Little non sequiturs keep piling up, don’t they? I don’t mind. I can write them down, and whenever they total up around 600 words, they’ll provide another column with little effort.
For instance: Can you remember when telephone lines running alongside a road used to swoop in graceful arcs between poles, and you could be almost hypnotized into a state of calmness just by watching them? This assumes you were not the driver, of course. Yes, I miss them, too. Someday I’ll write some nostalgia about the old highway between Olympia and Aberdeen.
I’m appalled by the number of letter writers to this newspaper who use the word “literal” when they mean “virtual.” To simplify the difference between the two, literal means “absolutely” while virtual means “almost the same.”
Along the same line, let me state that “gauntlet” is a glove, not a narrow passageway through which someone is forced to run. That’s a “gantlet,” but if even “Jeopardy” can make that mistake I guess I’ll have to live with it.
Here would be a good place to remember that the clam, “geoduck” is pronounced, at least here in the Northwest, as gooeyduck.
And I’m upset when I hear or see some information about an event in Seattle at “McCaw Hall.” The complete and proper name is “Marion Oliver McCaw Hall.” When the McCaw brothers supplied a huge amount of money toward its construction, they wanted it named after their mother.
I wonder how many people realize or remember that Marion Oliver McCaw was born and raised right here in Centralia. Her family, I’ve been told, were the original owners of the Lewis and Clark Hotel. And how many oldtimers remember Oliver Rickard Hardware store? Marion married J. Elroy McCaw, one of the three gentlemen who invested in a new-fangled enterprise, radio station KELA, back in 1937.
He parlayed that into a group of stations ranging from Hawaii to New York City. (At that time it was against the law for any individual or corporation to own more than seven broadcast facilities.)
KELA’s crude TV cable system was eventually morphed into a giant nationwide operation by his sons, which made them quite wealthy, indeed.
Another random thought bemoans the slow loss of old-fashioned owner-operated stores. The closing of Hall’s Pharmacy was one of the most recent.
I can only hope that, in Centralia, Greg Anderson’s True Value Hardware (with the Coast to Coast sign still up there on the marquee) won’t be next. Nyholm’s TV & Appliance and Fechtner’s Jewelry could also be candidates
I know, somebody’s going to write a letter and ask, “Why didn’t that stupid so & so mention (fill in your own blank)?” It’s happened before.
And do you remember when you could go into a lumber store and, even if you only wanted a 2-foot piece of 2 by 4, someone such as Chet Keen would say, “Sure, I’ll just cut it off a 10-footer and sell the rest as an 8-footer.” Now, if a 2-footer doesn’t show up on the computer at the front desk, you’re totally out of luck. So much was lost when personal service became obsolete.
I can only repeat my old mantra, which goes something along the line of “For every bit of expanding technology gained, a greater amount of personal interaction has been lost.” A person seen walking through Fort Borst Park with eyes glued on a phone in his or her hand is as good an example as any.
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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.
