While poking around the police station this week, I learned that the one and only Dom Salvatore had returned to Newtown for a visit. Before retiring as a police officer in late 2005, Dom had worked for 21 years as a patrol officer, spending his last 15 years on the overnight shift. Dom now lives in Florida where he works full-time as a carpenter and home improvement specialist. I’m told that he looked as fit as a fiddle on his return to Newtown, having spent many hours toting timber in accomplishing tasks on his job.

I guess the gas prices have finally driven people back to pedal power. Arthur and Raleigh Upshur returned to Newtown last week after tallying up more than 4,000 miles on their bicycles this summer. Now it seems that Matt Barackman, the son of Philip and Deborah Barackman completed a 3,000-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. on August 12. Matt’s miles were dedicated to the 2007 Journey of Hope event for the disabled.

It wasn’t thousands of miles, but Venture Crew 70 members Emily Boncek, Nate Crevier, Haley Keane, Andrew LaMarche, Alex Middeleer, and Matt Saxonmeyer, headed up by leaders Peter and Tracy Van Buskirk, spent five days pedaling around the northern region of Vermont August 3–5. They kicked off their 200-mile bike trip at the Northeast Kingdom Music Festival and then spent from 40 to 70 miles each day enjoying a wide variety of summer weather, steep hills, and a few dirt roads before ending the adventure in Burlington. If there were any bears about, they didn’t make themselves known to the crew, but they did enjoy watching a cow moose and her calf one evening.

Maybe all of these bicyclists are ready to sit for a spell now, and what better place than Edmond Town Hall Theatre, where the accommodations just get nicer all the time? Stacked like piles of oversized red gumdrops in the inner lobby of the movie theater at Edmond Town Hall is new hardware that is sure to make tiny tots and their parents happier when watching films in the theater.

The theater has acquired the booster seats for tots, which when placed upon the theater’s newly installed seats will provide the children with a clear view of the screen. Also, it will relieve the parents’ laps of extra weight during film screenings.

Julianna Therese Frenette has better things to do than watch movies, though. A follower of the Tang Soo Do school of karate, 10-year-old Julianna has become an apprentice red belt in that martial art, according to her father Gary Frenette, who is Newtown’s zoning enforcement officer. Julianna has applied herself during the past four years, concentrating her energies to attain that level of achievement in karate, Gary explained.

Gary and his wife, Linda, adopted Julianna from China in 1998. “She’s just unbelievable. She’s brought so much love into our lives,” said Gary.

Julianna isn’t just kicking up her heels, though. Woodbury Middle School sixth grader Julianna, who loves animals, is interested in becoming a veterinarian. Now there’s a worthy profession, I say.

I was just about to put out an APB for Ralph the pug who had wandered off from his Alder Lane home last Friday when Sheri Legeret let me know that the two-year-old pup had been found. The Legeret family is relieved to have their friend back safe and sound. Because Ralph is hard-of-hearing, the little dog must not have been able to hear all of the whistling and calling. As much as I hate to admit it, the picture on the lost poster was pretty adorable and I’m glad someone recognized the Legeret’s furry pal.

There is something else missing in town, though. I thought I felt a tremor rumble along my otherwise peaceful windowsill at The Bee, and after a long stretch I slipped off the sill for a walk. A midnight stroll through the empty streets of Fairfield Hills revealed a distinct ghost in the background.

Fairfield House was gone and in its place are the faint concrete imprints where the building once stood. Was the tremor I detected the last brick clattering into the back of a dump truck? The razed structure has left a hollow within the campus, and in the vacuum you can almost hear the far-away sounds of cheering, the crack of a bat driving a pitch into left field. Like a seashell holds the sounds of the sea, the pocket where Fairfield House stood awaits the baseball diamond that will take its place.

Nostalgia attached to the building is now kept in memory alone, with one less looming façade to remind former state hospital staff and patients of the comforts many found at Fairfield Hills where none existed elsewhere in earlier decades. As far back as the 1930s when the hospital opened, the well-honed bedside manner and comfort were the best cure.

This cat, for one, will watch Fairfield Hills shrug out of its hospital dress and into business and recreation attire. I just hope you don’t shrug me off next week. Remember to…

 Read me again.