Recent Stories with tag elma high football

Last Friday night, while you were enjoying your wine bar or experimental theater or ginormous music festival, I went in search of the pleasures of small-town America: A Friday night high school rivalry football game.

Montesano and Elma have played 148 times

I found it in Montesano, a logging town of 3,000 that's halfway between Olympia and the coast. Sitting at Geppetto's Sports Bar on Pioneer Avenue before the game, I overheard the type of conversation that assured me I was truly in a small town.

One bar patron turns to another.

Patron #1: "Hear about Bob Timmons*?"

Patron #2: "Nope."

Patron #1: "Dead!"

Of cancer, he related, and so the small-town gossip went, touching on various forms of cancer suffered by people in town.

The guy sitting next to me leans in and says "So, how do you like it? This is what you get in a small town--everyone knows everybody's business."

They even knew my business. I challenge anyone to sit in a bar in Montesano, Washington, and not have your business known by the time...

(more)