     Yesterday we had one of those “just like it should be” days.  We drove over to Menlo and took in the Pacific County Fair.  The weather was perfect and ‘way hot’ just as it should be on Fair days.  Right away my hamburger fell apart and I got mustard on my shirt at right-boob level so I went around looking like I had one headlight on.  I consoled myself that hot and sticky is how you’re supposed to feel at the Fair.
    We spent the most time looking at all the chickens (of course!) and concluded that our own girls would stack up very well alongside all those ribbon-winners.  As usual, we marveled at the kids in the barn with their cows, all happily grouped together playing games (the kids, that is) and looking proud of their big, cud-chewing entries.  I’m pretty sure there were goats, too, but some way or other we missed them.
     The vegetables were impressive even though it was day three of the displays.  The peas and beans and zucchini, the onions and beets and cabbages had all held up well.  Only the carrots had gone limp and shriveled.  The flowers, too, had lasted remarkably well and we enjoyed seeing some lily varieties we’d like to try for ourselves.
     We loved the Grange building – especially the beehive-making exhibit in the Willapa Valley Grange’s display.  And we were amazed to find that there is a Morehead Park Junior Grange right here on the peninsula.  They meet for a week in July.  We hope the Long Beach Grange will be able to have a display next year.
     Before we left, we spent some time in the building that houses the various organizations.  We talked with our friend Rose who was at the Hospice booth and went by the Pacific County Historical Society’s booth to admire Denise Rogers’ handiwork.  I was a little put off by the man there who gave us a bit of a lecture about the importance of county history and held up several Sou’westers – not mine – extolling their virtues.
     It was the “not mine” part that irritated me, of course.  And the fact that he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise so I couldn’t tell him that I had just picked up thirty copies of the hot-off-the-press issue on the Oysterville Church and that it was written by me and that he was preaching to the choir.  I’m hoping that it was just my ego getting in the way of his hard sell and that he wasn’t so off-putting to others about local history.
     When we got home late yesterday afternoon, we took our first good look at that newly finished Sou’wester.  It turned out wonderfully, if I do say so myself – thanks to Steve Roger’s layout and the printer’s TLC.  For my part, I’m pleased that I was given the opportunity to document one more piece of our local history.  Hooray!