Flags, football, food, and some friends | Life in Ludlow

Posted

The last holiday weekend of the summer was pretty nice. The flags were flying, it was the first college football weekend, the Mariners were playing and the Storm was, too. The really good news is the closest we got to the tourist crowds was a fun breakfast at The Dusty Green Café at the Port Ludlow Golf Club.

Once again more than 130 of your neighbors and some local businesses subscribed to the Rotary Club fundraiser putting up 330 American flags around the area. There were even some nice breezes keeping the flags at attention for most of the weekend. Some of the flags went up Thursday while others went up Friday and Saturday. Getting the 20 Rotarians to all do something at the same time and on the same schedule would be like getting Donald Trump to give back the nation’s secrets when asked. No, not really that hard.

Traditionally on Saturday morning after the flags have been put up we try to get together for breakfast someplace. Past places for meeting have included Snug Harbor and El Molcajete. The Snug Harbor has sadly been closed for a few years and El Molcajete is not really open for breakfast. They did open early for us a few times, but we could never guarantee it would be worth their while to do so. As a result, the usual destination is the Dusty Green.

Last Saturday flag floggers John Ericson, Brian Belmont and wife Dana, Karen Best, Pat Cooper, BJ, and I were there swapping flag erection and other stories. Actually, I think Pat is there every Saturday morning telling and embellishing stories with folks such as Don Clark, Jim Watson, and several others.

Jim greeted me with a hearty, “Hello you old curmudgeon.” Where do people get these ideas?

In addition to the folks enjoying breakfast there was a wayward bird unable to find the large door open for it to escape. We heard it had been there over a day and was clearly showing signs of being unable to find an exit.

Dana told a story about Brian actually catching a parakeet mid-flight with his hand some time ago as it was attempting to break free of the home where it lived.

So, Brian once again demonstrated his bird-catching skills as he deftly reached up over the door where the bird was recovering from its exhausting attempts to escape the confines of the café, retrieving it, and then releasing it back to the freedom of the golf course woods.

The crowd wanted to see Karen Best save the patrons from the bird, but if you know Karen, she is roughly half the size of Brian. Truthfully, if you know Brian, you know his bird-catching skills are almost wholly dependent on his height!

Now for some sports news you probably did not know you needed to know.

At this writing I suspect many of us are happy with the Mariners and their seven-game winning streak. It does look like they will qualify for postseason play for the first time in a very long time.

The University of Washington Huskies football team looked good beating the “Golden Flashes of Kent State.” Washington State University survived a battle with the Idaho Vandals.

As far as I know there are no other athletic teams with a mascot called a “Golden Flash” which looks like a chicken on steroids and a yellow beak. The only team that comes close is the Minnesota “Golden Gophers”. I suggest that their mascot at least looks like a gopher.

Continuing in the same vein, the Wabash “Little Giants” did beat the Hampton-Sydney College Tigers 52-48 last Saturday. I know of no other college athletic mascot either named or looking like a “Little Giant.” (There was a movie named “Little Giants” in 1994 about a fictional kids team.) However, there may be thousands of teams using a tiger for their mascot. One example is the DePauw University Tigers who beat Rose-Hulman University 17-14.

Another example is the Lee’s Summit Tigers, the high school from which potential Seahawks quarterback Drew Lock matriculated.

Yep, you didn’t know you needed to know any of that stuff and you probably didn’t. I hope you had a great Labor Day weekend.

Love a curmudgeon and have a great week.

(Ned Luce is a retired IBM executive and Port Ludlow resident. And with 647 columns under his belt, he is the Leader’s unofficial official mascot. The costume comes with big yellow boots and a cape. Email Ned at ned@ptleader.com.)