1. First, the big news! Every year for as long as I can remember, Ed has asked me if there were any chance I'd be in Kellogg on the third weekend of February for the Kellogg Elks Crab Feed, sponsored by the Past Exalted Rulers. Every year, Ed told me about how he and Nancy and Buff and Kathy and Jake and Carol Lee and Joni and Danny and Sharon and others get together and he sure hoped one day the Deke and I could join them for their annual get together at the annual Crab Feed.
When the Deke and I decided to move to Kellogg back in September, one of the first things Ed said to me when I told him about our decision was, "Well, great! You'll be able to join us for the crab feed in February." Harley and Candy run the Elks, and whenever Ed and I ran into them uptown last fall, Ed always asked Harley when crab feed was going to be, wanting to make sure he had the dates right so he wouldn't make other plans.
So, tonight, February 17th, was the Elks Crab Feed. Harley and Candy had seats reserved for our party in the basement of the Elks. We arrived plenty early. I enjoyed a beer or two and the Deke and I yakked with different people here and there; we saw Christy and Everett and Carol and Paul at their table upstairs. Soon enough, it was time to line up with a plate and have members of the high school's JROTC program plop a whole crab, a container of baked beans, a scoop of coleslaw, and a fresh, soft bread stick on each of our plates and we headed back downstairs to eat.
Throughout the Elks' building, upstairs and down, people were having a blast, talking, laughing, eating, milling around a bit. I felt like I'd been plopped into the happiest place on earth and saw what Ed meant all these years when he told me, "Bill, people absolutely love the crab feed! They have a ball!"
Every day, things happen here in Kellogg that bring to mind what a different world I live in now than all those years in Eugene and those three years in Virginia/Maryland. This crab feed epitomized what a great night out in Kellogg can be -- people giving each other a bad time, picking on each other, people telling stories, laughing, the feeling that a simple all you can eat crab dinner is a royal occasion, and my favorite moment of the night when Harley came to the basement with baskets to pass around so we could tip the JROTC members who were our servers, circulating around the two rooms with buckets of crab, and bussed our tables.
Harley came to the basement after he's solicited tips upstairs and announced what the people upstairs had contributed in tips and announced that he was sure the basement could do even better. He encouraged us to be generous because, "These kids might just save your butts one day!"
Well, the basement contributions fell just short of the upstairs total and, when Harley announced this, hands with different denominations of dollar bills immediately shot up around the room and people added more money to the tips already collected, and I guess those of us in the basement topped the total of what was collected upstairs. The JROTC program ended up with about 1500 dollars in donations to help fund their program.
I also ended the evening with a nice donation for use in my food lab: three 1 gallon ziplock bags worth of crab shells to eventually put in the crockpot and let simmer for a few days to make a soup stock. The first thing I did when I arrived home was freeze the shells and one day I will take them out, clean them, and see what kind of stock results. I don't know what to expect. That's life in the food lab.
2. It snowed like crazy much of the day in Kellogg. If we had many different words for snow, the word to describe today's snow would denote a wet snow falling as big flakes, on the edge of rain. At around two o'clock or so (I guess) the snow subsided and I shoveled away, clearing our sidewalks and the driveway.
3. During the day, the Deke finished knitting a hat for Meredith's daughter. Meredith manages the restaurant at Radio Brewing. Around four o'clock or so, we drove up to Radio Brewing to deliver the hat and Meredith was sure her daughter would love the hat and then she told us how the Deke's children's CD, Come and Go With Me, had saved her family's car vacation last week because repeated playings of the Deke's CD soothed their two year old, helped keep him quiet and content, as he grew tired and cranky because of long hours in the car. She said they must have played the CD about twenty-four times! It worked every time.
By the way, other mothers over the years have told the Deke that this CD had the same effect on their restless children.
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