,
...it sure looks delicious and the web site didn't have a picture of the .halibut dish...yummy!
After a complete fail to meet at the correct spot and time with Phil and Jody which was all my fault (I had wrong cell #, and didn't look under ALL covered parking for them. They very smartly tracked us down at the Hilltop. We ordered halibut dinner early and they ordered halibut dinner and surf and turf a bit later. The house dessert was delicious (I should have only eaten a quarter of the very nice carrot cake). We caught up on all the social and family news. Everyones health seems to be doing well. All realtions were discussed. Surprisingly no politics reared its ugly head. We exchanged correct phone numbers and I got some help entering them in the new cell phone. We had recently been forced to upgrade to newer technology as the older tech was no longer supported by the carrier. Of all the nerve! ...and the staff did not chase us out of there and we spent 2 1/2 hours over dinner, it was a very nice visit, Thanks Bro and Happy Birthday, if you would remember the name of the restaurant that serves the abalone dish, let me know and it's on me. I loves me some abalone.
It was on the evening national news tonight, fifty years ago today the Ford Mustang was introduced to the world. It cost 2700 dollars and my cousin, Carl, purchased one. He drove it to Emmett that late spring. I loved it. He took me for a ride during a school day around lunch time and I got to rather obnoxiously bray at friends, "Yoohoo! See what I'm riding in!!" Carl laughed uproariously.
A few years later I stayed with Carl and Robin for a few months, the Mustang was still struttin'. I spent eight EIGHT hours in the back seat of that very same mustang at the Petaluma Drive-In watching Beach Blanket movies. The seats were cramped, the viewing was iffy because the fog would roll in and out periodically but the night was memorable to my then 17 year old self, it was cool.
The mustang eventually went up on blocks in the garage and was replaced by a Jag XKE which Robin said always reminded her of a dog taking a dump. Carl was dismayed to find that he needed to purchase the English mechanic to keep the thing running.
Eventually Carl's mustang went a way, apparently of the 500,000 units sold in 1964 there are only eight original owners still in possession of their 50 year old time machines. Good for them. Rock on.
so I got up, made a PB&J, glass of milk and sat down to compose some random thoughts.
I listened to an interview on NRP with an author who just published a book on libraries; the one with interesting architecture. I decided to order that book to see if they included the Petaluma Library which is now a museum. It was a Carnegie built in 1904 and was famous for the largest domed glass ceiling. I don't actually remember the dome but inside was a classical temple to books with a fabulous second story you could see from the ground floor. I read a few books there from the summer of 1964 when I stayed with Robin and Carl.
The public library in Emmett, well actually the City Library, used to exist in a house on the street in back of the old Parkview Junior Highschool. The library had books upstairs and in the basement. I had a library card there in my pre-teen years after I had exhausted all reading material that interested me in the school library. The school library was located in an odd little room at the head of the study hall. I was once banned from checking out books from there until my grades improved. I discovered all of the Glenn Balch stories about horses, Nancy Drew. At one point I attempted to emulate the girl in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn who was systemically reading her way alphabetically through the local library there. I found that method boring.
The new City Library is located on the block that used to hold the old Wardwell School. My father attended that school briefly. In my youth the third floor had already been condemned by the time I went there in the fourth grade. Parkview did not have a lunch room so everyone who ate hot lunch marched to Wardwell to eat in the basement. I used to get free meals there and was let out 15 minutes early to work the lunch shift.
I remember the librarians were not too strict about checking out not quite so age appropriate books. They let me check out a sci fi book by Robert A. Heinlein about the human Martian who was raised on Mars and returned to Earth, it was admittedly an adult book but no one knew because it was Sci Fi. Because I was too young they asked that I have an adult okay the book. I believe I asked my cousin to write me a note, Lynn then being a highschool senior I think he actually recommended I read it in the first place come to think of it.
One of the oddities of the City Library was that if you lived within city limits membership was free but if your residence was out in the valley proper there was a fee. The old library became a museum of sorts and the new library is still there. It ain't a gorgeous classical Carnegie but it is mid century modern. Yeah.
