Mitchell Way
The slush pump, or more commonly known as the slide trombone. The instrument which has mystified children since the day it was created — “Mommy, where does that tube go when he slides it back and forth. Into his mouth?”
The instrument which mystified me for over 50 years — “Cripes, where do I position the slide so I don’t make the sound of a bellowing cow?”
In my young years, life was all about flying and before Bellingham airport became a fenced business park which happens to have a runway, it was a young boy’s dream. It was a place where you could ride your bike right up to a parked airplane and press your nose into the window. The smell of aviation oils and leather interiors are still logged in my memory. Evenings, we would bring home model airplanes and spend hours in my bedroom building them, only stopping when we could not see straight from smelling the rubber cement. This of course led to the need to build something bigger which we could make fly, so we put wings on a cart.
It started as any of our other hunting trips — with high hopes and low expectations. Sturgis Fenton and I were going to spend three days hunting the hills of northeast Washington.
Ricky Dandelion, Whatcom County’s foremost authority on guaranteed bad luck in farming, fishing, and camping, had just caught a break. A distant relative had passed away and left Ricky a 5th wheel pop-out trailer. This was indeed an upgrade from his converted school bus camper. Both Ricky and his wife, Venice, were giddy with excitement over the thought of finally being able to camp in style.
It was not unusual for mysterious events to take place around the Mitchell neighborhood in the 1970s. It appeared, to the untrained eye, to be just another group of normal homes with average families, but this was far from the case.
When I was born, the doctor lifted me upside down by the ankles and repeatedly slapped me on the bottom. Since that moment I have had an unnatural fear of piñatas.
Ricky Dandelion walked through knee-high field grass next to his back field property line. It was mid-July, and the grass stalks were getting close to the electric fence wire.
Normally, Ricky and his lovely wife, Venice, would consider it a Saturday date by going out together into the cow field with their matching Stihl-FS131 weed-eaters and cutting the grass away from the fence line, but things were different this year.
Poof! A chalk eraser ricocheted off the top of my head. Chalk dust settled in a cloud around my desk.
“I told you, Mitchell! I told the class that if I caught anyone looking at their keyboard, I would wing an eraser at them. There you were staring at your fingers.”
The rest of the class, afraid to look up from the test cards in front of them, nevertheless, giggled. It was after all, a timed typing test so every word counted.
“Just another ripple on my lake of irritation,” I can almost hear custodian Luke muttering this as he hiked up the stairs to the third floor at Bellingham High School. For some reason the drinking fountain was plugged.
Ho, Ho, No! You ain’t getting me into that thing! And with that, Santa left his sleigh and drove off in his car.
Dad and I stared at each other. “Huh,” he said. “I guess we go with plan B.”
It was the yearly tradition of The Santa flights.
My best friend, Chuck, was sitting across from me in a booth at Bunks Drive-in. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was setting. A blonde woman’s wig lay in the center of the table between our two Cokes.
Not all stories are embellished for a laugh. Some are 100 percent true.
When I think of a US Naval station or base, I think of battleships, destroyers and aircraft carriers moored on long piers. Jeeps shuttle sailors up and down streets lined with large warehouses filled with supplies while tugs escort submarines into the harbor. The Jim Creek Naval Radio Station shattered that stereotype.
“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9
Summertime on the Nooksack River, sitting in an inner tube, floating mile after mile in the warmth of the sun. On any hot weekend in July and August the river is spotted with hundreds of floaters drifting as singles or bunched together in groups. When you are young and haven’t many responsibilities, the river is the place to go.
Right off the bat I know that many of you will scoff at the notion that there may be a spirit world. The idea that there are good spirits as well as a slew of very unsavory ones is to some, a laughable idea. Yet the movie industry makes millions of dollars each year on movies based on the occult and the living dead.
A peanut sat on a railroad track; its heart was all aflutter. Along came a choo-choo train, choo-choo, peanut butter.