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Illinois Valley News, Cave Junction, OR Wednesday, April 6, 2005
My stuff keeps disappearing. Then sometimes it reappears
in places where I already looked for it. This is most distressing,
which is a nice way of saying that it ticks me off and gives me a
royal pain -- somewhere.
It’s a household malady that also affects my wife, Jan. Just
the other afternoon she was looking for a book that she had
been reading that morning. She looked in our bedroom. In both
bathrooms. In the room we use as a library. In the living room.
In the kitchen. Not there. The book disappeared off the face of
the Earth. A little eerie. Even spooky.
So I looked for the book. I literally checked our library
shelves four separate times, and then proceeded in that room
to look under the couch, on the window ledge, in the closet,
and in the dresser. Then under the dresser. No book. I went
through the entire house, including the guest closet and the
garage. No book. We thought maybe senility had smacked us
or that we were simply unobservant. Then we became suspi-
cious of our 16-pound Siamese, “Bubba.” It would be just like
him to hide the book and think it was real funny. You know, cat
humor. I questioned him to no avail.
Then our son, Mike, came over. We told him about the
missing book. He took pity on his aging parents, what with our
tears of frustration, not to mention the gnashing of teeth. He
looked around the house, under the living room couch cush-
ions, and so on. No book.
Then he decided to check the library. I told him that his
mom and I both had exhausted the space, but he went in any-
way. (He’s stubborn from Jan’s side of the family.) I went in
after him. As he began checking the right side of the book-
cases, I again looked from the left side. On the second shelf I
checked, there was the book. In plain sight. Dang! How could it
have been there the whole time and neither Jan nor I see it?
Frankly, I think I heard diabolical laughter from tiny voices in
that room.
You know, gremlins or leprechauns, or those strange crea-
tures who keep taking stuff from kitchen drawers and putting
them in another place, or rearranging all our stuff in the draw-
ers. Thus, when we look for Scotch tape, it’s not there. But the
creatures have replaced it with thumbtacks. If I were looking for
thumbtacks, they would have replaced them with tape. Weird.
Same situation holds true with a storage cabinet in the
garage. Whenever I try to find, say, a hammer or pliers I know
I put in there a few days earlier: They’re gone! Instead, there’ll
be a level or a screwdriver that I don’t need. Sometimes I spin
around real fast to see if I can catch the gremlins watching me,
but they always hide too fast. But I still can hear their giggling.
Maybe those goblins have stock in some stores. For ex-
ample, if I can’t find, say, a box of finishing nails, despite tear-
ing apart the house and drawers trying to find the ones I know I
have, I’m forced to buy more. Then when I’m ready to put
away the new box, I open the cabinet, and viola! -- there are
the eight other boxes of finishing nails from previous “can’t find”
situations.
Frankly I’m weary of always looking for stuff that was there
a short time earlier. Now, where did I put those car keys ..?
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Illinois Valley News
An Independent Weekly Newspaper Co-owned and
published by Robert R. (Bob) and Jan Rodriguez
Bob Rodriguez, Editor El Jefe
Entered as second class matter June 11, 1937 at Post
Office as Official Newspaper for Josephine County and
Josephine County Three Rivers School District,
published at 321 S. Redwood Hwy., Cave Junction, OR
97523
Periodicals postage paid at Cave Junction, OR 97523
Post Office Box 1370 USPS 258-820
Telephone (541) 592-2541, FAX (541) 592-4330
Volume 68, No. 3
Staff: Kacy Clement, Becky Loudon,
Michelle Binker, Nina Holm Consulting,
Shane Welsh.
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(Editor’s Note: Views and
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Typed, double-spaced let-
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‘Great article’
From Melanie Tehan
Selma
Project Linus thanks
Christina Hill for the great
article in the March 23 issue
of “Illinois Valley News.”
She did a fantastic job.
I shared it with the
group, and several members
wanted copies. Some com-
mented that another newspa-
per didn’t even give us a
paragraph, even though a
photo and information were
provided.
We appreciate Christina
and “Illinois Valley News.”
Our group is impressed.
Death penalty
From Catherine Austin
Cave Junction
I recently saw the
movie, “The Passion of the
Christ.” Besides showing
the graphic brutality that
Jesus endured, all the while
praying for forgiveness for
his perpetrators, I was left
with two strong messages of
what Jesus stood for.
First, he told his follow-
ers that his one command-
ment to them is to love one
another as he loves them.
Second, that the reward is in
loving your enemies, for it is
easy to love those who al-
ready love you.
Sounds like pretty
straightforward stuff to me. I
don’t consider myself a reli-
gious person, but I can defi-
nitely understand this, and
appreciate it, without partici-
pating in any organized
churches or religions. After
all, it was the church of the
time that persecuted Jesus.
I am deeply troubled by
the trend, with our current
Administration in the White
House, to claim alignment
to Christian faith while uni-
laterally starting wars, vio-
lating human rights on de-
tainees (torture), and execut-
ing prisoners domestic and
abroad. While Bush was
governor of Texas more
than 150 Americans were
put to death in his state; he
did not stop a single one.
With all the obsession
over the Terri Schaivo case
by the government, the ma-
jor media, and the religious
people, there is an enormous
crying out that, “It is better
to err on the side of life.”
People have been put to
death who were later found
to be innocent. The United
States is one of a minority of
countries (like Iraq, Iran,
Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, North Korea,
and China) left in the world
today that still have a death
penalty, or conduct torture.
Perhaps we have more
in common with those we
claim to be our enemies than
we realize.
‘G-Dub’s great’
From Elaine Horn
Cave Junction
What a great resource
we have here in our valley. I
feel very lucky to have G-
Dub’s shop in Cave Junc-
tion.
I had a minivan with a
wheelchair lift in it, and
every time I had a problem
with the lift I had to go to
Medford or even Klamath
Falls to get it repaired --
until I discovered that G-
Dub could repair just about
anything.
When he repaired the
wheelchair lift, it stayed
fixed. So when I recently
bought a new/used van and
needed the old wheelchair
lift taken out of the minivan
and installed into the newer
full-sized van I called G-
Dub first. But I also called
two other businesses that
specialize in accessible vehi-
cle modifications.
One said they could do
the job for about 50 percent
more than G-Dub’s quote, if
I got both vehicles to Med-
ford; and the other person
finally got back to me al-
most two weeks later after I
had called twice and sent an
e-mail, quoting me a price
more than four times G-
Dub’s quote.
And again, that is not
taking into consideration
getting both vehicles to a
shop more than 100 miles
away.
Of course I’m writing to
say that G-Dub did an amaz-
ing job, and I could not be
happier with his work. The
13-year-old wheelchair lift
is working as smoothly as it
did when it was new. In my
opinion, he is a real genius
when it comes to electron-
ics. As a matter of fact, G-
Dub picked up both vehicles
and delivered them back to
my house. As a person with
a disability on a very limited
income I appreciate a job
well done at a reasonable
price.
In this age of technol-
ogy, where everything
changes so quickly, we of-
ten aren’t given the option to
fix something when the
newer, brighter, faster,
smarter and more expensive
replacement is so easily ob-
tained. Let’s save the land-
fills and our budgets.
Let’s support our local
business. When you need
electronic work or some-
thing needs to be repaired,
phone G-Dub’s Enterprises.
Skip & Liz Leahy
315 S. Redwood Hwy., Cave Junction
592-2212
Open Mondays through Fridays 2 to 7 p.m.
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Cave Junction store only
valid month of April
We’re happy we made
the
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Because we wanted SPEED fast
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Come on, Make the Switch!”
— Mike Belmont
*In the March 30 issue
there was a misquote in a
page 1 story, “Major Down-
town Cave Junction mural
project posed to council.”
In her comments to the
Cave Junction City Council,
Libby Goines did not say
that Lane Cosner is “the
only area artist capable of
handling such a large pro-
ject.”
Her actual statement
was that, “There are only a
handful of artists in our val-
ley who have the skill to
render such a large paint-
ing.”
(Editor’s Note: Sorry!)
*In the March 23 issue
there was an error in a page
16 article headed “City per-
mits show work.”
The article should have
read that H.D. Patton is
building a single-family
residence at 585 W. River
St., and not a remodeling
job for Ken and Sherri Arm-
stead at 317 Millie St.
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