Grandsons here, grandsons gone, then one of them comes back – my Lord, I can’t keep it straight.

As always, they’re lots of fun. Shoot, one of them even enjoys going to Rotary lunch with me. They all seem to enjoy going to the library. In fact, the youngest one is convinced that the $10 gift card from the Hiway 101 Diner out in Port Angeles is actually a library card.

Unfortunately, he has never been able to get an order of fries from the nice ladies at the library’s checkout desk. This grandson is the youngest, and he is staying with us since his parents are on a Holland America cruise to Alaska. Our son-in-law is a science professor at Seattle University and is on the cruise as its “naturalist” for this week. Our daughter went along for the ride. Nice work if you can get it. It only requires a Ph.D.

The annual Lower Pioneer Drive Picnic in Kehele Park arrived with some rain the day after we experienced 100 days without measurable precipitation. (It is 100 if you round to the nearest 100.) No matter, 50 or so of the friends and neighbors showed up and shared a potluck dinner, including hot dogs and hamburgers grilled up by Vic Draper and Harold Brunstad. As it turns out, one neighbor went two days in a row to the same picnic. The afternoon of the day before the neighborhood picnic, he noticed all the partying in a neighbor’s backyard adjacent to Kehele Park. He figured the picnic was that day instead of the next, so he packed up his cooler and joined in the party. He was warmly welcomed, particularly by me, because I got to tell this story.

The partying continues this week with music and hot dogs at The Beach Club tomorrow at 5 p.m. Then, on Sunday, there is the Ice Cream Social from 2 to 4 p.m., also at The Beach Club. Port Ludlow is becoming “party central.” We have old friends from the Midwest who are stopping in to visit for a few days while on their six-month tour of the western USA and British Columbia. I suspect the view will be better while they are in town, because the smoke has dissipated. After several weeks in British Columbia, they were in Port Angeles last Sunday for the first rain in a while. So, they naturally went to the west side of the peninsula to tour the rain forest.

SOLAR ECLIPSE

How about this upcoming solar eclipse? Our son and his family from Seattle as well as my sister and her family from Los Angeles will all be in Oregon for the event. I fear they will all experience traffic issues as the state is expected to absorb another million folks on Aug. 21 anxious to see the sun go dark. (Doesn’t that happen every night?) They also risk the potential for cloud cover, effectively blunting much of the effect.

Oh, wait, there are never any clouds in Oregon!

Football season is just around the corner, bringing to mind a famous quote by former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith when describing coach Tom Landry. He said, “Tom Landry is such a perfectionist that if he was married to Raquel Welch, he would expect her to cook.”

Love a curmudgeon and have a great week.

(Port Ludlow resident Ned Luce writes this column weekly. Contact him at nedluce@sbcglobal.net.)