It’s been an exciting week. Last Saturday, I celebrated the completion of my 90th year on this planet with a small gathering of relatives and special friends in the small backyard behind my current dwelling. My longest lasting friend — ever since the fifth grade — came down from Tacoma, another good friend brought her accordion all the way from Wenatchee, my daughter flew in from Georgia for a few days, my son, Matthew, came with my daughter-in-law, Lanita, and his guitar (in that order) and my grandson rode his bicycle down from Olympia in addition to some choice special friends from right here near home. I’m looking forward to similar treatment for my 95th birthday.
On another topic, would you be as flabbergasted as I was after being invited to throw out the first pitch at Centralia College’s Lady Blazers final home game of the season at a Borst Park softball field? This is scheduled to happen tomorrow. The game is being advertised as Seniors Day, and hopefully many in that category will take the time to attend.
Game time is 3 p.m., but as an attraction for those of us who suffer from advancing years syndrome, music from the 50s will be played for an hour before the game. It should be fun. If I can throw the ball all the way from the pitcher’s mound to home plate with only one hop, I’ll consider my part in the event a success.
Enough about me; here are a couple of things to keep you awake nights if you have nothing else to do the job.
If plastic grocery bags are banned — as they are in many areas of our nation — what will we use to line our kitchen wastebaskets?
How prim and proper can the English language get? Or should we be honest and start calling it the American language? Anyway, recently on TV, I heard a missing leg described as “a limb deficiency.” I don’t make these things up.
Whatever happened to Jim Carrey? He was such a hot box office star a couple of years back.
The late (and great) Chronicle columnist, Gordon Aadland, frequently mentioned growing up in Sisseton, South Dakota. The thought nudged me to look up a small town in Nebraska near the farm where my grandmother and her four sisters grew up. Grandma — or “Ma” as she was known — held such fond memories of the town that she and Grandfather Moeller named the largest of their three apartment buildings after it.
The town was called “Westphalia.” I was curious to see if it still exists today, and it does, but with a population of only 68 in the 2010 census. It reminded me of the many Lewis County towns that no longer exist, but are still remembered.
Here’s a quote from Mark Twain, “Common sense wins out over unbridled outrage.” A good thought, but difficult to follow when you think of the way our beloved country is heading.
And, finally, over twenty years ago, when I was still hosting “Let’s Talk about It,” the program I started on KELA, I made the observation that the future would treat Jimmy Carter kinder than it would Ronald Reagan. The response to that was the kind of laughter one uses to regard someone severely challenged in his or her mental capacity. I wonder if any of those laughers have slowly and regretfully changed their mind by now?
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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.
