The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

CHILLY MORNINGS. This past weekend may have been dry but the late night and early morning hours were certainly not warm as it was below freezing on Saturday and Sunday. We had fog so thick on Sunday morning that you couldn’t see two feet down the road. I understand that it was clear and sunny in the Cathlamet area but Skamokawa means "smoke on the water," so I guess it's to be expected. Ha!

COMING UP. I hope you come down to the Wahkiakum County Fairgrounds on Saturday for their monthly flea market sale from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day. It's always held on the second Saturday of the month.

SPECIAL DAYS. Celebrating birthdays this week are Bailey McKinley, Connie Shrum, Tyler Havens, Ethan Havens, Lucas Havens, Wendy Havens, Ann Pedersen, Blaine Cochran, Ronnie Cothren (Chink), JoAnne Nortrup, Chandler Nortrup, Wendy Peek, Paul Schroder, Ron Bigelow, James Hoven, Iaian Haney, Kim Jones, Mykall Stensland, Hailey Blain, Sherry McCormack, John Thompson, Shawn Cortay, Sean Brennan, Diane Garrett, Brandon Souvenir, Scott Pedersen, Annette Miller Carlie Freeman and Blake Hess. I hope you all have a great birthday celebration on your special day. Celebrating anniversaries this week are Ryan & Breanna Lorenzo, Christie & Ray Davis, David & Julie Blake and Jerry & Linda DeBriae. Here's to celebrating your anniversaries in a special way on your special day!

VALENTINE'S DAY. As you should be aware of by now, Valentine's Day is this coming Wednesday, Feb. 14 so you've still got some time to make those reservations and get a treat or some flowers for your special someone, so don't say you haven't been warned, you really don't want to mess this special day up! Our local restaurants are having specials so we hope you'll do the "support local" thing and make a call to one of them today in order to celebrate with your special someone close to home.

ENGAGED. It won't be long until another happy couple celebrates their special days together as man and wife­—my one and only granddaughter, Tessa Sechler, was engaged this past weekend, in a surprise move, with an engagement ring from her best friend and love of her life, Bobby Graham! Woo-hoo! It's not always easy to pull off a big surprise like that but Bobby had a plan and with the help of his soon-to-be in-laws, he was able to get down on one knee, pulled out a stunning ring and proposed. The whole family is excited by the news and couldn't be happier for them. Tessa is the only daughter of my eldest son, Pete, and his wife, Katie (Nollan) Sechler of Seattle. As you can imagine, the wedding plans are already in the works and we can hardly wait to hear everything about them. A hearty congratulations to the happy couple. We are very pleased to add Bobby to our family.

CHANGES FOR TWO GROUPS. I've been notified by two different groups that they have made some changes to their names. As you know, I've been a big supporter of the Shoeboxes of Joy-Wahkiakum project spearheaded by Season Long and it's been a huge success. However, this is a project that is not only happening here in our county, but also Pacific County and in order to reduce confusion as to where donations are going, the name of the group here has been changed to Wahkiakum Shoeboxes of Joy. I think that having our county's name listed first will definitely help end any confusion about who is being helped by your donations. This has been a great project and the recipients of these boxes have been thrilled to receive them. I urge all of you to help out this coming year if you're able to and I really get a kick out of choosing items when I go shopping and put them aside for these boxes in December. It's fun and rewarding too.

Another group that has changed its name is the group that meets at Our Saviours Lutheran Church on Wednesdays from noon to 3 p.m. They were called Cathlamet 60+ Friendship Group, but now they are called the Cathlamet Senior Friendship Group. The change was made by founder Nancy Nelson who realized that many folks who are retired but not yet 60 years old were being excluded from the group due to its name. She wanted to be sure that they were welcome. This is a group that has formed in order to meet and greet others that might only know each other through social media or are new here and would like to meet the locals. It's also a place that will have groups within the group. Some like to make cards, some like to play cards, some may want to sew. It's all up to you. You can come and stay all three hours or you can pop in and stay for just a short while—it's up to you. If you're on Facebook, you can check out their page and take Nancy's polls, answer her Question of the Day or just chat and share things. They are hoping that you'll head over to the big white church on the main highway on Puget Island Wednesdays from noon until 3 p.m. Feel free to bring goodies to share! Park your car in back of the church and enter the lower level of the church via the rear door.

BLAST FROM THE PAST. This week back in 1990 was a real doozy! Those of you who lived in the area will remember it well, but for those of you who are new, you won't believe what happened in the blink of an eye. On Feb. 10 of that year, State Route 4 had a major issue after rain and nasty weather. There was a massive slide on KM Mountain. Not only that but going down the hill with it was a snow plow and a county dump truck. Luckily, those who had driving were not in the vehicles and ran like mad and made it safely down the road. This was a major slide, which can still be seen today. It really impacted everyone, but especially those of us living on West Valley Road, which was made into the bypass road. To make matters even worse, it was snowing. At first there were a few inches, then it got down to 15 degrees, and on Valentine's Day, we wound up with six inches of snow, and it kept snowing. By the morning of Feb. 15, we had a foot of snow out here in West Valley and by that night, we had twenty inches. As you can imagine, there were power outages and the road crew and the PUD crew were working like crazy. By the morning of Feb. 16, we had two feet of snow here. I was not amused; heavy snow took down trees which took down power lines, and all we could do was shovel snow constantly as we tried to keep roofs from collapsing and driveways cleared. It was a truly miserable time. I do hope this Valentine’s week will not be a repeat of 1990!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY EVERYBODY!