You know the old saying, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” and it’s never been more true than this summer. Just a few days ago, it seems, we were celebrating the Fourth of July, and here we are now, listening to endless “back to school sales” blather and having planned our Labor Day festivities. If it continues to fly by at this rate, we’ll be picking up the Thanksgiving turkey before we turn around twice.
Are you old enough to remember what a “Dear John” letter was? I’m not sure if such a thing still exists in this day of instant communication with our devices; perhaps now you simply text the person you want to “dump” and do it. But, during several of our assorted wars, large and small, when a soldier on deployment received a “Dear John” letter, it meant that the person supposedly waiting for him to return was, in fact, not going to wait after all, and was informing him of the situation in that letter. We all knew what “getting a Dear John letter” meant.
I love it when something I’m not supposed to be eating turns out to be good for me after all, and it has happened, over the years, several times.
It’s hard for me to believe, now, that I ever uttered the words, loud enough for all around me to hear, “Salmon again? I’m really really tired of salmon every night!”
How could I ever have been tired of salmon? Well, my grandfather, father, two uncles and a couple of cousins were all avid fishermen, going out every weekend unless the waves in the bay or on Hood Canal were three feet high or more. And after my grandfather retired, he was out in the boat, line in the water, every day from dawn to dusk. Among them all, they caught a lot of salmon, their preferred catch. An occasional cod or sole was acceptable, but it was salmon they were after, and salmon they got, which of course they shared with all the family members who lived in Shelton and nearby.
February may be short compared to all the other months, but it’s certainly not short on days of importance.
Here we are, smack in the middle of holiday party time, awaiting Santa’s visit followed by the close of another year.
Have you ordered your Thanksgiving turkey yet? If not, you might want to consider giving up the old Butterball in favor of a big, fat bird that’s been tippling on beer for the better part of its short, but no doubt happy life.
The scariest, yet funniest, Halloween of my long life happened just three years ago, and every year when Halloween rolls around my memory banks fill my head with that day and evening.
“I wish you’d stop yakking about zucchini and give me some help with eggplant. I’m tired of eggplant Parmesan.” That’s one of the more blunt requests I’ve had in the past couple of weeks for eggplant recipes.
As hard as it is to believe, Labor Day is over and school has started.
Far be it from me to disappoint regular readers, from whom I’ve already had a few e-mails regarding this topic, so I think you know what today is all about. If it’s late August, it’s time for, (fanfare please), THE BIG Z column.
Depending upon whether you’re reading this Wednesday or Saturday, you may or may not already have been to the fair. If you haven’t yet taken yourself to one of our island’s major summer events, do it before it’s too late. And if you have already been, I needn’t say more, except “lucky you.”
Much has been said and written about the legalization of marijuana and its many ramifications.
