Nephew’s first away game is at WWCC, so we’re going to go take in some of it after a swing past the antique show.  Hopefully my navigation isn’t as inept as last time I went there.  For those of you not familiar with Washington, our main state penitentiary (the one with the gallows and the gurney; in Washington, criminals can still hang) is at Wally, and it’s fairly out of the way.  Undeterred, I got sufficiently lost and confused by atrocious road construction that I pulled up right outside the slammer.  Fortunately, I didn’t get invited in.

With luck, JD will get to play.  He hasn’t seen the field yet this year, and it’s a new experience for him, pining it.  (For me in baseball, it was the commonplace norm, with my many athletic deficiencies.)  It’s that way for all of us in college, or at least most of us:  “Wow.  All my life I was the best player/(or smartest kid).  Good lord…so were all these people.  I’m going to have to pack my lunch.”

Wally’s a pretty nice town, though, so I don’t mind going over there.  Its primary industries, besides growing sweet onions, are educating the young (one university, one college and one CC) and incarcerating those who declined to be educated.  It has a religious background, based somewhat on the Whitman College heritage of Methodist education (their mascot is still the Missionaries).  The university, WWU, is an Adventist school.  The Whitties get a real good education, though one pays handsomely for it–it is a very highly regarded liberal arts college. Some of my tougher editing services competition probably comes from Whitman.

Less known is that Wally was at one point the primary city in Washington Territory, a contender for the state capital.  Not happening now.