For frying out loud,
that's a lot of bread

Patti Puhn, in foreground, and others prepare mouth-watering fry bread prior to the First Salmon Ceremony. Several hundred people turned out last Friday for the annual event held at Arcadia Point and sponsored by the Squaxin Island Tribe. Immediately behind Puhn is Russell Harper.

Captain of the company

Shelton's Teresa (Gardner) Wenner leads her unit after the recent activation ceremony of the only unmanned aircraft system training battalion in the U.S. Army at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. The captain, 29, a 1996 graduate of Shelton High School, is in charge of a company in the battalion, training soldiers operators, mechanics and officers in the operation of the Shadow, Hunter and Warrior Alpha unmanned aircraft being used in Iraq to spot the enemy from the air. Operators flying a plane from a console on the ground and looking at video from the airborne craft can be a hundred or more miles away from the action and danger, and no pilot's life is risked. Gardner, an intelligence officer, has been to Iraq with a unit flying the little drone-like planes and is considered an expert in the new warfare strategy. Her current obligation to the Army ends in June 2008. She then hopes to return to the Northwest with or without the Army. She would stay in the service if she could be based here, and in that case would be up for major in 2009. If she cannot land an Army assignment in the Northwest, she would return with her husband, Teddy Wenner, to follow other pursuits, and she would like to start a family. She married Wenner, a West Point graduate she met in Iraq, last October. He is serving as a project manager for a construction company in the private sector while she finishes her Army obligations at Fort Huachuca. Wenner, who still uses the name Gardner in the Army, is the daughter of Don and Mary Gardner of Shelton. She was home briefly last weekend to celebrate the commissioning of little brother Stephen as a second lieutenant in the Army after he finished the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Gonzaga University in Spokane this year.

FOND GOOD-BYES and pop flies combine for the usual Kodak moments last weekend as members of Shelton's slowpitch community stage cancer's annual One-Pitch Coed Softball Tournament in Callanan Park. That's the ubiquitous Denny Temple at the top right, getting a hug from tourney director Monica Deemer upon formal recognition of his soon-to-end 45-year umpiring career here. In the insets, from the top: players cool off between games, slugging all-star Tracy Bishop exults after an inning-ending put-out, perennial all-star Bill Remington offers up a fat one from the mound, catcher Liezl Thompson and umpire John Brown rainbow-gaze between batters and, in two-part sequence, Ralph Delamarter feigns an on-base pantsing of rival baserunner Casey Bingham. See next week's Journal for a complete account.

Big-rig models of
the dream machine

The Mason County Fairgrounds was on a roll Saturday with presentation of the 12th annual Antique Truck Show of the Northwest Chapter of the American Truck Historical Society. Admission was free to an event that featured food and beverage vendors, a swap meet of truck, tractor, gas engine and automotive-related items and approximately 150 trucks, the oldest of which were built in the 1910s. The show was also the scene of the Washington State Log Truck Driving Competition.

Travel trailer fire
under investigation

A 24-foot travel trailer, parked at the Wooten Lake Boat Launch, was marked up as a complete loss following an early morning blaze on Sunday, August 12. Fire District 2 crews responded to the call from the Collins Lake station shortly after 4 a.m. and were at the boat launch within five minutes. The trailer was fully involved, but quickly extinguished by the responding firefighters. The cause of the fire is yet to be determined and is currently under investigation by the Mason County Fire Marshal's Office.