Re-Newell, Renewal

It has been quite a while since my last entry. A lot has happened.

My father, Newell Dana, passed away last December. It was difficult watching him die.

On a positive note, he had a good life and most people would be happy accomplishing a fraction of what he did. I know I would. I miss him every day.

More recently, my mother had hip replacement surgery last week. She is eighty-four. She is struggling with the rehab some. Considering her age, she is probably doing just fine. It will be good when she can get around again.

Regarding The HUB, business has been humming along. We renewed our liquor license in April with an upgrade that allows us to sell hard liquor. We are developing a collection of cocktails we do. We work from a service bar and will bring in more flavors of booz as our customers ask for them.

We are breaking new ground this week. We are extending our hours of operation by an hour on Friday and Saturday. With the longer daylight hours, people eat dinner later. Maybe we will capture more late diners.

The first of June, we hope unveil new menus. In spite of the fact that our disposable income is stretched with higher motor fuel cost, the cost of product in our restaurant is piggy-backing fuel cost as well. Every aspect of our business is impacted by higher oil cost. We are reluctant to raise prices too much, but we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. We hope our customers are not traumatized too much.

John Bruce is working feverishly on our web-site. I have been seriously delinquent in getting the content for him. It is a monumental task developing even a little content for each page. I think the most challenging task was stopping the writing on the history page. When I get started with a story thread, I tend to run on. I am sorry for some of the length, but I can't tell a story without telling the story. If it gets too long, just dump it.

For our long term patrons who may be a part of our history, if I left out your story(ies) I am sorry. They come to me at different times. I make notes to myself about something and try to write about it before I forget.

Our little restaurant has been blessed with a lot of really interesting people; both staff members and customers. The history is written in two sections. The first section is the Newell & Shirley Dana years from 1960 to 1985. The second section is from 1985 to 2008. The old stuff is certainly history, the second second section seems a lot less like history and more like last week.

I hope to record more memories for the history as they come to me.

I had the opportunity to visit with two characters from my history today; former Hub employee Bob Wright and former Hub pinball player Scott Barry. We are all alums from SHS class of '68. We spent a couple hours this morning/afternoon hashing out things.

Scott Barry was the editor of the Seattle Times Snohomish County Edition until just recently when he was induced into retirement when they stopped publishing that paper. Scott is exploring his options. We (Bob and I) are glad that Scott is making lemonade from his lemons.

It is interesting listening to these other guys. We are all forty years out of high school. Our lives have all taken different courses, yet we find ourselves looking at the world through strangely similar eyes.

Scott and Bob and I have been friends since we were together in high school. As Scott observed this morning, we have not been close, but we always thought of each other as friends. I look forward to seeing how he handles the next phase of his career/life.

Bob has also entered a new phase. He has been in the antique business at Apple Annies in Cashmere, WA for a number of years. He and his wife Linda burned out on all the work it took to get that project off the ground. They are trying to find a lifestyle that is more life friendly. Bob is developing an avocation into a vocation. The best way to describe it is to say it is sort of like naturopathy. Bob is developing information regarding natural health strategies. I don't think he includes chanting in what he does, but I could be wrong.

Bob will be involved in our forty year class reunion this summer. We have enlisted him to develop the entertainment for the evening. I can always count on him to entertain.

I am determined to be a regular contributor to this page for the near term. I am never lacking for things to say, but sometimes I question whether the place for the discussion is the internet.