Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Sorted by date Results 276 - 300 of 589
Heart BEAT WAITSBURG - The first thing you see is a pan of the wheat fields, followed by a drive through town: the stately early-century homes, campus-like sidewalks and the downtown Main Street core. Then suddenly, Paul Gregutt and Karen Stanton Gregutt are greeting you from the kitchen aisle of their new Three Maples Cottage on Third and West. "You," that is, if you happened to be among the hundreds of guests attending the Auction of Washington Wines' Gala at Chateau Ste. Michelle in...
WAITSBURG - It was never Wyatt Withers' sole inspiration for going in the Navy, but once he had decided to join it certainly helped having a grandfather who had served in the same branch many decades ago. Choosing to be "seasick over digging a fox hole," longtime local farmer Jack McCaw went to amphibian training school in preparation of the Allied invasion of Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He became part of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's occupation force in Japan...
WAITSBURG - Despite losing four combines to accidental fires in the past week, despite dealing with lodged grain and some rust, and despite the prospect of losing some hired help from students and teachers going back to school soon, grain growers in the Touchet Valley aren't complaining about this year's harvest. "This is one of the best crops we've had in recent memory," said Guy McCaw of 4MC, one of the area's largest growing operations in the area stretching over 70 miles and 18,000 acres fro...
Heart BEAT About Needs & Good Deeds P RESCOTT - Perry Dozier remembers going into the Prescott Lions Club building when he was a kid. The wheat grower and county commissioner whose farm is close to town would go there for Boy Scouts meetings, while his parents would attend dances on the second floor during New Year's Eve. "The Lions hall has been a part of my whole life growing up," he said. So when members of the club approached him with a novel fundraising idea to pay for a new roof and other...
Former Nurse Leads Primary Results DAYTON - This fall's general election runoff for Board of Commissioners Position 2 of the Columbia County Health District will be between Colleen Sproul and Blaine Bickelhaupt. With all ballots counted in the Waitsburg portion of Walla Walla County and Columbia County Tuesday night, Sproul led Bickelhaupt 41.25 percent to 37.9 with Garry Snyder, the third candidate trailing at 20.86 percent. Sproul, a former nurse, performed particularly well in Columbia...
WAITSBURG - Rick Smith claims he started his non-stop yard sale a few months ago, after he found work as a logger in upper Michigan and decided to get rid of some surplus household goods before moving there. What better way to sell them than in the yard in front of his trailer situated at the very visible corner of Warren and Second (Highway 124). The stuffed animals were in the front row this weekend, seated together on a bench not far from a variety of shop tools flanked by furniture, books,...
WALLA WALLA - Before William Shakespeare became a wellknown playwright, he was an actor with Pembroke's Men about a decade before the end of the 16th century. Perhaps more than anyone, the English bard knew that actors feed off their audience. A silent, immovable crowd can kill a good play. A responsive one can inspire actors and lift their performance. So, when it came time to design their own theater in the heart of Elizabethan London, Shakespeare and his friends from the world of drama knew...
WAITSBURG - We'd almost forgotten about the Classic Car Show Cruise when we heard the car horns down on Main Street. We were having a barbeque on the patio behind the house. My friend Michael Bryant Brown, visiting from Bainbridge Island along with my father in law and his girl friend - all here for the grand opening of the coffee shop - noticed it first. He thought it was a freight train coming down the track by the Touchet River. We knew better. We peered between our home and our neighbor's,...
WAITSBURG - Standing over the engine of a 2012 Mustang with his young son Race, Reece Hubbard was melancholy for the car he was recently forced to sell. "It was a 2008 Mustang Bullitt, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the '68 version," he said, recalling the movie Bullitt with Steve Mc- Queen, who helped make the model famous. "They only made 5,800 and my mine was #5,780. " With his wife out of work for a year following an injury, he had no other choice, but he still pines after the car...
DAYTON - Kevin Carson must have been about 12 when his parents introduced him to books about Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. He devoured the l ike s of "Hear Me My Chiefs" by Lucullus Mc- Whorter and "I Will Fight No More Forever" by Merril Beal. Growing up in a household that admired the Native leader and sympathized with his plight as the last holdout of his tribe, the irony of his own ancestry wasn't lost on the teenager. As the great great great grandson of Dayton Volunteer Lieutenant Levi...
DAYTON - Imagine downloading a music album in five seconds or a one-hour TV show in half a minute at home or the library. Or picture going to Dayton General Hospital and having your doctor share your X-rays with another medical expert in Walla Walla or Spokane so you don't have to drive all the way there. Such conveniences aren't too far into the future because plans are in the works to make Waitsburg and Dayton stops on a new fiber optic super highway that will bring high-speed broadband to rural communities throughout the state. Some compare...
WAITSBURG - By the time this edition of the newspaper comes out, Coppei Coffee will be open or be just about to have its soft opening. Our grand opening, as we reported last week, is scheduled to coincide with the openings of Betty's Diner and the Anchor Bar on Classic Auto Show weekend this Friday and Saturday. As part of our continuing introduction of Coppei Coffee, we thought we might discuss our menu and go over some espresso terms. With the evolution of espresso culture in our country, it m...
DAYTON - Harvest is barely underway and it's still a month before the new school year starts, but in the Touchet Valley it's never too early to start talking about upcoming high school sports. The 2011-2012 season will see some big changes for students, parents and coaches who meet in Dayton this Thursday and in Waitsburg on Aug. 15 to prepare for fall sports. The biggest shift at the top comes from the resignation of Jack Smiley as Athletic Director for Prescott High School after two decades...
DAYTON - It isn't too often that you can sit at a fine-linen banquet table outdoors enjoying the farm-fresh cuisine of a Whitehouse Crawford chef one day and get your paper plate piled high with some of the best chuck wagon chuck in the west the next. Yet, that was my culinary journey two weeks ago. I attended the four-course natural gourmet dinner hosted by the international Outstanding In The Field group at the Monteillet Fromagerie on Wednes- day. On Friday, we were in line for the chuck...
HUNTSVILLE - Zooming by on Highway 12, it's easy to miss the unassuming signs that mark the county line. "Entering Columbia County" reads the one going east. "Entering Walla Walla County" greets drivers going west. Most motorists pay them scant attention. But not businessman John Palmer. The owner of the new Ace Landscaping nursery, who barely needs binoculars to read the Walla Walla county sign, says it spells unfair competition to him, at least until Columbia County officials amend their...
WAITSBURG - More than 100 family members and local friends of Dennis Nostrant showed up for a dinner and silent auction at the fairgrounds Saturday, hoping to give the father of two a "second chance" at life, as his sister Susan Skeeters put it. The event raised more than $6,000 for Nostrant's transplant fund. The engineer, once a bar owner in Dayton and a longtime former resident of Waitsburg, needs a liver transplant to survive his late 50s. About one year ago, he discovered he has cirrhosis a...
DAYTON - Federal, state and local law enforcement officials on Monday seized 2,000 marijuana plants with a street value of $3 million from a grow in the upper Tucannon River drainage in the Umatilla National Forest after they arrested a suspect at a nearby location last week. Santiago Orozco-Contreras, 41, a Mexican national with a last known address in the Tri-Cities, was booked into Columbia County jail on Thursday on suspicion of possession of a firearm and of manufacturing marijuana. The arrest was made in the same general area of the...
DAYTON - Susan Hosticka always wanted to do a "bee beard" to prove the hard-working insects are really quite gentle and harmless despite their reputation to the contrary. Late last month, during a field day for the state's beekeepers association at Washington State University, she finally had her Fear Factor moment when 4,000 bees crawled and buzzed around her shoulders, neck and head. "Not a single sting," said the co-owner of Octopus Garden Honey on South Touchet Road near Dayton. "It kind of...
PRESCOTT - Last summer, a Canadian bicycle rider making her way across the country stopped in Waitsburg. Being from the wheat belt in the flat-as-a-pancake province of Saskatchewan, she remarked on the pitch of the wheat fields in the hills around the Touchet Valley. "Our farmers wouldn't know what to do with that," she said about the challenge of cultivating such steep terrain. Growing wheat in the rolling Palouse has never been easy. There's not enough rainfall for an annual crop on higher...
DAYTON - Jitters may be closed, but the Underwoods remain on Main. Scott and Yara Underwood, who started Jitters more than a year ago, closed the coffee shop at the end of May citing an overload of work for their young family. But the household still needed a place to relocate their PC Solutions operations, which had been in the back of the building, so they got the store front that's popularly known as the "Snowflake" building. "This is the first space we've set up exactly how we wanted," said...
WAITSBURG - The Travel Section of the Seattle Times has selected the roads in the Waitsburg-Dayton area as one of the best five routes in the state for riding or driving. In a piece called "Five Roads To Nowhere: The Best Of Washington's Boonies," guide book author Mike McQuaide selected " the roly-poly Dr. Seuss-esque hills surrounding charming Waitsburg and Dayton in the southeast corner of the state" as one of his favorite paddling and wheeling loops. The others include Bad- ger Mountain-Waterville northeast of Wenatchee; Tanasket-Oroville n...
DAYTON - Former Columbia County Sheriff 's Deputy Mark Franklin violated three aspects of his employer's policies and procedures, a misstep that would have triggered his suspension if he were still working in that capacity, Sheriff Walt Hessler said Tuesday. Franklin resigned in early June pending an investigation by the Asotin County Sheriff's Office into allegations that he conducted himself less than professionally during an incident at and near the Midway convenience store and fueling station in Waitsburg in February. Investigators, who...
Heart BEAT About Needs & Good Deeds T HORNTON, Wash. - Dennis Nostrant had not been feeling well all day. It was April 7, 2010. As an engineer for Hardcon Co based in Spokane, he was getting together with county officials, engineers, contractors and subs for a bridge construction project near Kettle Falls in Stevens County. But when it came time for the site meeting, he had to step behind one of the pickup trucks to throw up. He was shocked to see it was mostly blood. His liver had stopped...
WALLA WALLA - Former Waitsburg resident Adam Hermanns was sentenced late last week to five months in Walla Walla County Jail as part of the first of several cases against him in Superior Court. Two more trials that could lead to much longer sentences await Hermanns, the first of which begins on Wednesday, July 13. The second has been set for July 18. Hermanns, who pleaded guilty to the charge of theft in the second degree last month for taking automotive parts from the Waitsburg property of Todd and Beth Ann Wood on Jan. 21 this year, was...
WALLA WALLA - On a trip to the south of France in the late 1990s, Marvin Wood saw Petanque played for the first time. In the late afternoon, the men would come out to the sun-splashed gravel courts under shade trees in the parks or along the boulevards in the villages near Marseille and toss their boules after a little pilot ball, or jack, then compete fiercely to make their steel balls cozy up to it. The game seemed social and leisurely yet fascinating because of its demand on hand-eye...
