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Page 4 Shelton-Mason County Journal — Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023
Correction
An article on Mason County Community Concerts in
the Jan. 12 stated the incorrect time for next concert.
Nashville-based Vinyl Radio plays music popular in
the 1970s at 7 p.m. Jan. 25 in the Shelton High School
Performing Arts Center. The regrets the error.
' Johny Baltimore, the Hawks and Nirvana
Seahawks’ playoff game
with a friend, Johny. Bal-
timore. “Baltimore” isn’t his
birth surname, but it’s what
people call him, mostly be-
cause he rarely appears with-
out a Baltimore Orioles base-
ball cap.
He beca'me a fan of the
Orioles in 1988 when the
team started the season with
21 straight losses. “I was in-
trigued by the idea that a
team could go an entire year
without winning a game,” he
told me. '
Thus, a fan, and a name,
were born.
I’ve known Johny for 20
years, but I didn’t know his
legal last name, so I asked
him, for purposes of this col-
umn. He hesitated. I asked
whether he knew my last
name -— sometimes when you
ask a question that some-
one hesitates to answer, you
volunteer the same informa-
tion about yourself. It’s a
reporter’s tactic. He smiled.
“I don’t, but I don’t deal with
last names.”
So we left it at that.
Johny’s the kind of friend
you only run into. Maybe you
have friends like that too:
We’ve never set up a time
Iwatched Saturday’s
KIRK ERICSON
THESE
TIMES
, and place and agreed to meet
at that time and place. Johny
allows serendipity to be his
guide.
I thought it would be fun
to engineer an extended visit
with Johny. He’s a Seahawks
fan — he had recently attend- .
ed his first Seahawks game
— so last Saturday I scouted
around for him.
If you’re looking for ‘
Johny, you find him by ask-
ing other people, “Have you
seen Johny?” And that’s how
I found him: He was sitting
alone at a table in an estab-
lishment reading Rickie Lee '
Jones’ autobiography, “Last
Chance Texaco: Chronicles of
an American Troubadour.”
The TV screen, tuned to
the pregame show, was 20
"LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Support Pioneer
School
Editor, the Journal,
I am in support of the levy for Pioneer
School. This is a replacement levy, not a
new one. The levy is about cf the dis—
trict’s budget. It supports transportation
costs notzcovered by the state, after-school
academic tutoring for students, athletic
programs, reading and math specialists,
support stafic not covered by the state and
other programs. ‘
I am retired and do not have children in
school, but education is important for the
children’s and our future.
Pamela Harrell
Vote for schoOls
Editor, the Journal,
feet away and he had a front-
row seat. I joined him.
“Do you have any hope the
Seahawks will win?” I asked.
“I’m not expecting them to,
win,” he said. “I’m just happy
because they weren’t sup-
posed to be here. You have to ‘
be gratef .”
He remained upbeat when
San Francisco went up 10-0
in the first quarter.
“Maybe if we’re down 10-0,
we’ll have them right where
we want them,” he said. “It
will give them a false sense of
security.”
After Seahawks running '
back DeeJay Dallas ran for 7
yards, he said, “DeeJay prob-
ably has the best smile on the
team.”
His mood remained rough-
ly the same when the game
fell. apart for Seattle. I asked
whether he was discouraged.
“Being down three touch- ’
dow'ns is discouraging, but
that’s called life.”
As the game spun out of
control toward the end of the
third quarter, we started pay-
ing more attention to the ads
shown during game breaks,
including ads for trucks, beer,
.fast food, new cars, invest-
ment advisers, cellphones,
legal drugs, insurance ._.. it
Shelton School District to vote “yes” on the
upcoming levy ballot measure on Feb. 14.
This is a replacement levy, which means
no new taxes —— just a renewal of the cur-
rent tax, which will expire on Dec. 31,
Shelton
Co—chairs, Citizens for‘ Shelton Schools
The Citizen’s For Shelton Schools Com- s
These fimds shore up the gap between
the fimding that the district receives from
the state and the cost of offering things
such as the school nurse, library services,
counseling services, afterschool sports
and activities, campus security, etc. This
replacement levy provides about of
the Shelton SchOol District’s budget. In ad-
dition,'Shelton School District will receive
about million additional dollars from
the state, but only if the levy’passes.
Please vote “yes”!
For additional levy fact information, see
sheltonschoolsorg.
ll , Kristy Buck
Brad Miller
mittee would like to urge all voters in the
uses 492,300
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County Journal, PO. Box 430, Shelton, WA 98584.
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became a joke because none
of those ads were close to ad-
vertising anything we’d be
interested in, and here we
were spending a Saturday
.afiernoon watching the game.
People like us were not being
represented in the ads.
Then an ad appeared on
the screen that showed still
shots of fleeing families,
maybe from Latin America
heading north. The last words
superimposed on the screen:
“Jesus was a refugee.”
“There we are,” Johny said.
In 2008, Johny gave me a
20-by-24—inch double—expo-
sure print of Kurt Cobain.
He took one of the exposures
at a Nirvana concert at The
Evergreen State College in
1991 and the other exposure
around the same time in an
alleyway in Pike Place Mar—
ket. He wouldn’t let me pay
him for it. ' V
I asked him Saturday how
that Kurt Cobain print came
to be, and he told me a story.
After seeing Nirvana per-
form in Olympia and Seattle
in early 1991, he saw them
play later that year in New
Haven, Connecticut, where
he lived at the time. He and
some friends gathered out-
side the venue, The Moon, to
greet Nirvana when they ar-
rived. It was Sept. 26, 1991,
two days after “Nevermind”
-—- the most influential rock
album of the 1990s — was
released.
“Before the concert, they
drove up in a van,” Johny
said. “Kurt came up to me
and some friends and asked
whether we could get him
anything We got him some
cough medicine. He got us all
on the guest list.”
You can see the Sept.
New Haven concert on You-
Tube. Nirvana starts with
four cover songs. The crowd
seems sedate for a Nirvana
show, but then the songs on
“Nevermind” start. First, “An-
eurysm.” Heads start bobbing
and jerking. You’re watching
people hear the songs, many
for the first time, that became
the soundtrack of their youth.
“A'little homeboy from
Aberdeen ended up touch—
ing people’s lives” around
the world: “Pretty amazing,”
Johny said. ,
“You’re an optimistic fel—
low, aren’t you?” I asked.
Johny took a moment.
“Hopefully,” he said.
I Contact Kirk Ericson at
kirk@masoncounty.com
I AM GETTING THE
FEELING THEY ARE
NOT HAPPY WITH
ME.
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