Encore October 2014

ENCORE What’s Inside:

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Mike Mroczkiewicz was selling his copper artwork

Wednesday Oct. 22, 2014

at last week's Lynden craft show.

A supplement of the Lynden Tribune and Ferndale Record

A Guide to a Fulfilling Senior Life in Whatcom County

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

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Auction barn building’s history goes back to 1905 Until 1942 it was Roeder School, then grocery The basic structure of the Everson Auction Market was first built in 1905 as the Roeder School, which was closed in 1942.

In 1946 Bob Noble opened the Auction Corner Grocery in the building. Sometime in the 1950s it become an auction barn. The café was introduced as a convenience for the buyers and sellers on auction days. It has continued to serve its famous burgers to many generations of local farming families.

The auction barn has been owned and operated by many different proprietors through the years: Willis Greon, Mike Roorda, Greg Barnett, Harry Tiemersma, Todd Beld, John Roorda, Bob Wiersma and Darrel Timmer, to name some.

It is currently operated by the DeBruin family.

It’s been many stages of life for the country crossroads building. (Courtesy photos/www.washingtonruralheritage.org)

Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

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Longtime workers keep Everson Auction cafe a happening and happy place Margaret Visser, just past 80, is still busy waiting on customers, pouring coffee, baking pies

By Calvin Bratt editor@lyndentribune.com

EVERSON ­ — It’s a one-of-a-kind gathering place that could be considered a throwback to earlier times, where ‘most everyone seems to know each other and the talk flows as easy as the coffee — oldfashioned brew coffee, that would be.

There is no sign whatsoever advertising this place. People just know about it and come, again and again.

And Margaret Visser and Helen Stadt have been in the middle of it, workers at

the Everson Auction Market cafe, for at least a combined 42 years.

Stadt retired a little over a year ago at age 73. Visser is still at it, despite passing her 80th birthday on Oct. 11. On a recent Wednesday sale day, Visser was still quickly taking orders from customers, delivering hamburgers and pie, and refilling coffee cups, with the zest of someone much younger.

“I enjoy it,” said Visser during a momentary break from the busyness. “But don’t ask me how I feel on Saturday night.”

On one big Saturday per month at the sale barn, she could be working from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Mondays and Wednesdays each week are a little lighter.

Stadt can now come in with her husband, Jack, as they live nearby, to just enjoy the food and atmosphere of the Everson Auction Market, Whatcom County’s only remaining cattle sale barn. She can reminisce about earlier times and former co-workers, too.

It used to be even busier here, back

After Margaret Visser tallies your order, payment at the Everson Auction cafe must be cash or local check — no credit cards here. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)

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ENCORE when there were hundreds of dairy farms in the county.

“We’ve had it when it was standing room only, it was so busy,” Stadt said.

It might have taken six women working the kitchen and tables in the past, versus the four now.

The café is open all Mondays and Wednesdays and the second Saturday of each month, with breakfast going to 10:30 a.m. and lunch to 3 p.m.

Once the Everson auction barn routine gets into your blood, it seems hard to shake.

“People who used to come here, then moved to Bellingham, they come out here still just because the hamburgers are good,” Helen Stadt said. “We just try to please the people.”

Because it’s a cattle sale barn, most of those making their way to this corner of Van Dyk and Everson-Goshen Road have some connection, past or present, to farming.

Sy Lautenbach, who dairy farmed on Telegraph Road, is one of those.

He remembers back to the man who started creating this place in 1946, Bob Noble, out of the former Roeder School building. It was a store with gasoline pumps in front before it was a livestock auction. (See page C3.)

“We bought furniture here at this place,” Lautenbach said. “Bob just loved to sell junk, rather than cows. They would sell cows and furniture and anything else.

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record “It’s a miracle this place stayed.

Lynden had a sale barn and that went down. This one is still here,” he said.

“It’s like walking back in history.”

Visser actually worked for about 10 years at the Lynden auction, which closed in the 1980s.

Julie Schmidt, one of the cafe workers with Visser, gets into the history of the area too, to the point of knowing that the Nooksack (River) Crossing — essentially the foot route north for Cariboo Gold Rush adventurers circa 1860 — is just nearby.

Today, the core of the Everson Auction Market building is so old that upgrading the electrical system is problematic, so the grills in the kitchen operate on propane.

The cafe serves both breakfast and lunch menus.

At either, the country corner chatter could easily be the same, including also, “Say, Margaret, can I get some coffee?” and “Did you put the pie on my bill?” and plenty more for the hustling wait crew.

Oh, and Margaret bakes those homemade pies too, several a week.

“It’s a fun job,” she summarizes.

The work crew at the auction cafe now consists of: Visser, Schmidt, Sharon Dale, Lori Carlson and sometimes Carissa Wineinger. Workers of years past, many of them longtimers, were: Stadt, Anna Mae Sterk, Pat DeJager, Genevieve VanDellen, Ruth Tjoelker, Marie Tjoelker and Katie Bouwman.

Helen Stadt, left, retired last year while Margaret Visser continues to work in the cafe. But Helen still comes by for the lunch. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

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Many reasons exist for denture replacement Lynden Denture Clinic specialists start procedure from scratch

By Shauna Thomas Lynden Denture Clinic

LYNDEN — A variety of reasons exist for denture replacement. Dentures can be ill-fitting, worn, clicking, breaking and more.

There are a few reasons, however, that aren’t quite as noticeable.

When a set of dentures is old (eight to 10 years old or more) and worn, a condition called “over-closure” can occur, in which dentures close down too far with the bite. The facial appearance is very flat and the facial structures tend to lose their shape, resulting in a person’s face appearing shorter and more “crunched down.”

After replacing old, worn dentures, a person’s bite will be restored to the correct function and height, making overall facial structure taller and more supportive.

The other critical reason for replacing an ill-fitting denture is unnecessary

pressure put on the supporting bone when a person’s bite is closing down too far. This causes accelerated bone loss, which makes it difficult to adjust to a new set of dentures. As a denture wearer, the patient has the most success when there is good supporting bone.

Over-closure can still occur even if a set of dentures is not old and worn.

If a patient has been wearing dentures for any number of years, gum or bone shrinkage occurs. Sometimes a reline — also known as a permanent liner — is the answer, but there are some instances in which a new denture is required.

At Lynden Denture Clinic, patients generally begin with a no-charge consultation at which they have an evaluation and are presented with options and exact pricing for treatment.

When a patient decides to get new dentures, the denturists at Lynden Denture Clinic start from scratch. This allows them to restore the correct bite, fix poor esthetics, and leave the patient with a high-quality, custom-made, well-fitting denture.

First, the denturists take impressions of oral structures as they currently are and begin creating a new denture

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

ENCORE from those impressions. The next step is restoring the correct bite, which is accomplished by taking several measurements.

The next appointment, the “try-in,” is often the most important to the patient. At this visit, the patient gets to see exactly what the denture will look like and make any changes to size, shape or shade of the teeth. Sometimes this takes more than one visit, and Lynden Denture Clinic will do as many as necessary.

Once the patient and denturist are happy with the appearance, the denture is processed, and the patient comes back for denture seating. There is always a post-check appointment a few days later to check the dentures and do any adjustments. All adjustments, office visits, and annual exams are free on dentures constructed, and satisfaction is guaranteed.

Clayton Sulek and James Anderson have over 35 years of combined experience and are licensed denturists seeing patients at both the Lynden and Bellingham denture clinics. They specialize in providing precision dentures directly to the public from their in-house laboratory which allows for quality control.

Lynden Denture Clinic is located at 1610 Grover St., Suite B9, and the Bellingham clinic is located at 2003 N. State St., Suite B. Most insurances are accepted, and payment plans are available.

Call today for a free consultation and evaluation at 318-0880.

Clayton Sulek is the experienced denturist at the Lynden and Bellingham clinics. (Courtesy photo/Lynden Denture Clinic)

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

After 30 years in carpentry, he finds a love of copper art The work of Mike Mroczkiewicz — at last week’s Lynden show — is definitely being noticed

By Calvin Bratt editor@lyndentribune.com

Phillip Shishko of Bellingham, with younger brother Josh, gives his guess of a name for a created copper critter in the booth of Mike Mroczkiewicz at the Lynden Fall Craft and Antique Show last week. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)

LYNDEN ­— Three years ago, Mike Mroczkiewicz knew he was making a life change.

He was ending about 30 years as a remodeling contractor. Exactly into what next, he didn’t know. Perhaps a lot of travel in his RV and plenty of fishing.

He is doing a fair amount of those things when he wants to. But what he is really into — enough to put him in a booth at last week’s Lynden Fall Craft and Antique Show — he could hardly have foreseen.

He is an artist in copper.

Maybe it started as a hobby of curiosity, but it has become much more than that now.

He is a master craftsman.

The way he tells it, Mroczkiewicz (pronounced Mrooch-KAY-vich), 62, was “playing with a piece of copper flashing” and, long story short, he kept playing with such pieces.

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

ENCORE He even got some ideas and inspiration from a niece in the Midwest who was doing metal artistic creation as a 4-H project. Likely he got a creative do-it-yourself mentality from growing up a farm boy, he adds.

Whatever. He put down his big tools of carpentry and picked up the small tools of an artist.

The primary tools are a hand punch (like a large needle), a small electrical rotary spinner, brushes and a grinder. He begins with a paper overlay that marks the perimeter of the object and gives as much guiding detail as possible. He ends with actually cutting out the final dimensions, multiple lacquering and then mounting his object using glue or tiny nails.

He has been visualizing for a while what this art piece will look like — whether a fish, a bug, a bird or some other creature of wildlife — before he actually begins to give it shape. Then he “just keeps working it till it looks right,” with the details of the fish’s scales or the bird’s feathers being exactly as they should be. (A salmon’s scales are quite different from a bass’s, did you know?)

It may look perfectly smooth and effortless as a finished product, but Mroczkiewicz will insist, “No, it is not seamless. I’m still learning.”

“Some of the technique I do is totally by accident,” he said. That would be true of the experimentation Mroczkiewicz did to arrive at the second tone of color, a greener shade See Copper on C10

This is the bug creation of Mroczkiewicz that needed a name, drawing dozens of guesses at his booth. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

Copper: Burnished with brass takes a different hue Continued from C9 than the natural brown of copper, that he has worked into his artwork.

Back up the process a step and Mroczkiewicz actually starts his imagining from the rock or wood piece that will be the mount for the finished metal work. He lingers with the raw elements long enough that the finished look gradually emerges in his mind.

A salmon that seems it could splash off the wall and into your arms, on sale at the show for $1,300, represents two solid weeks of work. Sometimes a work requires leaving and coming back to, even changing some things. Mroczkiewicz said he tries not to pay too much attention to time when he is in the act of creating.

Although realism is his forte now, his next step of experimentation may be toward abstraction, and he may make that first object a dragon, Mroczkiewicz said, after having recently seen a dragon tattoo on a man.

To do abstraction, he is told, he needs to “let go” with his creative imagination.

“I may have something visually in mind, but I never know for sure how it’s going to look until I’m done.”

The lighter greenish hue is created by the brushing of a brass wire wheel on the copper. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)

See Copper on C12

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

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Lynden Tribune | Wednesday, October 22, 2014 | Ferndale Record

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Copper: Hobby has developed in just three years Continued from C10 He has learned, and he tells people, that different lighting bring out different looks of his copper art. He doesn’t mind that prospective buyers consider carefully where they will place his work in a building.

Mroczkiewicz has also gotten creative making candle holders and deck planters, and they were part of his booth display last week.

He owns a piece of property off Noon Road that needs some work to become more habitable, and he has had to cut down trees whose wood he can use in his creations. So far, his work studio is a small space in a garage.

Mroczkiewicz got noticed by Judy Meixner, co-founder of the Lynden craft show, just this past August when he was out at a first-time Maple Falls benefit art show.

As always, she was on the lookout for possible new talent for her twice-yearly show, and it didn’t take Meixner long to realize that this guy was “really amazing.” She invited him to submit three pieces of work to be juried and, of course, he was good enough to be accepted in.

“You have to like people and like making things,” said Meixner of inviting people to be in her shows. “A lot of these people are

not where you would expect. He’s got attention to detail and he has that nice patient personality.”

His very first public appearance with his copper artwork was at the 2013 Everson-Nooksack Summer Festival. He had a seasonal round in the Jansen Art Center in Lynden. “When I realized the caliber of the art there, I was glad to be included,” he said.

He has six pieces in an art shop in Silver City, New Mexico, dropped off when his RV travels took him there last winter, and he will no doubt return to that climate again at some point this winter.

He plans to be in the Whatcom Art Guild’s Hampton Inn Fox Hall art show in November, a VFW exhibit at Lynden, and maybe something else locally. Otherwise, his schedule is pretty wide open, and Mroczkiewicz will see where the muse of creativity and his fishing or traveling impulses take him.

He said that one of his next projects is to develop a website, but until then he is willing to just be phoned at 739-4550.

Mroczkiewicz carries a card that declares “Artist - Fisherman - Dreamer (not necessarily in that order.”

“That pretty much explains me,” he said.

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Some of his work will again be for sale at the Nov. 7-9 Whatcom Art Guild sale at Fox Hall of Bellingham. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)

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