Robert Lewis Stevenson ~ Nazi Wolfpacks & the Montlake Cut

 

1934 - SMA - 9239 

On October 17, 1934 an Engineering Department photographer captured this image of the Puget Sound tug boat Equator towing the oil tanker Geo. H. Jones through the Montlake Cut and into Lake Washington.   At 429 feet in length and 59 feet wide the G.H. Jones filled The Cut on its way to the Lake Washington Shipyards for repairs and refitting.  The bustling shipyards at Houghton ensured that large oceangoing ships were not an uncommon sight in the Montlake neighborhood.  Both the Equator and the Geo. H. Jones had interesting histories and met, equally, interesting ends.  Not present that day in The Cut but part of the story was the Nazi submarine U-455 that would put one of them on the bottom of the ocean.

Jumping From the Montlake Bridge

 

1975 – SMA – 179771

Sometime around the 3^rd or 4^th grade I made one of my life’s ambitions to jump off the Montlake Bridge.  I would walk out to the middle of the span and pull myself up on the railing far enough so that I could look straight down and revel in the butterflies that rose in my stomach, the patterns on the water, the toy boats passing below, the sound of the car tires rolling over the metal deck grating.  It seemed impossibly high but doable.  I may have been dumb and reckless, but I knew that swimming would be involved and since that was something I didn’t know how to do I got signed up to take lessons at the YMCA in downtown Seattle. 

Red Letter Day

Gotta say that yesterday was a red-letter day for this local history nerd. 

I have been searching for an affordable copy of “Pig-Tail Days in Old Seattle” by Sofie Frye Bass for years.  Typically, decent 3^rd edition copies go for over $100 with 1^st edition copies in good condition between $250 and $350.  All out of my price range.  So, when I saw a copy for $40 I figured that it must be a beater.  That is the cheapest I had ever seen this book so hoping for the best but expecting the worst I ordered it,  

The description read “A nice hardcover with a missing dust jacket, a tight binding and an unmarked text.  1937 Former owner’s inscription.  From a private smoke free collection”. 

Yeah, well, we’ll see what $40 buys me.  I can only check this out of the library so many times, you know, and I really need it in my local history collection.

So, when it showed up a week before expected I was pleased and tentatively opened the package hoping that I wouldn’t be too disappointed.  To my surprise the book was in near-perfect condition sans the dust cover.  Clean with a nice tight binding.  

Opening the cover I saw that the appraiser had mistaken the author's signature for the "Former owner" as it read Sophie Frye Bass.

The Last of the Portage Bay Log Booms

Written May 14, 2022 

Sofie Sarah Frye Bass was born in 1867 and was witness to much of Seattle’s earliest days.  Since she was a granddaughter of Seattle Founder, Arthur Denny, she was well connected, knew everyone in town worth knowing and probably was all up in everybody’s business.  By recording her observations, she brought to us some of the most revealing yet brief vignettes of life in early Seattle.  Her descriptions of growing up in the places we grew up in and where we walk today sometimes tell of great change and other times paint pictures of folks doing the same things that we did at the same places. 

In her book “When Seattle Was a Village” she talks about picnicking at the log canal at The Portage.  She says…….”Logs were then run through this channel.  We liked to picnic at the canal and watch logs float into the booms at Portage Bay, and when no one was looking, we ran and played tag on the logs”.  

1895 – MOHAI – Sophie and Her Sisters

Boxers (not Briefs)

 

Wichita 1955

Boxers (not Briefs), shorts, tee shirt, bare feet and dirty hands..........Damn!..........there is just no denying your destiny

Snow White and Big Head Discuss Smoke, Covid-19 and Parasitic Diarrheal Disease

 Big Head:

“What a day.  The smoke is so bad here.  I’ve never seen it so bad!  It’s our anniversary today and we were headed to the coast for a hike but saw the Cliff Mass Blog and he said “Don’t bother”.  How are you holding up with this all this covid and smoke?  Protests and crazy stuff going on in many places.  Waiting to hear some new protest songs!!  Where are they?”

 

Snow White:

“Yeah.  The smoke is worse than yesterday here.  Fires. Plague. Darkness.  If I hear that Lake Washington has turned to blood I’ll be fixin’ to see Frogs and Locusts next.

 

Big Head:

“I seen a giant gerbil chasing a Sasquatch.. They was goin’ north”.

 

Snow White:

“I know and there’s Giardias everywhere.  I seen them, too”.

 

Big Head:

“What does giardia poop look like?  Watery, sometimes foul-smelling diarrhea that may alternate with soft, greasy stools?  Fatigue or malaise?  Abdominal cramps and bloating?  Gas or flatulence.  Do you track the Giardia’s by following their poop?  With Sasquatch I just follow the footprints

 

Snow White:

“Wow!  Ya know I been waitin’ forever hoping that someone would be smart enough to ask me that. 

So, the deal is there are some things that you need to know about Giardias if you ever hope to see one for yourself.  As you know, their existence is not universally accepted and nothing but a radical-left conspiracy as far as Qanon is concerned.  Seeing one, or a herd of them, is not nearly as common as trippin’ over a Sasquatch turd in the Arboretum or even up in The Ravine.  I mean a turd so large that you trip over it is hard to deny.  But Giardias, well, they are a whole ‘nuther thing.

To start with, and I’m tellin’ you this now in the strictest confidence, their shit is bioluminescent which makes you think that “Hey, spotting glowing shit is easy”, right?  At least that’s what I said but it isn’t easy at all.  No, and it’s also really dangerous to expose yourself to them so seeing them for yourself can come at a price.

The deal is they are really fucking teensy, right?  So, a single glowing teensy turd doesn’t really jump out at you.  Ya see, you can’t really see just one Giardia turd so in order to see them at all you have to find a whole herd of them.  Only when you are in a huge group of them will there be enough glowing shit that you know that you are in their midst and when you are surrounded by them they attack you and bite your gentiles.  I shit you not.  I seen them and undergone their attacks so I know.

The first time I seen ‘em I was with some friends in the forest smoking some Thai stick.  After many lungfuls of smoke I saw that I was in a cloud of teensy bioluminescent shit.  When they attacked me, they knocked me onto my back but The Force was strong with me and I quickly jumped to my feet.  My friends were all laughing at me so I knew that they had not seen the shit and therefore were unaware that I had been attacked.

I thought that maybe seeing ‘em was my gift or something, sort of like you and your ability to see dead people, but the next day my crouch was itching like crazy and I decided it was gift I didn’t want.  The itching was driving me crazy so I went to the doctor and told him that I had been attacked by a herd of Giardias.  He said, “Giardias huh”? Then he told me to go to the drugstore and buy a bottle of something called RID, which I did.  I followed the instructions which made no mention of Giardias.  It did come with a teensy comb which not only helped remove the Giardias but provided a great styling tool for pubic hair.

The second time I seen ‘em was at Volunteer Park.  I was with some friends and we had dropped acid.  Pretty soon I started seeing that I was surrounded by colorful geometric crystals floating around.  This time I wasn’t the only one who saw them, though.  We all seen bioluminescent stuff but didn’t realize that it was Giardias.  They are sneaky fuckers, I tell you, and because we all saw ‘em it didn’t cross my mind that we were under attack.

A few days later it started burning when I pissed and I got suspicious.  When I pissed that golf ball, I put 2 and 2 together and realized that those fuckers had gotten me again.  I went back to the same doctor and told him that it was another Giardias attack but he said that it was something else called Gondolarrias or Gorgonzola or something like that.  He gave me a shot to get rid of it.

So yeah, I seen ‘em and I hope to never see ‘em again.  I would rather be abducted by aliens and have them stick that needle in my belly button again then undergo another attack on my gentiles by rampaging Giardias.  They are a total fucked story.

Shirts and Skins

 

Behold the Montlake Pennant.  I bought this at one of the last Montlake Carnival I attended (1962 or ’63?) but lost the staff that came with it.  The staff was simple wooden dowel with a dark green ball on top.  Note the school colors of Hunter Green and Grey. 

The word pennant or pennon came from the Latin word penna meaning “feather” or “wing”.  It originated in the Middle Ages when they were carried on the lances of warriors.  Various colors were used to denote who’s side a warrior was fighting for and that concept has carried over to this day as seen on sport team’s uniforms.  Makes it hard to confuse a Cincinnati Bengal for a Los Angeles Ram or a Flying A from a Longacre Colt.  

n.d. - Stategikon

At Montlake in the early ‘60’s our basketball team had no Hunter Green and Grey uniforms.  Heck, we had no uniform of any color and our league schedule pitted us against just two rivals, Bryant and Stevens Schools.  They also were without uniforms.  

n.d. - Craig Daily Press

 But, we didn’t need no stinking uniforms because we had Shirts and Skins!