Fast talker meets fast flyer at benefit
Jay Fiske, of Woodinville, recently met his childhood hero.
Fiske, who owns Northwest Benefit Auctions in Bellevue, was the auctioneer at a Boy Scout benefit at the Palm Springs Air Museum. Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than sound, was the guest of honor.
“When I was a young boy, I was a huge Chuck Yeager fan,” Fiske said. “Because of General Yeager, I read every book I could find written about airplanes.”
Fiske built models of the planes Yeager flew. He became a pilot in emulation of his childhood hero.
“I never imagined that someday I would get to meet Chuck Yeager. But there the legend was, standing on stage next to me as I sold his Rolex watch, a fishing trip with him and an elk-hunting trip with him,” Fiske said.
Leave it to an auctioneer to come up with an appropriate quip on stage.
“I couldn’t resist,” Fiske said. “When I was standing next to the general to sell his items, I commented that while he could fly faster than anyone in the room, I was able to talk faster than all of them.”
Like mysteries?
Check out the Redmond Historical Society meeting at 10 a.m. today at the Old Redmond Schoolhouse Community Center, where part of the program will be a showing of History Mystery photographs.
The unidentified pictures are from the old Sammamish Valley News collection.
The Historical Society folks hope people in the audience will help put names, dates and places to the old pictures.
About town
Debra Winter, who works at Nature’s Pantry in Bellevue, recently enticed her brother to a raw-food dinner. He worried about being hungry after a meal of carrots and celery.
“After indulging in raw appetizers, multiple salads, entrees and desserts, we nearly exploded from overeating because everything tasted so incredibly good,” Winter said.
Raw food is the hot - well, in this case, the cool - new thing at Nature’s Pantry. Chef Adam Lewis oversees the Raw Food Bar, showing people how to prepare nutritious meals without cooking the fruit and vegetable ingredients.
The trend is so popular that every couple of weeks Nature’s Pantry and Lewis host themed raw dinners. For more details, go to www.naturespantry.com or call 425-454-0170.
Sharing the road
Brenda Frost and her daughter, Jordan, were returning home from the Bellevue Youth Theatre last week when they spotted an unusual local resident.
(Frost, of Bellevue, is the assistant stage manager and Jordan plays a future kid and sings a solo in “Hocus, Pocus,” the play that runs through Sunday. The musical was written by Dan Alpern of the Youth Theatre.)
As they drove south on 148th Avenue Southeast, right by the blueberry farm, they had to brake for an animal running down the middle of the road.
“We thought it was a dog at first,” Frost said. “When we slowed down, we saw it was a coyote. Not something you see every day in the middle of Bellevue.”
Sherry Grindeland: 206-515-5633 or sgrindeland@seattletimes.com