On the Atomic Frontier

Last week's main event was a celebration deemed Atomic Frontier Day.  Other towns have Pioneer Day or the like, but here in Richland, WA, home to the Hanford nuclear site, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the part the town played in the Manhattan Project.  It's pretty much our only claim to fame.

Above is a model of an "A" house -- the government built "Alphabet" houses in the 1940s here to house its workers.  If you lived in an A or C or F house, you knew exactly what your friends' homes looked like if they lived in an A or C or F house...and most of them did.

My friend Beckie and I (and the Hounds) went to the Uptown shopping center (opened in 1949 and going strong) where they were staging for a parade, and also having a sidewalk sale.  Pippin was very popular there.

The parade was short and fun -- here is a Girl Scout troop sporting vintage uniforms:

And there was the usual assortment of vintage vehicles:

 There were two marching bands.

And horses!  Pippin barked madly at them until I told him to think of them as really big dogs, and then he shut up.

More fun was to be had at the main park in town, where there were historical booths and displays, including this 1940s bus that took workers out to the Hanford site:

It was a long commute (35 miles), and workers brought games to play during the ride.

Note the sign banning games in the aisles.

My friends Sue and Irina were there, manning a table for the Friends of the Library book shop:

Here's an overview of the festival booths:

A staffer at the booth below cajoled me into picking a question from their trivia board.  They were surprised when I boldly passed the easier 100 and 200 levels and went straight to "Shrub-Steppe" for 300.  The Shrub-Steppe is what our local bioregion is called.  When they revealed a picture of a bird and asked what it was, they were very impressed when I firmly declared, "That is a Greater Sage-Grouse!"  I won a plastic ruler.  Wowza.

Then we stopped in at the community center, where there were more historical displays:

All in all, it was a fun, old-fashioned, low-key festival and we both enjoyed it very much.

Plus I found stuff at the Uptown sidewalk sale!

Otherwise, this past week I did the usual things that I do -- walked the dogs, went out with the sketch group, hit up the yard sales as well as a church book sale (good stuff!), hung out with the family, read some of those many books I keep buying, and watched a lot of baseball.

Here is one sketch I did while on one of my regular morning riverfront dog walks:

And here are some members of the Tri-Cities Urban Sketcher group, who met at an RV and boat dealership.

I got ambitious and did a sketch that tried to show as much of the location as I could fit in -- we have 1-1/2 hours to do our sketch and I was pretty happy with it overall.

This coming week has a lot of showers in the forecast so I may not get out and about as much.  We shall just have to wait and see.