Visiting Walla Walla…

I graduated from Walla Walla high school back in 1964 so basically I grew up in this area. They say that 80% of people either stay or eventually return to the place where they graduated HS. I don’t know about that in my case, I’ve always had the wanderlust thing going on so when I stay somewhere, especially now that I’m a full time RV’er, I’m looking over the place as a potential ‘settling down’ area to plant my ass permanently. Same thing with Walla Walla.

And Walla Walla definitely has it’s charm. At one time it had more millionaires per capita then any other town in the country. So when you drive around the older residential areas, you can’t help but notice these older palatial homes…sort of like today’s McMansions only from early last century. Most of them very handsome. Some already refurbished and modernized attaining their former glory.

Back when I was the Montgomery Wards Service Manager here in town, I was lucky to be a field TV tech and got to visit many of these older homes. Even though at that time in the ’70’s many of them were beginning to look run down, they still retained that elegance they were built with. Since I was always in my car, never really got any pictures, I’ll try to do that the next time I’m in town. I did visit Pioneer park, a very large park just to the east of downtown about 10 blocks into an older residential area…where you can find many of those palatial older homes I mentioned. At this park is an aviary. Lots of exotic birds. Big open cages with bird netting over the tops so they can’t escape. Many smaller brooding cages too.

And here’s the duck pond. Used to come here with the baby daughter shortly after we moved back or when we visited the parents. Generally there’s lots of wild ducks here that people use to feed bread too. But now we know that bread isn’t very good for them so people have sort of stopped doing that. Bringing bird feed instead. You can see a cluster of the tame ducks in the picture. They stay the winter because they get fed enough here they don’t feel any need to fly south any more.

And here’s another look at the aviary. Pretty big affair. The birds probably enjoy it…free from predators, lots of quality food, some friends to hang with. What’s not to like?

And here’s the bandstand. Every spring summer and fall there are concerts here under the trees with thousands milling around and sitting on the ground enjoying the music.

And then the son, daughter and Scott came to another ball game with me. This time, I’d bought the expensive tickets at $17 each. Better view.

My son  James. And the Sweets won this game too. Big scores at these AAA games so that’s always fun.

Went to visit my sister Teri and her husband Gary. Had tacos and my sister’s famous salsa for dinner. Yum. Sister in the background, daughter in the foreground.

And back in M-F, I had a bit of trouble when my neighbor noticed and pointed out that my RV’s jack pad was sinking right into the blacktop! Yikes! It’s not suppose to do that. So another neighbor that helps RV’ers with repairs came over and together we dug and pried it out of the ground. And found that the strain had broken off the 8″ landing pad from the bottom of the jack. Jeese. Turned out the neighbor was a welder so he got it all fixed up for me. Saved me bunches of money over what I’d have had paid for an RV shop fix it for me. They would have wanted to replace the entire jack assembly to the tune of a couple thousand parts and labor.

My daughter had gotten a job in M-F at the cheese factory here in old town M-F. Back in Minneapolis where they were living before moving back to Walla Walla, she’d worked at a cheese shop so…

Anyway, went to visit her at the cheese shop, Walla Walla Cheese Company. Here’s a shot of the building, and then some random shots of downtown before I went inside.

Check out the old timey bank building from 1902. Painted pink. Now an Asian restaurant. And stepping inside the cheese company… Cheeses be everywhere! So daughter offered me lunch…a bowl of spicy tomato soup and a spicy grilled cheese sandwich. OMD! was it good. Both were just sooooo excellent. Hard to describe how yummy they both were. A treat for the senses. So good I came back a week later for another go.

And all the other cheeses, wow, I had at least 10 samples and every one of them was excellent. I know, what is the Walla Walla Cheese Company doing in Milton-Freewater? Maybe because it’s known as the Walla Walla Valley and includes both towns? Yeah, that’s it. I guess.

Invited my daughter and her bf Scott to the only Indian restaurant in downtown Walla one night…

Food was well, not much to my liking. I’ve had excellent Indian dishes in the past, but what I had this evening was not very good. Think I ordered the wrong thing. Or the kitchen staff just doesn’t know how to cook? Nah. Afterwards we wandered around downtown a bit and stopped to look at the stream running under the street. Probably one of the creeks that flow into the Walla Walla River.
Here’s a few shots of the Villadom RV park where I was staying in M-F. I came to dislike the park…not very comfortable. But it was in a good place to both save money (the Walla Walla RV parks are pretty expensive) and visit the kids so I could put up with an uncomfortable park for a month. And after the first week, I did pay for a full month. At least the Wifi was working great for 3 out of the 4 weeks I was there, also there was the guy that helped me work on the RV, there were several very nice restaurants nearby, including an Irish Pub for watching football, and of course downtown Walla Walla was close. After that issue of sinking into the blacktop, I turned the RV around, and this time put my wooden landing pads under the jack pads, which by the way already had the SnapPads on them and even then punched through the blacktop, at least the one jack pad did.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you might have read that I’m really a big fan of the Walla Walla High School campus. It’s really a very nice place. When my family moved to W2, I went to the old HS which was built in 1912 or so. It was 4 stories and showing it’s age. My second year of HS near the end of the year in that building, we students were all pressed into service as workers as we lugged thousands of school books, supplies, equipment, and paraphernalia from the old school to the new school. And of course we got to tour the campus but it wasn’t going to be ‘our’ school until the following year. What luck I was going to be a senior that next year so I got to spend a year at that beautiful campus. Anyway, this is the first time since I graduated that I’ve been back to take some pictures and refresh some old memories…first, an aerial view of the campus. This view will give you and idea of how it was set up, check it out: Walla Walla HS

Here’s the creek where we all hung out between classes and during lunch. I was a cross over guy, so I could hang out with any of the cliques I cared to. Bikers, jocks, cheer gurls, dweebs, nerds, crazy fuk’ers, didn’t matter, I was welcomed by all. In fact, I got well known enough to be a message courier between groups. I thought that was pretty damn silly so I’d garble up the messages pretty good so I’d get a laugh. One time I overheard one of the brutish guy groups talking about following one of the gurls in our class home, forcing her off the road, and raping here because she was a stuck up classical musician. I fuk’in tore into them and laid out the law and what was going to happen to them if I found out they’d done anything even close to that. They sort of backed off from the idea. Really out of the group of around 6 teenage boys, only 2 were ring leaders, the others might have followed along though. So graduation comes and goes, I head into the Navy meeting my assigned ship in San Diego so it’s not until 2 years later I heard that they did try to rape that gurl but she screamed so long and so loud that they eventually let her go. Of course they ‘were only kidding’. I talked to her parents and they told me she suffered from it but was recovered enough that she’d applied to the Cleveland Symphony and was accepted. Bone headed boys. Jeese.
This is the cafeteria, general assembly meeting, arts building. Spend many a fun hour there. Didn’t eat there much, can’t remember why. Almost always brought my own lunch. My girl friend was the director of a play here…it was strange as the lights went down at the end of the play, no one applauded because none of us knew that was the end. My gf started the applause. We drove out of town afterwards for some necking. That was fun.
This is the main Quad. Often ended up here between classes.
Off in the distance are the football field, tennis courts, outside basketball courts and what have you. The last week of school my senior year, we were running laps and the coach was on the fat kids ass about him being too slow…even the kid with CP beat him the day before in a scramble race…but the kid collapsed and died. It was just as class was ending and I was in a hurry to go to my final class and gaze at the gurls and get home so I missed most all of that excitement. Read about it in the next days paper. At least I think that’s what happened…it’s rather vague now.All the buildings are brick and they have quads inside. Open air squares with grass. Our lockers where we stored out books and coats were along the edges of the inside open spaces. Outside in the open air but covered. All the windows had a view of the lockers so not much theft happened…pretty cool idea.
I loved this campus. It made me think of the collages I’d visited in the past…it was like going to college! And I liked it so much, I worked my tail off my senior year getting A’s and B’s instead of my usual C’s and D’s in order to perhaps go to a college some day. And I did!

And a visit the campus wouldn’t be complete without going to a Blue Devils football game. James, Scott, and I went to this one. We WON! Great game. I got a 1/2 price ticket probably due to my age, but might have been because the ticket taker thought I was funny when I walked up and said, “Hi! Two adult tickets and one immature adult ticket.” She laughed and gave me the student ticket price. You would be right thinking this looks like the same stadium the Walla Walla Sweets play in. It is the same stadium.

Ahh, nothing like the enthusiasm and energy there is at a HS football game. The crisp fall air, the early darkened skies, the hot dogs! Just a lot of fun. The band was good, the game was great because we came from behind to win. Yea!

So that’s all for now. There will be one more post about this area and then it’s on over to Wendell, Idaho. Thanks for reading!