You are liable to meet some interesting people during the "Beacon Cafe" gatherings at the Pancake Haus.  

Readers of this newspaper occasionally get together with writers and editors to exchange ideas on the publication and on the community.  The typical Edmonds neighborhood might take on a slightly different personality if Ruby Smith had her way.

 She attended a recent Beacon Cafe gathering, clutching a paperback book that could serve as a blueprint for tomorrow.

The name of the book is The Squirrel Cage and consisted of columns written by Douglas Welch for the Post-Intelligencer. Ruby is a huge Douglas Welch fan.  So was I when I worked down the hall from Welch at the late, lamented daily newspaper.  

He was an incredibly gifted humorist but I never once saw him smile or heard him laugh.  He dressed like an undertaker.  He seldom bellied up to the bar with other writers or editors at The Grove, across the street from the P-I.  

But nobody had a bigger or more enthusiastic audience.  And Ruby Smith considered herself among their number.

But I think we should keep an eye on Ruby.  Welch passed away several years ago, but his influence lingers.  And I suspect Ruby wishes she could relive those days, and reside in a neighborhood Welch described as his own.

"I live in a strange neighborhood," Welch wrote in The Squirrel Cage.  "We have the fellow who already has everything so his wife gave him a cannon for Christmas, a real cannon which he fires from time to time and people say to each other, 'It's the bomb!"

And we have the lady who puts on her old Girl Scout uniform and steps out on her patio and blows a bugle when something bugs her.

And we have the old lady up the street who complains to the State Department that the Russians are pumping poison gas into her bedroom window. And we have a St. Bernard who makes martinis, but not very good ones and nobody tells him because it would hurt his feelings.

"And we have Mrs. Dribble who throws sticks into the water for her husband to retrieve.  And we have Tuppin the cat who turns the television on and off and chooses programs for the family, which is a good things because his taste is superior to theirs."

Ruby Smith says she has always been fascinated by the neighbor with the cannon so if you hear any loud noises that you can't blame on the Fourth of July or New Year Eve, you'd better check up on Ruby.  

Lord knows what she got for Christmas.

My Christmas came in February because Ruby arrived at the Pancake House with two copies of The Squirrel Cage and she gave one to me.  So far I've been leafing through the pages trying to discover the neighborhood dog's cocktail recipes.  

I suspect that only a Saint Bernard could create a bad martini.