Is it the chill on the backs of our necks, or the acceleration of our hearts pounding in our chests that make us watch scary movies or listen intently to stories of the unexplained? Our fundamental human desire to explore the boundaries of fear and anxiety all the while knowing we are safe and secure in a movie theater, in our living room or with friends around a campfire. With Halloween about a week away, the time is right to explore more unexplained mysteries of the West End.
The other night, I read a Facebook thingy about Initiative 594 (gun control measure). It instructed Forks folks to vote no on the initiative because the entire town of Forks is going to be jailed if it passes. According to the Facebook thingy, merely handing your gun to anyone, including your dog, will get you thrown in jail if you do not go through the proper channels of transfershipness.
I had a great job, but no address. My general orders were to promote public safety and be on hand for cliff or water rescues. I walked all day around Great Falls and on the C & O Towpath.
For a while, I camped out and stayed with friends. The Park Service always is going on about crisp uniforms and I got written up a few times for looking like the homeless bum I was. I needed an address, but I couldn’t reconcile myself to going back to suburbia.
I wonder if you have perhaps considered just getting a job. By job, I mean where you would work for a legitimate business and receive a legitimate paycheck. This seems like such a Captain Obvious solution, but maybe no one has ever suggested this to you before? Maybe you have never even heard of jobs. It may be hard to believe now, but it is hip to be square. Jobs surprisingly come with a lot of perks.
Just six days ago at 3:10 p.m., Friday, the Olympic Apartment building burned down, after a gas explosion shattered it and glass windows as far as three blocks away.
Mrs. Alice Coyle was burned badly and 33 people were made homeless. Damage has been estimated near the $100,000 mark.
There is an epidemic in Forks, an epidemic of irresponsible pet owners. People are dumping, leaving, abandoning cats all over town. Some of the worst areas have been Steven’s Grove Mobile Home Park, Castle Rock, and near B & P Auto on Sol Duc Way. What is the problem? Well, they are ill and starving and it doesn’t have to be that way and a good place to start is if people would only get their pets spayed and neutered.
The history behind how Forks was named is not a mystery. Pretty much everyone here knows that the Calawah, Bogachiel and Sol Duc rivers once had an abundance of silverware flowing through them. Unfortunately, due to the Utensil Rush of 1910 (another part of history that pretty much everyone here knows about), the once proud silverware population is now almost non-existent. It’s a sad tale really, but while how Forks was named is not news to anyone, perhaps there are some who do not know how the rivers around here were named?
A few weeks ago, after a particularly tough week down at the city hall, the mayor stopped by Dave Zellar’s office and said to Dave, “After a week like that, you really need to paint the town red this weekend!” Dave, who is in charge of painting projects in Forks, took these words literally and got to work immediately.
There are a lot of things that Forks is good at, like rain and generosity, but, one thing we are really not good at is keeping a secret.
Last year at this time I was working at Forks City Hall, the mayor came up to the front counter area and motioned to my co-worker Valerie Russell and me to come over closer to him; he whispered that we might want to dress especially nice the next day. I guess our regular attire of riggin’ pants, hickory shirts and suspenders was a little too casual for his taste. So, being slow-witted it did not hit my brain that something special was going to happen the next day, but my co-worker was on it. She said, “Stephenie Meyer is coming tomorrow.”
The Forks Forum was started around 1930. The Forum office has fairly good archives of hard copies of old newspapers from 1940 until the present day. The only hard copies of the 1930s are thanks to someone that sent some papers that they found back to the Forum at some point in time.
The old papers have very few photos not until the 1970s are there many pictures of local people and events.
Steller’s jays were discovered on an Alaskan island in 1741 by 33 year old Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-1746) a German naturalist on Vitus Bering’s last expedition. When a scientist officially described the species, in 1788, he named it after Steller.
Last week, there was an announcement that money is available for projects that promote tourism. I think this is the wrong time to announce this. At the end of August, there isn’t a single Forks resident thinking, “What we really need are MORE tourists on the road right now!” Thankfully, once November hits, our wounds from tourist season usually are heale.
Bob Bowlby looked like just a sweet old guy in a string tie with a cane, who wouldn’t say “boo” to a butterfly.
But during the memorial in honor of his life at the Sekiu Community Center, Saturday, Aug. 23, a building full of family and friends and a feast of potluck food from the Strait communities, the truth came out. Family members, from as far away as Hawaii, stood up, and, laughing and crying, remembered and shared tales of an uninhibited life.
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