In the hands of a professional, cameras can be used to distort or quite accurately portray reality. The Feb. 15 News-Times photo rightly reveals that the stone bench being used as a sheltie grooming table is not even knee high to the groomer.

So to call it a picnic table, (Feb. 22 Blevins’ letter to the editor) if not a distortion of reality, is quite a stretch of the imagination, unless of course I am a giant. Nevertheless, I apologize for coming to town and through my actions causing the Blevins’ to forfeit their “inspiration” to picnic at any (apparently) of the many picnic tables at City Beach.

But eating isn’t the only thing. I enjoyed would-be song and dance stars performing on picnic table “stages,” or kite flyers standing on picnic tables. I even watched an ingenious couple maneuvering picnic tables into risers so they could climb to retrieve their son’s airplane from the roof of a building. Who knows what any of them stepped in (including doggie doo that some people fail to pick up) before utilizing tables for their individual activities?

I’ve also watched a couple of crows playing table top tug of war with the entrails of a deceased critter. I’ve seen gulls retrieve garbage out of overflowing trash containers and settle down to eat at picnic tables. They’re not too tidy at picking up, or where they do their splatter painting.

When people fondly remember a town they visited, or school they attended, or even a hospital in which an illness was treated, it’s not the buildings, it’s the people who cause them to speak of it as a nice place. I’ve never met an unfriendly person at City Beach and I think of it as a nice place.

Maybe some day the Blevins will be inspired to come see for themselves… and bring a tablecloth.

Ellie Powers

Mount Vernon