To Ponder – Page 366 – The Suburban Times

The Suburban Times

A community bulletin board for Western Pierce County.

To Ponder

Westside Story – Old Paint Cans

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In the 1950s when I was a 12 year old kid, I used to go to the dump with my dad in his 1936 Chevy pickup truck. As soon as we left the highway, he let me drive the old truck around the dump. That is right; no high school driver’s training for me.

We had the entire truck-bed loaded with trash, garbage and junk. By the way, we called this magic place the dump, not some fancy name like Recycling Center, Recovery Site or Landfill. If you had something you wanted to get rid of, you hauled it to the smelly dump, fought through the army of flies and pushed it out of the truck, with no questions asked. There were no rules to complicate life.

Letter: Hidden tears – they cry too

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With 420 million pornographic Internet pages – according to “Smart Freedom” by CareNet – littering “virtually every aspect of modern human life,” why do a handful of signs in Parkland “beckoning customers to a strip club using photos of scantily clad women” bother the Pierce County Council, member Jim McCune in particular?

For good reasons.

Letter: Why we row

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Because, quite simply, we’re not multitaskers.

In the days when service stations actually serviced customers by pumping their gas, I worked at one while attending college. Just not for very long – neither service station nor college. Too much going on at the same time for my simple mind to handle.

Westside Story – Infomercial

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Being retired is great, but living on a fixed income can be challenging. To combat the downside, I am establishing a brand new business called Boyle Innovative Products. My business plan includes designing and selling ingenious products you will not find in your local brick and mortar stores.

Westside Story – Cashless in Seattle

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Remember that fun movie, Sleepless in Seattle? This story has nothing to do with that movie. Cashless in Seattle is a different kind of story. The scene I am about to describe could be in a movie, but it was not.

After my wife and I retired, we decided to dedicate one day a week as Date-Day. We pledged to set this one day aside each week to do fun things together.

Westside Story – Drug Babies

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Readers, today was a fun day starting with a coffee meeting with local author Shirlee Eskew Dashow who has published her first book, Coke-Cry Revisited.

Coke-Cry Revisited. Titles fascinate me. I play with titles as I create my articles. I continually search for just the right words. I want my titles to be on target, say a lot in a few words and to capture the attention of my readers with the hope they will want to see the photos and read the entire article.

Westside Story – Oldest House in Lakewood

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Story & Photo – Joseph Boyle

Our Lakewood Historical Society, led by President Becky Huber, certainly enhances our quality of life in the City of Lakewood. Allow me to list just a few of those ways.

Letter: Hand-me-downs

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‘Hand-me-downs,’ unfortunately, are usually associated with the “cheap and shoddy.”

At one time the items, commonly clothing, were valued by somebody but one day they become hand-me-downs: discarded, unwanted, outgrown.

Letter: WYSIWYG

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Her eyesight shut down as she was rounding the curve, returning – thankfully – nearly as quickly as it had gone and just in time to avoid the bridge abutment. The ophthalmologist told her she needed glasses. The optometrist – who would have fitted her with corrective lenses except for what he saw – said she needed surgery. He was right. A Ping-Pong-ball-sized tumor had impinged upon her optic nerve and one of the best neurologists in the country performed eight-hour surgery just days later.