Thoughts on the weather, reunions and hunting season

Not long ago, a few days at most, I began thinking about ... well lots of things.

Weather

When asked, I explain the weather in Moses Lake as having a few days over 100 degrees every year and a few days below zero every year. It has been a long time, if ever, since I remember having so many days above 95 degrees as we experienced lately.

It can be speculated the weather produced many hot days before the irrigation project was in place. My mother says she remembers more dusty days around the Columbia Basin in the 1940s.

There were more days when the temperature was below zero in the past, too. I even remember the low hitting 25 below once.

The appealing and attractive part of Basin weather is the fact we enjoy four seasons. The weather was mainly warm and humid when attending flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama. This did not appeal to me at all, but I suffered through the torture.

Vietnam was not pleasant either, with the weather hot and humid, worse than Alabama. An olive drab-colored towel was draped over my shoulder most of the time to mop up the sweat during my time there.

It was mandatory to down two pills every day, a salt pill and a malaria pill, and both were huge.

The country where stationed which was most like the Basin, weather wise, was Korea. The seasons were arrived in dramatic fashion, almost to the day; one day it was winter and then next it was spring, with no mixing of the two.

I suspect the Basin would suffer hotter weather and colder weather without the arrival of water with the irrigation project. Just thinkin'...

Class reunion

The Moses Lake High School Great Class of 1965 is preparing for their 50th class reunion. The official dates are Aug. 28, 29 and 30, with a no host gathering at Chico's on Aug. 27.

We have a closed Facebook page, meaning a person must be invited to join. This allows us to control the members and a bunch of the content. We are 122 members strong as of Wednesday.

We also invite members of other classes, before and after 1965, plus family and friends of classmates. If you know a member of our class and would like to join the Facebook page, let me know.

We are sharing photos of classmates from our elementary school days to the present. Stories, old and new, are flowing freely. This is a great way to become reacquainted before the reunion.

One classmate commented, "Are three days going to be enough?"

Good question, but the Facebook page gets us through the catching-up phase of the getting to know each other again.

Hunting and fishing in the 1960s has been a frequent topic on the page. It was common to have a shotgun in the backseat of the vehicle and we would shoot a limit of pheasants before heading home.

The sad part of gathering information about the location of classmates is discovering the members of our class who have passed away. This is true of every class, of course, but sad just the same.

I placed an old Chico's Pizza newspaper ad on the Facebook page one day. John Walsh commented, "I want to go and have a Chico's pizza while in Moses Lake."

"When are you gonna do that, John," I said. "We have a Friday night dinner and a Saturday night dinner. Why don't you arrive on Thursday and we can head to Chico's in the evening."

Well this started a landslide of classmates changing motel reservations to arrive on Thursday instead of Friday. We now have the back room reserved, but still don't know how many people will attend the pizza party.

Perhaps I should ask on the Facebook page who will attend and who wants me to order for them early, as customers will wait up to two and three hours on a busy night at Chico's. Yes, having the orders delivered to Chico's a day early will help Chico's and classmates. Just thinkin'...

Hunting season

Hunting season is just a month or so away. The grouse and dove seasons begin on Sept. 1. Some big game seasons also begin in August and September.

Perhaps Garnet and I should consider a grouse hunting trip with a fishing trip in September to Alta Lake. This would allow hunting for grouse in the morning and evening, plus fishing during the rest of the day.

The hot dry weather may make for a difficult hunting season though. Weather such as this has closed hunting seasons in the past.

We need rain as soon as the wheat harvest is complete. Just thinkin'...