COFFEE BREAK
A6 — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
B6
THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 2021
Woman plants thick roots in married son’s home
Maureen then goes to her son and
tells him what Eve said, and it
causes problems in their marriage.
After dinner each night, Eve goes
into her room, closes the door and
stays there.
Maureen is capable of living
on her own, but she said she
might get lonely and that’s why
she won’t leave. The grand-
kids are pretty much grown now,
and there’s no need for Mau-
reen to stay. Her friends have
been encouraging her to make a
life of her own. Eve and her hus-
band plan to move out of state in
10 years, and Maureen plans on
moving with them. I think she is
putting her son’s marriage at risk
for her own selfi sh reason. Mau-
Dear Abby: Ten years ago,
my friend “Maureen” suff ered
a breakup that emotionally and
fi nancially devastated her and
moved in with her son and his
young family. Since then, she has
recovered in both areas.
Maureen inserts herself into
every aspect of their lives —
vacations, entertaining, etc. When
they go out to eat, she always
joins them. Her daughter-in-law,
“Eve,” has routinely given her
hints that it’s time to move on.
reen isn’t old and infi rm. She
could possibly meet a nice gen-
tleman if she moved out. All her
friends have suggested this. What
are your thoughts? — Bystander
in Florida
Dear Bystander: If Maureen
were unwell or destitute, the sit-
uation would be diff erent. She is
neither. My thoughts are that until
Eve is angry enough to assert her-
self and tell her husband the cur-
rent living conditions are intoler-
able, nothing will change.
Dear Abby: I recently had
to say goodbye to my precious
dog, Wendy Darling. She was a
sweet old girl with bad kidneys
and severe joint pain. During the
last few weeks of her life, she
could barely eat, and not at all in
the last days. I know in my head
that ending her suff ering was the
right thing to do. I have supported
friends and family who helped
their pets this way.
It’s my heart that is having
trouble. I keep thinking that I
didn’t have the right to make
that decision; that life is too pre-
cious to deliberately steal even a
single day. While her body was
declining, her mind and spirit
danced, and she looked at me with
complete trust. I miss her so much
and fi nd myself crying throughout
the day. Can you tell me how to
reconcile my head and my heart? I
have this huge weight on my chest
and more than a little bit of guilt.
— Missing Wendy in Oregon
Dear Missing Wendy: Please
accept my sympathy for the loss
of your precious canine com-
panion. You gave Wendy Dar-
ling a wonderful life, fi lled with
love. Dogs were meant to run and
play, to love and be loved, not to
suff er. I am sure you miss her, but
please stop beating yourself up for
making a rational decision about
what was best for her. If your
grief continues to overwhelm you,
talk with your veterinarian about
joining a grief support group. I
am sure he or she will reassure
you. Your loss is recent. That you
are emotional is understandable.
Try to remember that tears are
healing.
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
Imagination, Skitt les help boy, 5, on long hike
Association.
For Harvey’s hike, his parents
decided to take a “mini retirement”
from their real estate jobs in Lynch-
burg, Virginia. They’d been hiking
with Harvey since he was 2, so the
Appalachian Trail made sense to
them.
It was mostly smooth sailing after
a snowstorm in the Smoky Moun-
tains forced them to backtrack more
than 30 miles to safety over 2-1/2
days.
The family became accustomed
to sleeping in a tent, waking at
5:30 a.m. and hiking all day. There
was a simplicity to the routine and a
camaraderie with other “thru hikers”
that kept it from getting boring, Josh
Sutton said.
Karl Donus Sakas, a hiker known
as “Sugar Man” who accompanied
the Suttons from Pennsylvania to
the end in Maine, said Harvey had
boundless energy.
“He’s pretty strong and tough.
So often we’d get to camp and I’d
be beaten and tired. And Little Man
would say, ‘Let’s play freeze tag!’”
he said.
The parents said the biggest chal-
lenge was keeping their son’s imagi-
nation engaged. Harvey made plans
to build homes, construct space ships
and host a lava party in discussions
over miles and hours of hiking.
They completed the hike Aug. 9
atop Mount Katahdin. Now it’s off to
kindergarten for Little Man and back
to work for his parents.
By DAVID SHARP
The Associated Press
PORTLAND, Maine — Harvey
Sutton, or “Little Man,” as he is
known on the Appalachian Trail,
won’t have long to bask in the glory
of hiking its full length. After all, he
starts kindergarten Friday, Aug. 27.
At 5 years old, Harvey is one of
the youngest — and the latest of sev-
eral youngsters in recent years — to
complete the trail, hiking with his
parents over more than 2,100 miles in
209 days.
It was hard work, but it was fun
checking out frogs, lizards and other
wildlife. So was sprinkling Skittles
onto peanut butter tortillas as fuel for
the walk, he said.
“The rock scrambles were really
fun and hard. We were not bored,” he
said in a phone interview from Vir-
ginia, where he lives with his par-
ents, Josh and Cassie Sutton.
His parents were so busy keeping
him engaged and entertained that it
distracted them from the physical
pain of trudging over so many miles.
“It gave us a bond and a strength
that we hadn’t realized before,”
Cassie Sutton said.
Other youngsters have hiked
the 2,193-mile trail that starts at
Springer Mountain, Georgia, and
ends atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin.
Some babies have even been carried
in backpacks by their determined
parents.
Harvey was 4 years old when he
Farm Supply/Contributed Photo
A Farm Supply truck takes a load of grain from a farmer’s grain cart as
it prepares to haul the crop to market.
DROUGHT
Continued from Page B1
Wallowa County natives.
“Our families go back
generations here,” Craig
said.
The company has three
locations. In addition to
Enterprise, there are outlets
in La Grande and in Lew-
iston, Idaho, where a fl eet of
12 trucks are kept busy.
In fact, Lewiston is
one of the more popular
destinations for Wallowa
County commodities, since
the city on the Snake River
gives the otherwise land-
locked Idaho a seaport.
While they also ship to
Tri-Cities, Washington,
“Lewiston is way closer,”
Craig said.
“For us, it made more
sense to drive the bushels
to a port closer to the
ocean and that’d net the
farmer more money for
the same freight,” he
said.
But farmers here are
going to be hurting once
they get their drought-
stricken crops to market.
“Yields are bad over
(in Umatilla County),
but the dryland here is
just a catastrophe,” Craig
said. “The irrigated
ground here I think will
be down, but not like the
dryland. Even irrigated
hay, the yields are down.”
That’s both because of
limited water and heat.
“You just can’t get over
your ground fast enough to
keep from being pinched by
the heat,” he said.
Joshua Sutton via The Associated Press
In this July 23, 2021, family photograph pro-
vided by Joshua Sutton, 5-year-old Harvey
Sutton raises his arms on a mountaintop in
Bigelow Preserve, Maine, while hiking the
Appalachian Trail with his parents.
and his parents began their walk in
January and he turned 5 before the
family completed the journey last
week in Maine.
He’s several months younger than
“Buddy Backpacker,” a boy who
held the record for youngest to com-
plete the trail in 2013, Harvey’s par-
ents say. But the youngest of all may
be Juniper Netteburg, who fi nished
the trail at age 4 with her parents and
three siblings on Oct. 13, 2020.
It may seem extreme for a kid, but
a pediatrician sees no harm.
Kids are resilient enough to
handle the experience as long as par-
ents keep their social and emotional
development in mind and scale the
hike to kids’ abilities, said Dr. Laura
Blaisdell, a pediatrician and med-
ical adviser to the American Camp
www.gossmotors.com
1415 Adams Ave, La Grande 541-963-4161
weather
| Go to AccuWeather.com
AROUND OREGON AND THE REGION
Astoria
Longview
55/67
Kennewick
56/70
St. Helens
57/73
TIllamook
58/71
61/77
58/75
51/75
Condon
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
Clear to partly
cloudy
Sunny and
delightful
Sunny and
pleasant
Sunny and
pleasant
Sunny and
pleasant
79 40
86 44
83 41
Eugene
9
7
9
55/80
78 45
84 50
80 45
9
8
9
Comfort Index™ 10
La Grande
50 71 41
Comfort Index™ 10
Enterprise
10
10
44 68 42
Comfort Index™ 10
82 52
81 45
10
7
9
8
ALMANAC
TUESDAY EXTREMES
TEMPERATURES Baker City La Grande Elgin
NATION (for the 48 contiguous states)
High Tuesday
Low Tuesday
High: 112°
Low: 26°
Wettest: 2.52”
76°
28°
79°
35°
77°
41°
PRECIPITATION (inches)
Tuesday
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Normal year to date
0.00
0.65
0.33
3.11
6.32
0.00
0.42
0.52
6.54
11.18
0.00
0.42
0.49
15.79
15.72
HAY INFORMATION FRIDAY
35%
NW at 6 to 12 mph
5.8
0.19
RESERVOIR STORAGE (through midnight Wednesday)
Phillips Reservoir
Unity Reservoir
Owyhee Reservoir
McKay Reservoir
Wallowa Lake
Thief Valley Reservoir
0% of capacity
26% of capacity
18% of capacity
46% of capacity
0% of capacity
0% of capacity
STREAM FLOWS (through midnight Tuesday)
Grande Ronde at Troy
Thief Valley Reservoir near North Powder
Burnt River near Unity
Umatilla River near Gibbon
Minam River at Minam
Powder River near Richland
OREGON
High: 88°
Low: 27°
Wettest: none
Troutdale
Meacham
SUN & MOON
THU.
FRI.
6:07 a.m. 6:08 a.m.
7:41 p.m. 7:39 p.m.
9:51 p.m. 10:12 p.m.
10:32 a.m. 11:37 a.m.
MOON PHASES
482 cfs
1 cfs
88 cfs
41 cfs
68 cfs
5 cfs
Last
Aug 29
New
Sep 6
First
Sep 13
Elkton
56/76
42/72
Beaver Marsh
39/77
Roseburg
Powers
Brothers
54/77
Coos Bay
58/81
Full
Sep 20
Burns
Boise
55/81
Jordan Valley
46/76
Paisley
38/78
Frenchglen
46/77
Diamond
Grand View
Arock
46/77
55/81
50/82
Fields
Medford
50/82
Klamath Falls
39/81
Lakeview
38/81
McDermitt
Shown is Friday’s weather. Temperatures are Thursday night’s lows and Friday’s highs.
47/81
RECREATION FORECAST FRIDAY
SAT.
City
Hi/Lo/W Hi/Lo/W
Astoria
67/51/pc 70/53/pc
Bend
75/42/s 81/49/s
Boise
81/50/s 81/56/s
Brookings
75/56/s 77/57/s
Burns
80/38/s 81/42/s
Coos Bay
70/53/s 71/52/s
Corvallis
78/50/s 86/56/s
Council
80/45/s 83/47/s
Elgin
71/40/s 80/45/s
Eugene
80/50/s 87/55/s
Hermiston
79/50/s 84/51/s
Hood River
71/54/s 86/59/s
Imnaha
74/48/s 80/47/s
John Day
77/43/s 81/48/s
Joseph
68/42/s 76/52/s
Kennewick
80/50/s 84/53/s
Klamath Falls 81/42/s 88/46/s
Lakeview
81/39/s 84/46/s
48/83
Silver Lake
39/80
56/85
55/75
Juntura
41/80
55/85
Brookings
Ontario
60/84
41/77
Chiloquin
Grants Pass
Huntington
44/73
45/75
Oakridge
51/80
58/80
Seneca
Bend
FRI.
On Aug. 26, 1864, a railroad train ran into
a tornado 15 miles from Lawrenceburg,
Ind. The storm lifted cars off the track,
spun two passenger cars around and
deposited them upside down in a ravine.
Sunrise
Sunset
Moonrise
Moonset
Florence
Council
43/74
50/77
44/75
REGIONAL CITIES
WEATHER HISTORY
AGRICULTURAL INFO.
Lowest relative humidity
Afternoon wind
Hours of sunshine
Evapotranspiration
Death Valley, Calif.
Stanley, Idaho
Sanford, Fla.
43/68
John Day
42/77
Sisters
54/70
Comfort Index takes into account how the weather will feel based on a combination of factors. A rating of 10 feels
very comfortable while a rating of 0 feels very uncomfortable.
45/78
Baker City
Redmond
51/62
52/65
Halfway
Granite
53/78
Newport
56/77
77 48
51/76
53/73
55/78
Corvallis
Enterprise
44/68
50/71
Monument
56/75
Idanha
Salem
TONIGHT
43 74 38
Elgin
49/71
La Grande
51/72
Maupin
Baker City
58/75
Pendleton
The Dalles
Portland
Newberg
59/79
Hood River
54/75
54/68
Lewiston
Walla Walla
56/80
Vancouver
56/71
Forecasts and graphics provided
by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2021
FRI.
City
Lewiston
Longview
Meacham
Medford
Newport
Olympia
Ontario
Pasco
Pendleton
Portland
Powers
Redmond
Roseburg
Salem
Spokane
The Dalles
Ukiah
Walla Walla
SAT.
Hi/Lo/W Hi/Lo/W
79/54/s 83/55/pc
70/50/pc 77/53/s
71/40/s 79/43/s
85/54/s 93/58/s
62/48/pc 64/50/s
70/48/c 77/49/s
84/53/s 85/52/s
83/50/s 84/51/s
75/48/s 81/52/s
75/55/pc 84/59/s
76/50/s 80/53/s
77/39/s 83/45/s
81/52/s 88/56/s
78/53/s 86/55/s
71/51/pc 77/52/s
77/55/s 87/59/s
70/33/s 78/39/s
75/53/s 82/55/s
Weather(W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain,
sf-snow fl urries, sn-snow, i-ice
ANTHONY LAKES
PHILLIPS LAKE
Sunny and cold
Sunshine
47
33
70
35
MT. EMILY REC.
BROWNLEE RES.
Sunshine, but cool
Sunny and pleasant
57
39
78
48
EAGLE CAP WILD.
EMIGRANT ST. PARK
Sunshine
Cool with sunshine
54
33
65
33
WALLOWA LAKE
MCKAY RESERVOIR
Sunshine
Sunshine; pleasant
68
42
74
47
THIEF VALLEY RES.
RED BRIDGE ST. PARK
Breezy in the p.m.
Sunshine; pleasant
74
38
71
41