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The second of our three children is in her senior year of high school. I remember enough from seeing our firstborn through these milestones to know that there are many moments of poignancy as a senior races through the final months to graduation.
This week, the W.F. West girls soccer team played their final regular-season home game, and it was senior night. I knew it would be emotional for us, with flowers for her and the chance for us to escort her down the track before the game.
But one of the most moving moments of the evening took me by surprise.
The Bearcats played a good game and had a strong lead going into the final 15 minutes of the match. With the win secure, the coach did something special and the announcer over the loudspeaker had a key role.
Usually they just announce the name of the player coming in during substitutions, but to honor the senior, the coach and the announcer’s voice booming over the field called out each senior, one by one, and the name of the younger player in her place. It was a changing of the guard.
As each senior stepped off the field, we felt the weight of the change, the culmination of a young career and the step into whatever lies ahead.
The players on the sidelines cheered and hugged their teammates as they trotted off the grass. And the younger players had the chance to thank and acknowledge their teenaged elders as they stepped into their place.
Our society needs more rites of passage to help our young people step into adulthood. This was one that I didn’t see coming, which made it even more powerful.
It was meaningful. It was moving. It was the first of many moments that I know will make this transition real for our family as we watch our daughter and all the good kids around her step into adulthood.
Onward.
A bountiful harvest
This year, I plowed new ground personally, and I think in the history of newspaper columnists, when I gave away a free potato to readers of my column.
These were a special variety of potato, the Makah Ozette, which have grown in Washington for more than 200 years. An avid fan of this particular tubular spud gave me a few small boxes of them this spring. I left them at the front desk of The Chronicle, inviting any and all folks to come grab a couple and plant them. I’m told the spuds were picked up and picked clean very quickly.
I’ve heard back from a few readers who had a good experience with them.
Roberts Greenaway, a loyal Chronicle reader in Eatonville, sent me a photo of the large harvest he reaped from the original tubers.
“They were very healthy and look amazing,” he said. “We had placed mason bees near the raised beds as well as applied a natural bloom stimulator prior to blossom formation. Thus we had tremendous pollination which may have been the catalyst for the abundant potato harvest.”
He said that if readers want a couple of seed potatoes, he’d be happy to share.
Walt “Bud” Morgan of Centralia also had a fine harvest.
From three seed potatoes he harvested eight pounds!
“Not bad for an adventure,” he said. “I started with three little spuds no bigger than my thumb.”
As for my own harvest, my 14-year-old son and I pulled up our half dozen plants and ended up with about 40 potatoes of various sizes. Not quite as bountiful as these other gardeners, but more than enough to enjoy while keeping plenty of seed potatoes for next year.
Huge thanks to Tracy Ridout, the merry potato farmer of Montesano, for supplying us all with the starters this year, and thanks to the good people of the Makah Tribe who grew these unique fingerling spuds for two centuries after they were left here by Spanish explorers.
Long live the Makah Ozette potatoes!
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It turns out Walt Morgan is not just a gardener. He also is a veteran who will be speaking on Nov. 9 at 11 a.m. at First Christian Church, 111 Prindle St., Chehalis. He’ll be talking about the Honor Flight he took to Washington, D.C., earlier this year. The church, which he has attended for the better part of a century, will be honoring him and other veterans at their service of music and fellowship. All are invited.
Having talked with Walt about his life, I expect this will be a poignant moment with a fascinating senior member of our community in advance of Veteran’s Day.
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Brian Mittge is a community enthusiast who has written for The Chronicle since 2000 as a reporter, editor and columnist. He can be reached at brianmittge@hotmail.com.
