SoldiersHomeStories.com
  • Home
  • The Residents' Stories
  • Blog: My Visits with the Veterans
  • Photo Gallery
  • About This Project
  • Soldiers Home History
  • In Memoriam

Bundling Bingos

5/28/2012

0 Comments

 
Saturday, May 19, 2012 and Friday, May 25, 2012

Sometimes as a journalist, the brief bullet format is your best friend. Especially when you’ve been to two Bingos in the last week and feel behind in blogging and, as I might have mentioned, have two jobs, a teenager and a puppy.

Cue the bullets:

·         Still no word from Other Sandy, the MIA volunteer, so last Saturday turned into another fill-in day for me, helping Doreen in her VFW Auxiliary Bingo session. Doreen always gives away better-than-usual prizes, but this time she decided to try cold, hard cash: one buck per Bingo. It was a hit. When Leo Martell won his first dollar, he offered to take me out. “Oh, boy!” I said. “I think I could spend 50 cents pretty nicely.”  

·         I was kind of disappointed not to see Kevin, the new, young-looking guy—but then he showed up. Turns out he had just been outside at the gazebo, where a group of Harley riders was handing out coveted Harley swag. Kevin had a Nordstrom bag on his lap so full of stuff, I had a hard time lifting it so he could reach his Bingo card.  

·         After Bingo, I sat with Ray McDade for a while and caught up. First, bless his heart, he asked about my son’s golf game. Ray’s still having some lingering problems with that months-old gigantic blister on his heel—which, naturally, gave him an opening for his favorite recollection of all time: “I will never forget the look on your face when you first saw that blister,” he said. I guess he won’t.

·         Friday was a regular afternoon Home Bingo. (While these no longer seem so strange, after 7 p.m. sessions for years, I still have trouble getting there before 2:01.) Matt was calling numbers, Erin from Activities had loaded the prize cart and another volunteer (whose name I really should know by now) was helping out. I love a fully (and extremely competently) staffed Bingo room.

·         Friday’s Bingo was packed and unusually chaotic and loud. People were not in their usual spots, and I think I was more thrown than they were. Leo Martell and Charlie were at their regular table but in different seats—but for a good reason. They each were helping an older resident with his Bingo card. (When he left, Leo laughed, “I spent more time looking at his card than I did mine.”) It was extraordinarily sweet.

·         David Fox almost always picks prizes from the health-and-beauty section of the cart, and Friday he opted for a full-size deodorant. A couple minutes later, he called me over. “Read this,” he said. I had no idea what I was supposed to see on a deodorant container, so he pointed to a tiny ad-like box on the back: “If your grandfather hadn’t used this,” it read, “you wouldn’t exist.” David looked at me expectantly. I laughed out loud. He did, too. I love that he knew I would laugh with him.

·         Before I left Friday, I checked with Erin to make sure Monday’s traditional Memorial Day ceremony starts at the traditional 2 p.m. It does. I will not be a single minute late.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author
    My name is Sandy Deneau Dunham. I'm a journalist who’s worked at The Phoenix Gazette, The (Tacoma) News Tribune,  The Seattle Times, Town Hall Seattle and Pacific Lutheran University. I'm now back at The Seattle Times, as associate editor of its gorgeously glossy Pacific NW magazine. I've been a volunteer at the Washington Soldiers Home and Colony in Orting, Washington, since January 2009, and I am still a remedial videographer.   

     

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed