A Refusal Refusal

We've been gearing up for a couple months to fit into Renton's plan for a renewed garbage disposal contract. there are new containers and revised pick-up schedules as well as additional stuff targeted for recycling. This is certainly all good. Increasingly sophisticated stategies for waste mangement seem to be one bright spot on our otherwise pretty bleak environmental performance report card. Times have changed. In the 50's there wasn't any regular collection in Kennydale and everyone took care of their own garbage in their own way. At our house Pa guided us in executing a multifaceted waste elimination program that was environmentally sensitive and degrading in approximately equal degrees.

Unlike many folks in lower Kennydale we had a sanitary septic system that actually worked. No failures or foul smells emanating and ugly messes oozing out of the ground here and contributing to Lake Washington's nutrient load and pollution. Pre-Metro this very common residential circumstance was possibly the main reason this lakeside community didn't increase in development and value. So we were fine with sewage.

There was also composting, using manure in the garden and burying deceased critters and butchering offal under the fruit trees. All good approaches it turns out and practical, which was about the only point then.

On the other hand we burned anything that would; or almost would; or maybe would - brush as well as a lot of household paper, plastic and "stuff". My folks had burn barrels in back well into the 80's and we still regularly dig up bottle caps and metal bits. Old batteries. Miscellaneous junk. There's a lot of vintage broken glass in the dirt around the east end of the raspberry row. Automotive oil, antifreeze and other like fluids got poured in patterned drip lines up and down the street out front as a do-it-yourself dust control measure for what was then unpaved Park Ave. No. (104th SE). Lake Washington bottom core samples practically have sediment layers with our name on them (" ...these soils appear to be contaminated with brake fluid from the McNeely's 1952 Nash Ambassador." Just kidding(?)).

Even with such a broad based multi-disciplinary approach, however, it was sometimes requisite to go "to da dump". Almost everyone hauled stuff to get rid of it, but, just like today, not everyone went to the proper facility to do it. There were numerous traditional roadside sites along rural roads where dumping was seemingly tolerated or only gently frowned upon. We never used those, though. Pa was a relatively good citizen and we always traveled to the official landfill on the east side of I-90 at what is now Eastgate. Except one time. On a Sunday morning he and I loaded up the green '47 Pontiac sedan with bags and boxes of stuff from the house and a project; headed to the official site. It was closed. Pa reluctantly decided, "just this once" to leave our garbage along the road into the facility. Of course there was a better citizen than Pa and he took our license plate no. A week or so later we got an offer not to refuse from King County in the mail: "clean up or pay up". So we went back, picked up our junk and and finished its journey. To his credit, Pa was accountable, stand up (we went back in that same car, lest anyone mistake us for samaritans) and good humored about this incident. It had lasting impact on my estimation of him and was my first clue that the environmental frowning wasn't gentle anymore.

Walking Over Water

Yesterday I was walking at Gene Coulon Park. Went north this time, all the way to the nesting sanctuary nearest the Boeing roll out apron. It was interesting to note that the chained together "logs" enclosing the swim area are in fact perfectly round 25 or so ft. PVC (or some such) cylinders about 2ft. in diameter.

These are not like logs back in the day, the real ones we kids tangled with at the old Barbee Mill on Lake Washington, an interesting place to do stuff in the summer. In those 50's days the property wasn't closed off and we had access to Barbee's docks and waterfront and the very outfall of May Creek.

Like the spirit in the subway in the movie "Ghost" that teaches Patrick Swayze kinetics, we really weren't "supposed to be there" , but we only occasionally got yelled at and were never seriously deterred. Goofing off on the logs was fun. Fishing was good, especially when there were schools of chub. There were two kinds of logs: "boom" and "rolling". Boom logs were older, large, long ,debarked and permanently chained together end-to-end and anchored by pilings along the perimeter to form a corral (or "boom"). They could rock, but they couldn't roll. Rolling logs were newly cut timber contained by the booms and destined to be floated to the mill's saws.

It was possible to get quite far out into the lake - maybe a third of the way to Mercer Island - by walking the fairly stable boom logs. Anybody willing to risk their mother's wrath could manage it. Skill and risk taking was requisite on the rollers, however. They were unsecured, both rough where not debarked and slippery where they were and they....ROLLED!

Falling in the lake was not a problem. We could all swim well enough to get to shore if we couldn't get back on a log (which we usually could on a boom log, but absolutely could not on a roller). The danger lay in tumbling into the filled boom and not being able to surface or coming up between closely packed rapidly rolling logs. As far as I know there was never a serious injury or drowning at Barbee, but the potential for it was undeniably real. Those logs terrified Kennydale mothers as much as they enticed the kids. Their "you stay off those logs!" were as constant and earnest then as "don't take candy from strangers" was later and "know your rights" is today. For the record, this is a purely academic discussion for me. Not only was I mostly a creek fisher, but ever since Ma pulled out all my hair when I was five or so I always did everything I was supposed to. So I never went on those logs.

Everybody Didn't Quit

We smoked a lot when we were kids. At first it was just stripped seeds from various tall grasses that we'd put together and roll and (try to) light, but it wasn't long before we graduated to actual cigarette butts.

Always being alert for a good find on the road (anything more than an inch left) wasn't enough to keep us in "weeds" so sometimes we'd conduct specific searches for that purpose. One of the best places was the bus stop in the Renton Highlands at what until recently was known as Harrington Square. We were there often in the summer because that's where the pick-up was for bean and berry pickers (that was us, trying to make "school clothes money"). Besides the heavy waiting traffic there, the conditioning of folks to flip their perhaps not quite finished butts before getting on the bus made this a productive area. An hour or so wandering around with our eyes on the ground would usually yield enough for two or three days of puffing away. Often we found almost whole offerings of our favorite brand.

I was usually a Camel guy because that was what my Dad smoked, but Lucky Strikes were ok, too (Aunt Jane). There was, of course, the usual secretiveness and parental warnings , if not good example, that usually centered on "stunt your growth". I'm not aware that this was ever effective with anyone I knew and all my brothers and lots of friends and acquaintances became lifelong "x no. of packs a day" people.

There came a point for me, though, where for whatever reason I just decided that looking for butts was stupid and I certainly didn't want to move up to shoplifting (gasp) whole packs like some of the "big kids" did. Besides, smoking didn't really give me a lift or any other benefit that I could tell. Over the many years since, whenever I've been asked in social situations, on applications, at doctor's offices or wherever, "do you smoke" my stock answer is "I used to, but I decided to quit when I was nine." My other vices are taking awhile longer.

A No Bull Bull Story

Little boys are all about 'dangerous fun'. It's what they do prepping for more/better/faster 'dangerous fun' as pre-teens, teens and "adults".

When I was a kid we had pretty relaxed boundaries - geographic, temporal and dynamic - for these learning activities. When regular chores and assigned work (x no. of vegetable rows hoed and the lawn mowed) were in the can we were pretty much left to our own um...devices to do what we wanted to if we got home not too long after dark. With a plan, during the summer, we could even camp out overnight. Oan, Jimmy Chapman and I did that once when I was about eight.

We went down to May Creek, crossed it and climbed a hill the other side 'til we came to a large fenced (three strand barbwire; we wondered why it was such a tough fence, usual was two) rough pasture with old growth stumps and a few scrawny trees. This would be in the vicinity of the ridge between the creek, below Kennydale School , and what is now Newcastle. This pasture appeared to be empty, no cows or horses in sight, and the farmhouse wasn't visible. So we decided it was a good spot to camp.

We lugged and skinnied our considerable equipment load into the field and set up under one of the few trees which was, luckily, not too far inside the perimeter and set up our stuff. I built a little fire and was showing the guys how to make a fried egg sandwich when we realized the pasture was NOT empty.

In fact it suddenly seemed very full, what with the huge Holstein bull steadily advancing on us from over a small rise, which turned out to be a false summit we had erroneously assumed was the top of our field. He'd been there all the time, probably just biding his time, we just couldn't see him, and now he was coming to investigate.

We decided to leave. I still have a memory and image in my mind of the clumsy scramble out of there, but especially of the incredible jumbled multi-hued heap of clothes, ropes, sleeping bags, egged frying pan etc. piled just (barely) outside that fence. Thus, we learned why it was a three strander.

Frenchy's toast

Taverns and road houses were a major fact of social life everywhere in this country for all the time up until just a very few years ago. Their decline to the current state of nearly non-existence closely parallels the progress to completion of the National Defense Interstate Highway System (aka freeways) initiated in the 1950's by the Eisenhower administration. Of course, in the past 25 or so years the concerted campaign against drinking and driving has been a major influence as well.

Our local example of this cultural icon which eventually turned to, first, an artifact of a bygone era and then retaining wall foundation and footprint for an "upscale" Lake Washington view apartment development was the Boulevard Tavern, or "Frenchys" near what is now Gene Coulon Park. "Frenchy" was the owner/bartender who was already in ill-health when I was a kid. He passed on some time in those years, a victim of smoking as I recall hearing, but the place continued under his name, though according to old-timers not at all as gloriously as in its heydays of the 30's and 40's, until the late 60's. As I think about it now, it didn't last long after Carol visited it once about 1967! Hmmm....

Many of we local kids had experiences with the Boulevard Tavern when we became old enough to go there. My own were quite pleasant. I didn't have to wait in the car for peanuts anymore! For others, not so much, as it is popular now to say, for there were always such as the beginnings of marital issues and serious beatings in the parking lot - my cousin, Jack Lindquist's and others.

Typical tavern stuff, actually, writ pretty large. For two, almost three of the "big kids" on our block their experience there would even become their last anywhere. Jack Rogers and Chuck Chapman, Jimmy's older brother, were both killed in separate early morning high speed turnovers in front of Griffins Boys Home as they sped away from the tavern toward home. My brother Jim had precisely the same accident, but walked away from my dad's totaled GMC pick-up. (I might add parenthetically here that Jim walked away from a LOT of bad car wrecks. Train collisions, "not so much.") So, in addition to beer, Frenchys served toast to Kennydale kids.

The Neighborhood's Mr. Rogers

In his memoir of growing up in the midwest in the 50's and 60's, "Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid", Bill Bryson tells us about a buddy, Stephen Katz, who was ever ready to participate with his pals in pranks and petty (and not so petty) crime - and also willing to have everyone's back by taking the penalty when accountability time came.

We had a fellow like that in Kennydale. With a difference - he didn't willingly take blame; it was just routinely assigned him by various miscreants, including my brothers and (once) me. He was Jack Rogers, scion of what we thought was an outrageously dysfunctional family on the east (apparently the wrong) side of Meadow Ave. Jack got in a lot of legitimate trouble all by himself so he was an easy target when others wanted to shift the load. A fair estimate might be that he did about half what he got "credit" for.

Under severe parental questioning it was frequently "Dunno, must've been Jack Rogers". There was never a campaign against him. He was simply a handy way to avoid certain punishment would the truth be known.

The most blatant example of his dilemma is an incident involving my (now deceased) brother Jim and one of his friends (who shall remain unnamed 'cuz he still lives in Kennydale). These two were roaming the streets one evening in the early 50's, chucking apples at doors. They made a mistake when they attacked the Smiths on what is now 33rd Place. Mr. Smith was a pretty athletic guy (one of his sons was a champion gymnast a few years later) and obviously had been near the door when the apple struck. He gave chase and before too many blocks had passed caught up with Jim and hauled him up by the collar. "What's your name, son?", he demanded. The answer, of course, was, "Jack Rogers!"

Bryson's Steve Katz eventually came out ok after some troublesome times and gets the honor due him in "Thunderbolt". Alas, it didn't work out that way for our Jack. His was one of the tragedies that began at "Frenchy's" on Lk. Washington Boulevard and ended after a turnover at "a high rate of speed" a mile or so north in front of the original Griffins Boys Home.

Our neighborhood's Mr. Rogers had pretty much done his youthful duty for us by then, though, so it didn't seem like too much of a loss. 'Til now.

A Little Known Artifact

We kids used to spend a lot of time around Lk. Washington near Barbee Mill and just upstream from May Creek's mouth. What you see there now is mature alders near the end of their 60 or so year lifespans. Back in the day, however, the creek meandered across a wide cobble field that extended from Lk. Washington Blvd upstream to where I-405 crosses the valley. In those times I had an intense interest in "perty rocks" (for the record, I really dug astronomy, too, during the much simpler 9 planet paradigm where the only moons besides our own I had to know were Mars' Phobos & Deimos) and spent hours poking through this area looking for agates and other "good ones".

It was a pretty easy search and the bar for acceptance was low so I collected a lot of stuff. Some of it is still in a milk crate in the garage, very unscientifically uncatalogued and mixed in with "other people's" rocks from different times and places. But they're all "perty". One discovery, though, was special. I couldn't believe it when I found an actual ARROWHEAD!

Some of the grownups I showed it to couldn't believe it either and were a bit discouraging, saying "it isn't a REAL one, it; it just looks like it." But I knew. Santa wasn't real, but this was! For awhile after that our searches of the gravel bar intensified and an old shotgun shell was found. From their juxtaposition we imagined scenarios wherein these two artifacts were remants of an ancient cowboys and Indians "set-to along the banks of the muddy May" - or something like that.

No milk crate storage for my arrowhead! It's been in a jewelry box in the top drawer ever since and over the years we've learned a little more about it (and that it isn't cool anymore to "collect arrowheads", a science defeating and culturally insulting activity these days right up there with the grave desecrating "pot hunting").

According to an archeologist and paleontologist, my artifact probably isn't an arrowhead, but either a spear or scraper. Possibly it is a discarded unfinished implement that didn't turn out right in the making. Who can't relate to that? The experts also advised that the stone it is crafted from doesn't occur naturally in our area so it came from east of the Cascades via either a trader or ...dum da dum dum...an invader. Whatever the complete facts, it is certainly a Native American tool. And I found it! And it lives on in my jewelry box! Cool.

The Head Cheeser

The back yard of 3810 Park Ave. No. (or, then, 8436 104th SE) in Kennydale didn't always end at the Bergman's fence line. When I was growing up here our property went all the way to Meadow (106th). And back there was a barn. And in the barn we kept a succession of "large animals". Usually we had either a steer or pig, sometimes both, fattening for the locker (all our meat went to a locker in cold storage in Renton in those days; no one had a home freezer; hey, we're talking "back in the day" here, early late 40's, early 50's.) Well, the one bad day in these well-kept critter's lives would eventually come and we would butcher. I usually didn't get too directly involved in the killing and skinning, but I DID have an important job: taking the head in a wheelbarrow down the street to Mr. Nicoli. I would give the head to him and he'd give me a few bottles of his homemade wine in return, to take back to my dad. Now, Mr.Nicoli had traditional Italian tastes and accompanying skills. He knew how to make pickled pigs feet, sausage and....jellied meat loafs boiled out of the heads of butchered "large animals." Umm... also tongue products. He was a gentle, nice guy and his family was one of my favorites in the neighborhood. Definitely he was not someone you'd consider aggressive, controlling or bossy. But he WAS the head cheeser.

Relative Appreciation

When I was a kid, major new acquisitions were nowhere as easy or common as they are now. If someone got a new car it was required to either drive around to the relatives to show off or call folks to come see. Same applied to appliances and the first TV's. In our extended family camping for hunting and fishing were big deals and we were always trying to upgrade equipment. I remember when my uncle Charley and aunt Jane bought a "just new on the market" Coca Cola ice chest/cooler . It was about the size of your standard issue 24 quart styrofoam job today; made of galvanized sheet metal with a tray inside and bottle open riveted to one corner. Bright red with raised white "Coca Cola" lettering. So, of course, we all had to head on up to Hazelwood to inspect and ooh and aah over the thing. Everyone wanted one of those babies! And it wasn't too long before everyone did.

Can you 'here' me now?

In the Kennydale neighborhood of my youth we didn't make appointments or play dates. We'd just head to our pal's back yard door and yell for him/her. Just yell their name: "Ooaaannn!"; "Mmmiike!" and they would come out. No need to call ahead or knock and risk being faced by a mother, sister or some other unrequired person. The yellee would then come out to see "what's up" having gotten all domestic (non)permissions, warnings, etc. out of the way inside, sans yeller's presence (sometimes it was "you go out and tell him you can't come out 'til you..."; sometimes, "we're eating"; whatever). This simple, effective means of communication was used a lot in our immediate circle of friends. Not sure how widespread it was beyond our block. Somehow, I don't believe this would go over very well in our culture now, perhaps partly because kids don't "go out to play" as often or in the same way (we didn't "hang out"; we did stuff). Oan still drops in at the back door, but he quit yelling awhile ago.

Dirty Rotten Pinkoes

Clint Eastwood wasn't the only famous guy to put Kennydale on the map. Joe Robel may not be a household name anymore, but back in the paranoid "red scare" days everyone knew that he was one of several members of the Communist Party around here and that he was involved in an epic fight with with the Justice Department.

Like my dad, he was a machinist and they were casual friends, loaning to and borrowing from one another from time to time. My older brothers, Jim and Tiny occasionally did jobs for the Robels. Kathy Robel was prominent in my circle of younger friends (read: within one year of me; as opposed to my elders like Oan, Ray Pickle and Jimmy Chapman - as much as two whole years older).

The Robel family lived at the northeast corner of 36th and Meadow, one of the few older home in Kennydale that has now been restored rather than bulldozed (though what was their property has been subdivided with new construction on both sides now). They were close, loyal to one another and progressive.

Robel was a Communist, perceived to be a very bad thing then. He worked at the Naval Shipyards and at the peak of the hysteria, when writers, directors and actors in Hollywood were getting blacklisted; when job applications had a question: "are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?"; when Hoover and McCarthy were running rampantly amuck; when we were deploying Nike missiles on Cougar Mountain to shoot down the Russian bombers we were sure were coming to attack the Boeing plants, he was fired from his job. The basis for it was that no Communist should work at a defense facility. He fought the dismissal in a legal wrangle that went on for several years, all the time continuing his work pending court decisions, and eventually got to the Supreme Court. He was victorious and vindicated there.

I have always been a little proud that it never occurred to us kids to discriminate against, pick on or talk trash about any of the Robels. He might have been a Communist, but he was also a pretty nice guy and his kids were our friends. This wasn't a hard choice for us. There wouldn't have been serious repercussions whatever we did.

Not so for the adults. If they were too supportive of Joe they risked being "fellow travelers". My dad straddled. He was always friendly and welcomed Robel when he came to visit, but also declined to provide supportive affidavits or testimony or become involved in the court case in any way.

There's one other curious link between Joe Robel and the McNeely's. My transient orchard worker brother Jim, aka "Okanogan Red" for the color of his hair, who had worked for the Robels and who, if not an actual Communist, had fairly pronounced leftward leanings of his own , was run over and killed by a train at the King Street Station in 1983. A few years later Joe Robel wandered away from his home in north Seattle onto the railroad tracks nearby and was hit by a train. I wonder if a conspiratorial campaign against Kennydale's dirty rotten pinko reds was unrelenting, consistent in its methods and, in the end, diabolically successful?

Rain, rain, come today!

Here we are (December 26, 2008) waiting for warm and wet weather to wash away our weeklong accumulation of snow and ice. Not the first time I've hoped the sky would open up.

Used to pine for rain every weekend during the winter when it was "pruning season". We had LOTS of apple trees in the back field when I was a lad - Kings, Gravensteins, Astracans, Transparent to name a few. The Spitzenberg by the Bergman's fence is the last of the apple orchard on the place (large, almost expired pear tree in front is an heirloom, too). There were also cherries and prunes, but as far as I was concerned these were low maintenance and user friendly because only the apples had to be pruned every year.

My dad was an ambitious, hard working guy in those days and on weekends in the winter there were always projects going on, trimming the trees among them. Every weekend he'd be out on the ladder snipping away and we'd be running around picking up suckers and hauling them to a burn pile. It seemed like all day, but probably wasn't. Unless it rained.

Pa didn't really like working wet and would find something else to do if it did. Too many bad weekends, though, with spring approaching it had to be done (HE sez) no matter what. A silver lining in this borderline child abuse was the brush fires we had when the work was done.

Pa was a pretty stern taskmaster, but also generous with the hot dogs and marshmallows. Sometimes in the afternoon looking at the neatly shaped trees there was even a grudging sense of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. But I still "wished it would rain" tomorrow.