Summer may be on it’s way out, the evenings are cooler and it is a bit more comfortable. The thing I don’t like is the fact that the days are getting shorter and shorter. But this is what happens when the seasons change and one just has to accept that is the way it is. I do remember lots of hot beautiful days when school was back in session and it was difficult be in a classroom and all you could do it look out at the beautiful late summer day. So enjoy the last of this season and get ready for fall, my favorite time of year.
Traveling Neighbors
Edy is in Denmark right now, she is on a work trip. I keep reminding her that she is supposed to be retired.
David and Edy are also going to do a road trip to Depot Bay Oregon to meet some family for get together. The Oregon coast is always a great place to visit in the summer •
Chuck and Venita took a little road trip to the Canadian Rockies a few weeks ago.
They entered Canada north of Bonners Ferry, ID, A pass is required to enter Canada, Chuck recommends you go to Arrive Canada to complete the application before traveling. The scenery was spectacular between Banff & Jasper in the Canadian Rockies. They 
managed to find some great restaurants and convenient lodging in both Banff and Jasper. They indicated Jasper was their favorite place they visited, a friendly small-town community offering a wide variety of year around outdoor activities. They drove straight home from Jasper in one day, approximately 550 miles via Hwy 5. The US dollar was 30% stronger than the Canadian Dollar which I’m sure helped with their travels.
Article by Chuck H.
Photo’s by Punette B.
Recipe du Jour
Meatball Pasta Bake
Recipe from Southern Living
Serves 8-10
Ingrédients
1 (16oz) package penne pasta
1 Small, sweet onion, chopped
1 medium-size fennel bulb, thinly sliced (optional
2 Tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 (24 oz) jars marinara sauce
2 (14oz) packages frozen beef meatballs, thawed
1 cup fresh orange juice
¾ cup organic chicken broth
1 tsp firmly packed orange zest
½ tsp kosher salt
1 cup torn fresh basil
1 ½) packages fresh mozzarella cheese sliced
Directions
Step 1
Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare pasta according to package
Step 2
Sauté onion and fennel blub in hot oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat 8-10 minutes or until tender. Add garlic and fennel seeds, and sauté 1 minute. Stir in marinara sauce and next 6 ingredients; increase heat to medium-high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover and simmer 10 minutes. Remove from heat, and stir in basil, cooked pasta, and salt to taste. Transfer to a lightly greased 13X9 inch baking dish. Place dish on a aluminum foil-lined baking sheet. Top with cheese.
Step 3
Bake at 350F for 25 minutes or until bubbly.
This is the dish I made for the Potluck. It also is easily cut in half which is what I do when I’m making it for us.
Restaurant Review
Epulo Bistro
190 Sunset Ave
Edmonds, WA
425-678-8680
Hours
Sun-Thurs 4:00-8:30
Fri-Sat-3:00-9:30
Sun Brunch-11:00-2:30
Happy Hour-Sun-Thur-4:00-6:00 | Sat-3:00 -5:00
I do recommend reservations, it gets busy, they have a nice, covered patio which is lovely this time of year. There is usually plenty of parking
Jerry and I have visited Euplo Bistro recently. We have been happy with the food and quality of the service. They have an outstanding happy hour. Do try the octopus’ appetizer, it was quite tasty.
Community Activities
Shirleen visited the Cascade Art Museum recently and indicated how much she enjoyed it. Right now, there is an exhibit of NW Arts and Craft Movement sponsored by The Chase Family and Friends.
The Museum is located at 190 Sunset Ave #E
Hours-closed Mon. & Tues.
Wed.-Sun.11:00-5:00
Adults $12:00
Seniors-$9:00
Youth-0-18 free
Edmonds Art Studio Tour 2022
Website Edmondsartstudiotour.com
Sept 17 & 18 Sat. & Sun 10AM-5PM
This tour covers 23 studios with 41 participating artists. This is not a walking tour and parking will be available at each stop. This experience allows you to visit local artists, learn abut their process and purchase original artwork. Visit the website to see the variety of artists. It is also FREE
The first official meeting of the RMC book club was held on Aug. 8th at Andi’s. We had a great turnout, 8 guests. Andi served some great goodies. We chatted about This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. It is such a treat to be able to get together with everyone.
Our Sept. meeting will be on Sept 12th at Linda W. #301. We will be discussing The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. Let Linda know you plan to join the group. This is one of 3 books in a series.
Annual Potluck
Well, I think we did have the “best ever” or pretty darn close. If I counted right, there were about 27 of us in attendance. It was so nice to see almost all our new neighbors. Food was abundant and oh so good. We should thank everyone for setting up and breaking down the tables and chairs and arranging the food and beverages. There was a big group that helped do those jobs.
Tips Du Jour
I found a fantastic cleaner. The name of it is Well Done St Moritz, oil, and grease remover. You know how your cookie sheets get that orange burnt on crud from many batches of cookies, also it also collects on the bottom of skillets and pans. Well, this stuff works, I found about it when I was looking on the Facebook page for my June Smart Oven. Someone recommended this product to clean June.
Make sure you use rubber gloves are to be at least careful when using it.
Apple Watch Charger
I was lucky enough to get a new Apple watch recently. The charger that came with the watch is a bit of a challenge, not especially user friendly. Jerry went online and found me a great little gizmo that works like a champ. Here is the site he used to order it.
Tomato Crop
Myrna’s variety is Sun Gold, a sweet yellow cherry tomato. Carole’s variety is Super Fantastic VF. As you can see in the photo’s their tomato plants are flourishing. It won’t be long before they are harvesting their crop. John should be very proud of his “tomato farmers”.
Short Stories
We have had a couple of our neighbors submitting a couple of pieces, one a short piece of fiction and another nonfiction. I hope you enjoy them.
GRANDMA’S DOWRY
by David Ridge
I guess I’m not certain that this is truly about Grandma’s Dowry, but it’s something like that. My Grandmother (Alice Belle McLean) was born 13 years after the end of the Civil War. She was the sixth child of Daniel Neal McLean and Mary Ann “Molly” Matilda Mason. They lived in a small community located in the middle of Louisiana’s Kisatchie National Forest. The McLean’s came to know my Grandfather Victor Hinkle Ridge, probably in the late 1880’s or early 1890’s as he was a rural postman in that area. His family lived in Alexandria and were blacksmiths, the same as Dan McLean.
Grandpa Vic was 35 years old when he married the 23-year-old Alice on September 11, 1902. Vic had been running his own blacksmith shop for some years by then and had been in business with his future father-in-law, Dan, as early as 1895.
When Victor and Alice married, Dan gave her some money for herself. (Her Dowry?) In about 1944, when I would have been about 10 years old, I was farmed out for the summer to visit with my relatives in Alexandria. Grandma Alice got bored with me tagging after her all the time or maybe tired of me commenting on her cheating at solitaire, and she drug out her metal treasure box to distract me. Memory fails as to what all was in the box…some jewelry, some papers…, but she pulled out a gold coin and a stack of paper money her dad had given her. I think the coin was a $20 gold eagle (?) that she had kept all those years as her “mad money”. (All gold was supposed to have been turned in to the government for paper money during the 1930’s when the U.S. went off the “gold standard”.) The stack of paper money she had was Confederate money from Civil War days!
Grandma Alice gave me $51 of Confederate money from her stash, and I have it to this day. As things went bad for the South during the Civil War, the paper money would buy less and less. People would still sell you products or services for silver or gold money, but the paper money had been printed in such quantity to support the South’s war effort that it was nearly valueless by 1865 at the end of the war. If you expected someone to put a new iron horseshoe on your horse and then pay for it with Confederate money, you had to do some negotiating ahead of time. Payment could be a whole box of money. More likely, it would have involved some trading….a bag of potatoes or a day or two of work.
The bills Grandma gave me are fragile now, nearly 150 years after being printed. Some of these may even be worth something, although there were barrels of Confederate money left around at the end of the war. Some of the bills had even been printed on wallpaper, as even paper got scarce towards the end. The most curious piece I have is a $1 bill from The State of Louisiana printed in February 1862, shortly after the start of the war. On the back of the bill are halves of $5 notes, printed perpendicularly.
Two $5 bills I have are also from The State of Louisiana. The first was from Baton Rouge, October 10, 1862. The second is from Shreveport, March 10, 1863. Baton Rouge was the state capitol at the start of the war, but when U.S. ships came up the Mississippi and captured it, Shreveport was made capitol. That must have been around the dates shown on the bills.
Lastly, I have two $20 bills, both from Richmond, Virginia, and printed on February 17, 1864. These may be larger bills because $5 wouldn’t go as far as it used to by 1864. The serial numbers on these notes are nearly the same.
Notice all of these bills promise to pay X dollars to the bearers on demand. They don’t say whether you’ll be paid in gold, or silver, or copper, or potatoes. With the U.S. current and future forecast debts, maybe our dollar will be as good as the Confederate dollar soon?
Notice also that all the bills are individually signed, once or twice, and have handwritten serial numbers. I wonder who got that crummy job all day long? Now that I think about it, I’ve had some jobs like that myself.
David N. Ridge | June 16, 2022 | Unit 311
Regula & Ozzie
by John Weschler
Allow me to anthropomorphize. An unusual silent dialogue occurred last night in my neighborhood.
I’ll call her Regula. She’s the blinking red light at the intersection that calls out to drivers, 24 hours a day, “Stop. Look. Listen.’’ She’s had her eye on him, day after day, for months, maybe even years. He has a part-time job in the neighborhood. His work is to stay on the lookout for mostly men, those guys who drive by, walk past, or pedal by on thin-tired bicycles. He quietly calls out. “Hey! Come on in for a haircut. I’m Open.’’
I’ll call him Ozzie. Ozzie has regular hours, 9 to 6, Tuesday through Friday and 9 to 2:30 on Saturday. Since he doesn’t have to go home, he Just closes his eye after hours and goes right to sleep. Usually.
Last night I looked out my window and noticed that something was different. Ozzie was lit up like a sign and he spent the entire night calling out, “I’m Open. It’s time for a haircut. Come on in.’’ To the couples, out for an evening stroll, he intoned, “Send him in. He needs a trim. I’m Open.” He waited patiently for the joggers, the thinlyclads who hurry by in the night, and called out, “Hey sweathead, you need a haircut too. It’s worth a stop. I’m Open.” I can just imagine what it was like in the dead time of 3:33 AM: “ Shave and a haircut. Two Bits.” “Hey, paper delivery man. Am I ever glad to see you. Want a haircut? I’m Open. ”
Well, if last night was different, today is too. I’ve noticed that Open is not his usual placid self. In fact, he seems a bit excited. He’s waiting for his owner, yes the one who forgot to turn him off yesterday, because for the very first time in all these years, he’s putting in for OVERTIME! Imagine that.
But I digress. There’s a story of unrequited love yet to be told. This morning Regula was dutifully enjoying her power trips with the commuters down from Woodway and Edmonds and the yawning bus drivers and one-to-a-car drivers up from the shore lines of Shoreline. I asked her, “What’s this thing you have with Open?” Care to comment?”
“Oh yes, it’s OK. I’ve been trying to flirt with him for a long time. What other prospects are there for a gal like me, hung up here in the middle of nowhere? Last night I thought to myself, now things might get interesting. After six PM, he did’t have anybody behind him to listen to like he does during the daytime. Sometimes he gets to laughing so hard I don’t know how he keeps a straight face. But tonight he’ll be Open and he’ll be all mine for the rest of the night!
About seven, I turned on the charm. I winked. I coyly blinked. I hinted that maybe later we could make rainbows together. I could see he really didn’t have anything he had to do. Talk about being dense! It was, “Regula, don’t bother me. I’m Open for business.” Duh. Didn’t he notice things were not exactly normal? During the 10 to midnight dead time when even the oil tankers had stopped running up the hill from Paramount Oil, Open stared straight ahead. Cotta give him credit for trying though. “Even bald guys need a trim once in a while. I’m Open. Get a haircut.”
“You know,” she said to me, “nobody wants to be an Old Maid. I’m fresh outta ideas. But I’ll hang in there.”
Mail Box Cleanup
by Kaare Otnes
Are you sick and tired, or just tired of, getting that weekly collection of QFC/Fred Meyer/Safeway/Rite Aid advertising in your mailbox that your are immediately compelled to drop into the nearest recycling basket?
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