Mike Ward, 12-year-son of Mr. and Mrs. Maris Ward, tagged his first honker last Saturday as he and his father were hunting at Tule Lake with Warren Richardson and his son Lee.

Mike’s father, Maris, took two shots at the big goose, but it was Mike’s shot that brought the bird down.

Flynn offers candy canes

Andy Flynn proved recently that he is royalty endowed with the spirit of Christmas by offering to purchase and donate a standard candy cane street decoration to be installed at the corner of Third and H streets.

Flynn, who is chairman of the tourist and recreation committee of the Del Norte Chamber of Commerce, made the offer to the merchants committee, which has charge of the street decoration project. The offer was accepted.

Flynn also offered to buy two Christmas trees to be placed along Highway 101 entrances to the city. The merchants committee, with Leo Sullivan as chairman, will choose sites for those trees. 

Reporter covers North Pole

Coaching any team takes a lot of time and commitment, especially at the high school level. Buzz McCulloch is one of those special people.

Buzz is a 1973 graduate of Del Norte High School. While a Warrior Buzz played both basketball and baseball. He says he feels very fortunate to have had two excellent basketball coaches while at Del Norte. Dale Thomas was his junior varsity coach and Wally Maciel was his varsity mentor. These two have been great contributors to Warrior history.

After graduation Buzz went on to Shasta College in Redding, where he continued his basketball career. After finishing at Shasta Buzz returned to Crescent City and went to work for the local power company.

Buzz’s strong interest in basketball led him into basketball officiating.

The luncheon starts at noon, but the gracious women who invited me suggested that I get there by 11 a.m. When I arrived the VFW Memorial Hall was bustling with lively conversation among mostly ladies, mostly dressed in red or green, with a couple even wearing Christmas light earrings that actually lit up! Gentlemen in tuxes served us wine and I spotted Mrs. Claus and some elves helping out.

I bought a few raffle tickets and cruised the perimeter of the room where 30 decorated trees waited to be raffled off. Each tree was tagged with the name of the person or organization that decorated and donated it and each had a container to put raffle tickets in.

At home we didn’t have a tree yet, nor did we have plans to get one. Grinch, I mean Rick, doesn’t care if we have one or not. I was waffling, disenchanted by the looming trip to the crowded storage unit to round up decorations, ornaments and the new LED lights we bought on sale after Christmas last year.

While I tried to decide on which tree to take a chance on winning, I kept in mind our small living room, the fact that the kids weren’t coming home for the holidays and what Rick would say when I called from the corner of H and 8th to ask him to bring the pickup.

There is a good explanation for feeling like this, and most of us have similar desires this week. We’re not sick, we’re reflecting natural seasonal changes. Over the last couple centuries, humans have trained themselves to live the same way during every season, and it isn’t natural. What’s natural this time of year is eating, sleeping and growling.

It was at the beginning of the industrial revolution that factory owners decreed that peasants who wanted a job in July had better work in January, and things have been getting worse ever since.

 Until that time, people flowed with the seasons. In July we had boundless energy; we worked and played long hours. Locally, that meant catching and drying surf fish, picking berries, making boats and traveling to trade dentalia, hides and brides. There were weddings, powwows, and other inter-tribal celebrations. The people danced for joy and the overflowing abundance of the season.