By Bob Spiwak March 29, 2016. The warmest day of the year so far, a day for outside labor. The crocuses have emerged from the snow and all morning I have been clearing ice and snow. It’s just after noon, my wife is at the library and I am in a deep-sleep nap. The telephone […]
Off the Wall
How a snowstorm assured my residence in the Methow Valley
By Bob Spiwak Until sometime in 1968 I had never heard of Winthrop. Then a good friend told me that he and his dad had bought 20 acres west of town and would I like to drive out and look at it. We did, and I fell in love with the area. His acreage was […]
My real life, fictionalized, is revisited more than 60 years later
By Bob Spiwak When I got off the train at Havre, Montana, the thermometer read 54 below zero. This was in February 1953, and I was headed for a U.S. Air Force radar and control station 43 miles north of Havre on the Canadian border. It was ironic that the night of my arrival marked […]
Feelings about the Methow winter run hot and cold
By Bob Spiwak It’s the first day of February and we’re surrounded by snow, and the forecast is for colder weather. Yesterday, while looking for old copies of the Goat Wall Street Journal, I came across a calendar from 1982. In those days I did not use a journal, but important things like covering the […]
Shades of yesteryear: change is the only constant
By Bob Spiwak The snow is still falling and I am stalling when I should be mounting the tractor and pushing the snow around. Ms. Gloria is writing a letter to an old friend, Gretchen Gibford, who lives in Millwood, near Spokane. Both women were active in what was then The Methow Valley Artisans, a […]
Getting into outages with the right planning (and attitude)
By Bob Spiwak There were two power outages a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, they were planned, and we were alerted well ahead of time as to their time and duration by the electric utilities (Okanogan County Public Utility District and Okanogan County Electric Cooperative). This was helpful and considerate, for when outages occur suddenly, […]
A cautionary tale about getting lost in the Methow
By Bob Spiwak It was sometime in the mid-1980s, during hunting season. Darkness was upon us, along with a heavy rain. There was a knock on the door and I pulled the curtain aside to see a man and a dog. Both were dripping wet. The man, who we’ll refer to as Victim, asked if […]
History of the car count: driven to distraction by holiday traffic
By Bob Spiwak This month we will examine the semi-annual holiday car counts we have done for many years, and the advances made at the counting site in West Boesel, which now include a boost from the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The car (actually vehicle) count began as a lark. Bored one morning, […]
Visible progress on Methow River salmon recovery project
By Bob Spiwak In a previous column we touched on the Yakama Nation’s salmon recovery project on the Methow River near the Weeman Bridge, and since the end of July things are moving apace. From a quarter-mile up the road from our West Boesel location, there is the daily concert of high-pitched beeps as various […]
Do I have an obsession? You can count on it
By Bob Spiwak It is not unusual for people from all walks of life, and rides of life as well, to ask me if I am doing a car count on Highway 20 during busy traffic weekends in the valley. The query seems to be coming up more often as the years go by. The […]
