2. I don't remember the last time Linda Lavigne (KHS, '71) and I had a conversation. Oh -- I've run into her at the last couple of all-class reunions, but it was just a "Hi! How are ya? Great! Great to see you!" kind of thing. Around 4:30, I swung by Linda's place out in what we used to call The Canyon and we rocketed in the Sube to the Northern Quest Casino to join forces with Mary Chase and Kathy Brainard to play trivia at the Riverbank Taphouse.
Linda and I have deep roots in the Silver Valley. We grew up in the same church. We knew a lot of the same people in high school. We've both experienced our share of difficulties over the years -- so we had a lot to talk about going to Northern Quest and coming back. I learned a lot about Linda's family, about people with whom we went to high school, people I've lost track of, but whom Linda has been good friends with over the years, about friends of her family, and much more.
Linda carries many especially fond memories of our church when it was uptown across from what is now Radio Brewing. Her stories and memories about the creaky interior of the building, the smells of our church, the thrift store the church ran just down the street, and other things helped fragments of my own memories surface. Linda expressed deep affection for our church and I enjoyed how her memories stirred my affection for the place, too.
3. I don't remember the last time I visited the Northern Quest Casino. The place has undergone a ton of expansion since I was last there. Linda and I strolled in, immediately spotted the Riverbank Taphouse, settled in at a table and ordered drinks (I enjoyed a very good wet hop 2IPA from Crux) and soon Mary and Kathy popped in and joined us. I ordered a plate of delicious Bahn Mi Chicken Tacos with an Asian slaw on the side and soon the guy running the trivia game got tonight's action rolling.
The four of us had a lot of fun. Yeah, we got stumped a few times -- we were not very strong when it came to #1 country music hits -- but we got questions about Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, and a few others right! Mary and I were disappointed in ourselves that we couldn't come up with the Greek historian Herodotus as the answer to the last, and most difficult, question of the night.
So, we didn't win the trivia game, but, a panel of highly trained experts determined that our team name, "The Slam Dunkers" was the best name in the room and so we won a bag of prizes that included Skittles, Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, a Red Hook beer glass, stickers from Fremont Brewing, and a keychain with a Lilliputian flip-flop attached to it. (Did I forget anything?) Team names had to include "lam" in them.
At the end of the competition, our server snapped our picture. I don't think our faces are showing too much strain and fatigue after about 90 minutes of trying to answer grueling questions about fruits, US presidents, country music, and other random categories!
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| L to R: Bill, Linda, Mary, Kathy |
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