If I have a dollar for every time I drove through Monroe Road, I assure you I would be as rich as Bill Gates…!

The Wild Rose Prairie is a small community about 5 miles from the small town of Deer Park, Washington. I came to it in September 1966, at the age of 16 years and one month. There lived the Losh family who changed my way of seeing life!

In 1965 my parents decided to send me to the city of Spokane, Washington, where my uncle José Manuel lived, called by the family with the nickname “Panino”, who was a professor at Whitworth College.

Through a Presbyterian church, “Panino” got me the home of the Glod family, but there was never a rapport, and it was, for me, the worst year of my life.

I was enrolled in Mead Senior High School, but I didn’t get past a single subject. My mind was on Venezuela and my only wish was to return to my adopted country.

Then, as punishment, my uncle – through his secretary – got me the Losh family, who lived on a farm in the middle of nowhere. My uncle nicknamed the Wild Rose prairie “Siberia”.  They were sending me to “Siberia”!

The story had a very happy ending. It was a “hidden blessing.” With the Losh I felt like family. Sharon and Marky were kids, and I became their new big brother.

To make this story short, I can only assure you that the Losh Family is my American family and maybe I love it more than my biological family.

In the meadow of Wild Rose, I lived the best and unforgettable years of my adolescence.

The wild Rose Cemetery was the meeting place of the region, since every month a neighbor had to be buried. There are buried great friends of my adolescence, such as the Wegers, the Burdegas and many others.

It’s impossible to describe what I felt when I walked into OUR old Wild Rose Prairie home. I had lived in it the best years of my adolescence and now it was all part of my past.  My mind and my feelings led me to a song that Tom Jones made popular and that I sang to Beverly, which defined, in part, what I felt at the time.

Peter Mamopulako Travinski, one of my great friends in Venezuela, had a son who, seeing the sunflowers, thought they were mayonnaise flowers.

Helianthus is a genus comprising about 70 species of annual and perennial flowering plants in the daisy family Asteraceae. Except for three South American species, the species of Helianthus are native to North America and Central America. The common names “sunflower” and “common sunflower” typically refer to the popular annual species Helianthus annuus, whose round flower heads in combination with the ligules look like the Sun. This and other species, notably Jerusalem artichoke (H. tuberosus), are cultivated in temperate regions and some tropical regions as food crops for humans, cattle, and poultry, and as ornamental plants. The species H. annuus typically grows during the summer and into early fall, with the peak growth season being mid-summer.

Several perennial Helianthus species are grown in gardens, but have a tendency to spread rapidly and can become aggressive. On the other hand, the whorled sunflower, Helianthus verticillatus, was listed as an endangered species in 2014 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a final rule protecting it under the Endangered Species Act. The primary threats are industrial forestry and pine plantations in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. They grow to 1.8 m (6 ft) and are primarily found in woodlands, adjacent to creeks and moist, prairie-like areas.

Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain which is a worldwide staple food.  The many species of wheat together make up the genus Triticum; the most widely grown is common wheat (T. aestivum). The archaeological record suggests that wheat was first cultivated in the regions of the Fertile Crescent around 9600 BCE. Botanically, the wheat kernel is a type of fruit called a caryopsis.

Wheat is grown on more land area than any other food crop (220.4 million hectares or 545 million acres, 2014). World trade in wheat is greater than for all other crops combined.  In 2017, world production of wheat was 772 million tonnes (1.7 trillion pounds), with a forecast of 2019 production at 766 million tonnes (1.7 trillion pounds), making it the second most-produced cereal after maize. Since 1960, world production of wheat and other grain crops has tripled and is expected to grow further through the middle of the 21st century.  Global demand for wheat is increasing due to the unique viscoelastic and adhesive properties of gluten proteins, which facilitate the production of processed foods, whose consumption is increasing as a result of the worldwide industrialization process and the westernization of the diet.

Wheat is an important source of carbohydrates. Globally, it is the leading source of vegetable protein in human food, having a protein content of about 13%, which is relatively high compared to other major cereals  but relatively low in protein quality for supplying essential amino acids. When eaten as the whole grain, wheat is a source of multiple nutrients and dietary fiber.

In a small part of the general population, gluten – the major part of wheat protein – can trigger coeliac disease, noncoeliac gluten sensitivity, gluten ataxia, and dermatitis herpetiformis.

CENTRALIA