Senior

Highlights

Guess who’s coming to dinner? You are!

Have you heard about Simply Soup? A loosely organized group of volunteers will be “loosely organizing” a dinner on the fourth Thursday of every month. We will meet at the Enumclaw Senior/Community Center, 1350 Cole St.

So who’s invited? Young and old, Democrat and Republican, liberal or conservative, all colors of the rainbow. There will be room in the parking lot to park your Buicks, Jeeps, pickup trucks, minivans, Harley-Davidsons, GoldWings, Hummers and Hyundais, skateboards and bicycles.

What do you wear? Well, whatever you have on is just fine. Work clothes, suits, blue jeans, etc. The only occupational day clothes we may want you to change out of would be if you are a bikini barista or a skunk exterminator.

What should you bring? Well, not money. This is a free event open to the community. What we would like you to bring would be an appetite, your neighbors, friends, family members. Oh, and a bowl and a spoon. We don’t want to wash dishes. The seniors always share stories with me about the days before disposable paper plates, plastic silverware and disposable cups. These were the days when people met at Aunt Mabel’s for Thanksgiving dinner or went to the local Grange Hall for the community dinner each month – and everyone brought their own place settings from home. This was decades before any of us had even heard of Earth Day, recycling or being “green.”

Each month we will need three community groups. One group will come to the center that afternoon and make homemade soup to serve between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. for 100 to 150 people. Another group can volunteer to bake cookies or bring in freshly-baked bread or biscuits. If your group is interested, call Jobyna at 360-825-4741 or e-mail jobynanickum@ci.enumclaw.wa.us.

We hope to have a coupon table: folks can bring in coupons they find in the newspaper or magazines that they know they won’t use – but someone else might. Seniors can bring in coupons for young families – coupons for juice boxes, baby formula, etc. Young people can bring in coupons for seniors for Ensure, etc. When people come for dinner, they can leave coupons on the table if they want to share, and others can look through the coupons to see if there is something they can use. What do you think?

So mark your calendars for April 23. Drop by after work. Pull the kids together after school. Get your friends together. Get out of the house if you are usually “hibernated” after 5 p.m. This is a great time to try something new. Enjoy a bowl of hot, homemade soup, a piece of fresh French bread. Finish off with a homemade cookie. Listen to some local musicians play some old style music. As we like to say: “Sit down with a stranger, come away with a friend.”

Jobyna Nickum is director of the Enumclaw Senior Activity Center.