I note in the paper this morning (December 27, 2008) that Clint Eastwood has (again) a couple of movies being touted as potentially Oscar-worthy. That's fine, but around here his Hollywood career is a mere sideline since it became widely known that as a young man in the very early'50's he was a lifeguard at KennydaleBeach.
There was a Renton Recorder telephone interview awhile back where he said that he certainly remembered those days: "It was a pretty rural area then. Folks were real enthusiastic about swimming, especially the kids. I don't think we ever lost anyone so I guess I did ok."
Well, I recollect those lazy hazy days, too. I almost drowned there when I was five, maybe six, teaching myself to swim so he didn't have to save me later on. During the summers of his era (sometimes our "summer" began in April or May) we'd trek on down there two or three times a day. After laying in the sand for a bit we'd say, "I'm going in" and head for the water. Twenty or so swimming minutes later: "I'm going in". Back to the beach to tan and burn.
The rest of the time we just ran around being "real enthusiastic". Yeah, that's right: When you add all the stuff Clint did to my activities, together we put KennydaleBeach on the map!
In 1957 I got a brand new 1957 Lambretta 3-wheel scooter upon which we mounted a home custom made marine plywood box. I was 15 (so we're illegal here already) and the plan was to abandon my bike in favor of this exotic vehicle to ease the delivery of newspapers on the two Seattle Times routes I had gotten myself into (total about 185 daily and Sunday customers).
Well, I did that with some mixed success and you will no doubt hear more later about my paper route adventures. Here, though, a few words concerning one of my after after hours scooter-based initiatives.
In August or September of '57 a bunch of us decided to make apple cider and let some of it "harden". Because the potential reward was very attractive, it wasn't difficult to recruit a teen crew from two of my several social circles. We motored around Kennydale, picked up apples from a bunch of different sources and carried them in the scooter paper box to a central cider press location at the Robels where we conducted a press party. This was in the days when everyone had a few trees and apple maggots weren't yet a problem. So we had a good inventory of quality raw material.
Truth be told, we finished with about 20 gallons of pretty fair fresh cider in old vinegar jugs. Everyone got a few to take home. So that was good. In addition, and more to the point, Oan and I took three extra bottles to ferment and distribute at a later time. Because it was still pretty warm we hid them under some hay in the nesting boxes of an old chicken coop at the back of Nimtz' property (actually, this coop was at the middle of the fenceline across the back yard of Tom Carrolli's cottage -Fred Eckholm's, then - where your mother and I lived from 89/90 to late '93.
Oan's property, the coop, fence, Tom, Fred and the little house are all gone now, but WE'RE ok). Anyhoo... at first we checked almost daily on the cider hardening process and were mildly disappointed with the (non) progress, but later on when the brew rapidly turned green and foamy we figured we had it made, so to speak. Not so. Foul tasting vinegar. As I recall we escaped detection by our elders but had wasted several gallons of hard earned cider and had some explaining to our collaborators to do. It was hard, that ciderin'!
Was out pruning back the forsythia by the front porch yesterday and noticed the buds are already starting to swell. When they do that, maybe even BEFORE they do that, it's possible to bring them in the house and put them in a watered vase to force a (very) early bloom. Until they do open up, though, they look exactly like what they are, a bunch of twisted twigs.
With some evergreen foliage - Oregon Grape or Camelia, for example - this can make a cozy winter fresh flower arrangement. Can't remember a time of my life when I wasn't aware of this little known fact. Not everyone was, however.
In fifth grade I brought a bunch of these to my teacher, Miss MacMillan, and spoke the equivalent of, "forsooth, the fair forsythia forya; put this fruit jar of water full of sticks on the heat register by the window and in a week or so you'll have a nice yellow bouquet". She was skeptical, maybe even a bit reluctant, but, probably not wanting to hurt my feelings, she did it.
It only took a few days. On Monday morning she was surprised and amazed. They were in full bloom. Should have had some greens in there, but I wasn't sophisticated then like I am now. Beyond thanking me for my thoughtfulness Miss MacMillan never said more to me about this. During teacher conferences, however, she related the whole incident, including her initial doubtfulness, to Ma. Pussywillows are next. Of course there aren't any pussywillows around here anymore.
P.S. You cannot force apples, no matter how hard you try.
We used to have an extensive system of barbwire electric fence around the back field, from where Bergman's is now all the way to Meadow. There was a cross fence about halfway back where the little barn was; and rings around new tree plantings to protect them from grazing cows. This was 2 or 3 wires all the way and was powerful enough to, uh, generate a lot of painful memories.
There are still remnants and artifacts of this infrastructure - insulators here and there, one in the big apple tree, and a transformer ground rod in the shed. One of my jobs was to police the fence perimeter with a scythe and shears to keep weeds, grass and brush off the wires, lest they short out the juice. Sometimes it happened despite my best efforts, so we'd have a search and correct mission with lots of testing to see "is it on now?" queries.
Pa was extremely tolerant of electric shock. He thought nothing of working with live house wires or changing spark plugs in a running engine - with blue lightning bolts of electricity jumping around his fingers! As far as he was concerned the best way to see if the fence was on was to grab it. And he "encouraged" me to do the same. Usually, this required only a brief touch with the back of the hand, but for awhile we had a "pulse" system so we'd have to hold on long enough to test each mode (we got rid of that pretty quick because pigs were still getting out and Pa was convinced they had learned to time the pulses; I wasn't sure about that, but it was still ok with me). So "testing" was one, controlled, way to suffer shocks.
We kids were always wary of the fence, though, and two circumstances got me probably twenty times or more over my kid career. The first was opening and closing gates. We had insulated handles, but when everything was wet I never knew if I was in for a surprise anyway so I know exactly how a lab rat feels. The second was "crossing under" (or over). Best example of this was one morning returning from fishing in May Creek. On wet ground, with soaked pants and an old style steel telescoping fishing pole trying to crawl under the low wire in the back field I caught my shirt on a barb. At some point the pole made contact and I was in for it good. Probably didn't last more than a few seconds before I squirmed out but at the time it seemed I wasn't EVER going to make it.
Electrical contact wasn't the only way the fence was my nemesis. I ran into it once while trying to make a quick slide under and barbwired my face. The permannent scar across my right cheek just under the eye, faded now a bit, is a reminder of that youthful folly. I really didn't like that fence very much.
In our family it was fashionable, or at least mildly acceptable, for hubbies to jocularly refer to their wives as "old bags". Both my uncle Charley and my dad did that sometimes so I considered it normal and routine.
At some point when I was a little older than Weston and Paloma are now (4 ½), maybe 6, I decided to try it myself. Once. You know the boulders along one edge of the back yard? Well, they got there after being toted and reconfigured from a rock mound in the middle of the front yard lawn.
When I uttered those fateful words Ma was like "Whaaat?! You little ...." Without knowing exactly what was wrong, and being a clever little boy, I sensed serious trouble here and took off running out the front door and down the steps, naively assuming I could easily outrun the "old bag". She closed fast and chased me around that rockery a couple of times before catching me by the hair with, I thought, a few unnecessary extra yanks. Didn't know whether fear, pain or surprise was the called for reaction of the moment. Anyway, she became "Mama" again right away and stayed so till my teen years when she graduated to "Ma". I had a hand in that, too.
I, too, had a dream. It was probably generated by a combination of writing the other day about my nefarious scooter activities and recent plotting and scheming how I can generate enough extra bucks in the new year to float a cash purchase of "Mike's Last Golden Truck". It seems (in this dream) that a couple of suits were canvassing Kennydale for someone to take over paper routes and had been told I used to be 'da man around here. Well, they had a deal for me: I could have the exact same route I delivered more than 50 years ago, except now I wouldn't have a little less than 200 customers; there would be just short of a 1000. Also...are you ready?...a scooter wouldn't do. I would need a TRUCK! Otherwise, everything would be th same. Told them I was gonna sleep on it (kyuk, kyuk) and if they could come up with some numbers for the big Trifecta today to sweeten the offer, I'd dream on. Never heard back.
For the record, in those days I was sort of reluctant to even get into the basically 24-7 paper delivery business but my dad , I believe , was anxious to restore the family's (somewhat) good name after truly skanky stuff Tiny had pulled when he had a route. So he encouraged me when Oan went on to greater things and gave up #5126. A second of three routes in the greater Kennydale area (#5128) soon became available and we came up with the plan to take it also and get a scooter like the three wheeled Cushmans that Boeing used for internal parts delivery at their plants. None were available, so we researched and ordered a new '57 Lambretta from Angle Lake Cyclery out on Hiway 99, south of Sea-Tac. The store is still there, I believe. We borrowed money from the bank and paid $50 or so monthly installments out of route earnings ($200+/mo. - pretty good in those days for a paperboy). My first new car purchase! The route(s) was 12 miles long and covered the area from north of Edmonds and east/south of Aberdeen to Devil's Elbow; to behind Kennydale School between what would later become 405 and Lk. WA Blvd; to most of the streets between Park and Burnett (104th and 100th SE then); to all Lk. Wash. Blvd and waterfront from what is now Gene Coulon Park north boundary to Barbee Mill; to all of Park and Meadow (106th SE) and everything in between those avenues. A lot of work for Zip and me. If you think it was easy with the scooter, you'd be dreaming.
We always had animals on the place, but only once a horse. When I was about 11 my cousin, Lee McDougall, somehow came into ownership of a registered quarterhorse. Not sure what Smokey's background was - possibly an over the hill racer - but he was a real good looking critter.
Lee brought him over here for a stay in our pasture and of course we all had our chance to ride. Lee could handle Smokey pretty well and after he tired him a bit so could the rest of us. When the horse was fresh, though, he'd only consent to be walked to the far end of the field and then would turn and race back to the fence by the house, making as many quick stops as necessary ( read: one) to get rid of whoever was up there.
I was pretty persistent and tried almost every day for a considerable time before I gave up. Bucked off without fail, sometimes at a pretty high rate of speed and/or into cowpies and horse apples.It seems surprising, now when I think of it, that I was never really hurt. Took some pretty serious falls. Smokey was with us only for a few months, but he taught me early on how to lose with the horses.
It was always fun to "go down to Renton" on the weekends and pa was always generous in taking us along when he went. Downtown in those days was really where the action was. Three movie house on 3rd street (Roxy, Rainier and Renton); Hub City Drugs (lots of toy guns and caps); eating out at Longacres Cafe where my mother worked for awhile; just the general break in the rather rural routine at home.
Trouble was, to GET to Renton and home again required two passbys of The Boulevard Tavern, aka "Frenchy's". This watering hole, just north of the south entrance to Gene Coulon Park, was a social gathering place for local folks and pa had trouble not stopping there to visit and drink with friends and neighbors. So we kids, either eager to get to the big city or tired and wanting to go home, sometimes both, would have to stay in the car in the parking lot for at least one beer. If his visit lasted awhile pa would come out to the car with treats, usually a nickel cellophane bag of Planters Peanuts. While we were happy to have the peanuts we also knew the "wait" was really on.
This routine was actually one of the more harmless associations I have with Frenchy's - quite a few family and friend's tragedies were spawned there - but I hated it nevertheless and vowed I'd never do that to MY kids. And I never did. I just kept on driving.
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