Three Beautiful Things 08/26/17: More Hauling, Stu and Ed, Inland Lounge Crowd

1. I made two trips to St. Vincent de Paul's in Osburn, a last trip to the dump, and a trip to the Fuller Center for Housing Thrift Store in Smelterville. The garage is empty of the boxes and bags I packed. I got as much done, with Christy, Everett, Carol, and Paul's help, as I could within a week's time.  Mom's house is lighter. It's more open. There's more to take care of over the next several weeks.

2. Stu dropped by for a visit this afternoon and we had some very good food at the Hill Street Depot Pub. Ed joined us not long after we arrived and the three of us had a good time yakkin' about all kinds of stuff.

3. After eating a garden fresh BLT, prepared by Christy, I went up town to yak for a while with Bob Casady at the Inland Lounge. It was a great session and helped me dive a little deeper into the world of Kellogg, Idaho where I will soon live. The crowd at the Inland Lounge was good -- well-behaved, happy, and full of vigor. One guy was a miner on strike at the Lucky Friday. Bob had taken a break from running his bar to go to this guy's house to watch the Mayweather/McGregor bout.  I had a long talk about baseball, football, and Oregon with the guy who runs the food bank. The owner of Radio Brewing was in. The woman at the far end of the bar told me she knows all of Paul's family (Taylors and Roberts) because her sister is married to Dave Taylor, Paul's uncle. Charlie, who lives in a room in the Rio Hotel, was at the other end of the bar. I had met Becky, who works at Radio Brewing on Tuesdays, at the Silver Mountain Brewfest and she said hi to me as she walked in with a couple of friends and joined the owner of Radio Brewing at the bar for a while. I talked with County Commissioner Mike Fitzgerald.

Living in Kellogg is going to be very different than Greenbelt, MD and Eugene, OR -- and it's different in a lot of ways from the Kellogg I last lived in back in 1976. Much feels very familiar, but I know it's not the Kellogg that thrived on mining and logging over thirty years ago when there was plenty of work and the town was abuzz with retail and other commercial activity.