Anticipation

Finally the day has arrived. All the preparations have been made and now I am off to the First Annual Bloggers of the Smoking Christian Convention and Poetry Reading. There are so many unknowns: What will my fellow bloggers be like in person? Will I make friends? What will I say? Will my smoke offering be accepted? What will I order at HTB?

Sadly the SC himself will not be there to mentor us. We will have to make it up as we go. But I know he will be with us in spirit and I am ready with my best poems. Wish me luck!

On the Record

The October 13 issue of the Wheaton Record blares this headline: "Assistant provost to retire after 35 years."

If this doesn’t ring any bells, let me continue.

Ward Kriegbaum has announced his retirement after 35 years of faithful service. Hired in 1971 as Associate Dean of Students, the name Dean Kriegbaum struck fear into the heart of every malcontent, Artful Dodger and bad actor on campus.

I, being none and all of these, was never in Dean Kriegbaum’s office but was afraid nonetheless. Many of my friends were not nearly as artful as me and ended up finishing their undergraduate studies in places like Colorado State University, Ft. Wayne Community College and DuPage Technical Institute.

With so many of my closest accomplices gone I had to enlist the services of rival wise guys to accompany my forays into the shadier side of campus culture. Og will remember one such epic adventure.

Shortly after that escapade Dean Kriegbaum decided to take a somewhat more academic direction in his career at the Harvard of Christendom. Describing that period Kriegbaum stated, "Many students...were struggling with faith issues and how one lived out their Christian faith. This resulted in students acting out behaviorally in ways which were not in adherence to the Pledge." Kriegbaum says the campus atmosphere has since changed. "It’s much more positive," he says.

All of us here at Peter’s Ashtray wish Mr. Ward Kriegbaum the best.

Hopocalypse Now

At about 3:00 yesterday afternoon I walked out of my office and smelled an unusually acrid odor. I looked around to see if any of the neighbors were burning garbage. No smoke that I could see so I jumped into the venerable Nissan to run an errand. The local news/talk channel was reporting a large fire downtown on South 3rd Avenue. This got my attention. We have an office on South 3rd so I dialed up Kathy the Executive Secretary there and asked how everyone was doing. She said fine but they were pretty nauseous and the smoke was so thick they couldn’t see across the street. I told her to tell everyone they all had my permission to go home. We both laughed then hung up. Little did we know of the tragedy occurring only a block away.

Here in Yukimoo we are quite proud of our agricultural bounty. We are known for our apples (in a good year the state produces as much as 100 million boxes) that are shipped worldwide. We are also proud of another lesser-known commodity that comes from the Valley: Hops.

Hops is a strange vine that grows fifteen to twenty feet tall producing cones which are harvested in September. These cones are dried, baled and sent to the world’s breweries to use in flavoring beer. We produce a lot of hops. Mrs. Yak has calculated that 18% of world hop production comes from little ol’ Yakima. I read somewhere that half of all the hops used by Anheuser-Bush come from Yakima.

As I crossed the tracks on the north end of town I had an unrestricted view of the plume of smoke rising over the S.S. Steiner Company’s warehouses 3 miles away. What Kathy and I had laughed at was 4% of the nation’s supply of hops in a pungent pall over the city. Beer drinkers everywhere are soon to learn that their precious amber liquid will be a little more precious. Surely something worth crying over.

Epilogue:
Being the genius that I am, I picked up the phone and dialed my broker. Thanks to the run up of hop belly futures my bride and I will be vacationing in Martinique this winter. (I wonder where Desnoes & Geddes gets the hops for their Red Stripe™ Lager...)