Three Beautiful Things 07-17-2023: Light Meal for Family Dinner, Family Histories, The Most Fun I'd Ever Had

1. Debbie and I hosted family dinner this evening and Debbie did most of the heavy lifting preparing the meal we served. She roasted a whole chicken in the morning and later in the day, once it cooled, assembled a very tasty chicken salad with orzo, garlic, tomatoes, red onion, cucumber, basil, and other ingredients. 

I contributed by purchasing a couple of baguettes at Beach Bum Bakery. I also emptied and loaded the dishwasher to help Debbie keep the kitchen somewhat uncluttered while she made the salad. 

I was also tonight's bartender and we had a simple and reliable cocktail: rum and coke with lime.

For an appetizer, Debbie slathered a block of cream cheese with Harry and David's Pepper and Onion Relish and we put this combo on Triscuit crackers.

We had a frozen dessert -- they weren't popsicles, per se, but the same idea. 

2. Paul's mom, Pat, is in town until after the All-Class Reunion. She's a 1954 graduate of Kellogg High School and has clear memories of life in Kellogg in the past. We had fun discussions about the stores and the cafes and the joints that used to line the two main streets of uptown Kellogg and we learned more about Pat's family as she grew up. 

Our looking back at Kellogg and Pat's history segued nicely into Carol telling us about letters she has transcriptions of that our great-grandmother wrote to the governor of Tennessee, urging him to pardon our great-grandfather who had shot and killed another man in an alcohol fueled incident. Her pleas eventually succeeded. This led to us talking about the Wilson family, how large it was, and how Grandma Woolum's siblings are divided by a time gap. Grandma was one of the older siblings, then her dad went to prison, but upon being released, Grandma's Mom and Dad had more children and so there was a significant age gap between the older and younger Wilson siblings.  

Quite a story! 

3. Yesterday I wrote about listening to Emerson, Lake, & Palmer and memories of hanging out at The Cockroach Castle during my freshman year at North Idaho College. It made me especially happy that I got responses from both Jane and Liz. Liz and I both marveled at what a relatively short amount of time, just a few months, we all spent at The Castle. In her mind, as well as mine, that glorious time had expanded, had come to seem much longer than it was. I'd say, though, if time is measured by fun, exploration, experimentation, and the joy of being together with one another and having one blast after another, then, for my spirit, that was a long and full period of time that the calendar cannot measure, one of the most important in my life. Sharing so much of it with Liz contributed mightily to it being more fun than I'd ever had before.