In identifying this scene by what is “typical” about it, a student of western geology might choose the Snake River of Idaho-Washington over the Green of Utah-Arizona, or vice-versa – or neither. I, however, do not know how to use the geological fingerprint on the rock on the left or the grass there or the bush across the road to guide me. I do see, however, another typical Sykes with both distant and near-at-hand subjects. That a nearly furtive road winding most likely like the stream is also here lends to the subjects Sykes qualities. How Sykes has turned this scene or placed himself behind it is a fine example of his sensitivity for the picturesque.
This year I visited a friend of many years, Gerry Murray, who lives near Glasgow, Scotland. Gerry and I spent a couple days at the Edinburgh Fringe (which I’ll write more about soon) and one evening, heading back to catch a train, I turned and snapped the following photo of the city emerging from a cloud bank:
Edinburgh during the Fringe
It’s a part of a larger panorama, which you can examine in greater detail by clicking on twice:
Turning clockwise about 200 degrees from his position on top of Steptoe Butte in yesterday’s Our Daily Sykes #154, Horace Sykes looks southwest over the town of Steptoe, which is about 3 miles away. This is a different visit to the top for Horace. Practically all is green. Like yesterday a telescopic lens was used here too.
As the attentive visitor must by now know Horace Sykes liked to take the looping road to the top of Steptoe Butte. He left many Kodachromes of the patchwork fields below, and we know he often returned, for the light and sky varies so between his visits. This butte is a quartzite survivor. It is more than 400 million years old, while the basalt flows in the Columbia River Basin are in the “neighborhood” of a dozen million years old. Here Horace used a telescopic lens to look north (and a wee bit east) to the Selkirk Mountains: the dark horizon. Growing up in Spokane we thought of the Selkirks as foothills to the Rockies. Mica Peak, the highest point showing here at only 5243 feet, is but a few miles east from Spokane, but 40 miles from Horace and his prospect, the 3612 ft top of Steptoe Butte. One summer during graduate school I worked on a grass farm about 7 miles to the other side (north) of Mica Peak. My home, a tine shack in the middle of the grass field I irrigated throughout the day, was close to Post Falls, Idaho, the small town we passed on our way from sober and demure Spokane to the many pleasures of Lake Coeur D’Alene and its namesake Idaho town. Much closer to Horace than the footills are the rooftops of Oaksdale’s grain silo. They are about 7 miles from the top of the butte.
Mistakes can be exciting. In the original Colman Dock feature on this blog for which this is the 5th Addendum, I put it that the San Mateo was the only ferry transplanted or shipped from California that kept its Golden State Name. The rest were traded, I explained, for Evergreen State Names. I did not add at the time that the first ferry that Washington State Dept of Transportation built was named The Evergreen State, and you can find it above in that photographically crude montage pulled from a DOT stapled pamphlet. Now we get a letter from Rex, who helpfully joins in on this business of ferry names. The letter follows . . .
Dear Paul,
I loved your Sunday, 05 September 2010, Now & Then in the Times. I think the Black Ball look at Colman Dock is way better than the modern version! It always seems to be a struggle to get the state to just call it Colman Dock. Now they are back to “Seattle Ferry Terminal” but at least they added “at Colman Dock.”
As far as your guess about the SAN MATEO being the only ferry that kept its name, her sister ship, the SHASTA, also ran with her original name. The NAPA VALLEY used her original name for a while. She had a fire and was rebuilt. At some point she became the MALAHAT. The CITY OF SACRAMENTO ran with her original name or sometimes was referred to simply as the SACRAMENTO. But eventually she was completely rebuilt for the Horseshoe Bay – Departure Bay (West Vancouver – Nanaimo) run and renamed KAHLOKE. The steamers apparently were not expected to serve very long and so no effort was expended on changing their names. SHASTA ran until 1958 and SAN MATEO until 1969. KAHLOKE came out in about 1951 and ran a quarter century more and the MALAHAT was retired in about 1953. So actually some of the steamers or their reincarnations lasted a long time.
Yours, Rex
And thank you Rex. You have also moved us to attach the few pages on steamers and ferries that appear in the book “Building Washington.” We will attach them below. We mean to put this entire history of Washington State public works up on this blog soon. So the eight pages that follow are a kind of Public Works Titillation. They first were printed in the Waterways Chapter, the first chapter in the 400-plus page book. This is also a kind of test. We hope you can read it! By all means please CLICK IT TWICE to ENLARGE IT. The book was published in 1999 (and – we toot – won one of that year’s Governor’s Writers Awards). At the end of this excerpt we let it run on into the chapter’s description of the Port of Seattle – but we do not continue on with that. It is just a fragment.
While Horace could not manufacture his clouds he could choose and compose his subjects according to motifs – his motifs. Here he gives us what seems also like a Sykes Set. The best of this is the lovely mix of rocks and grasses and bushes. That on the right is both delicate and monumental. And there, typically, is his winding road ascending to the horizon, and the “flowering” plant – often a bush or tree – in the foreground, ordinarily to one side. Here it is the shining decay of a tree in autumn. And far left is a skirt of green. But all of it is sill not identified. Perhaps photographers who do not identify their subjects are more likely to be confident of their own – identity. They act in favor of moving silently through the connotations of their subjects, following the contours like a winding road.
Dexter Horton Bank, northwest corner of Washington St. and Commercial St. (First Ave. S.) before the June 6, 1889 "Great Fire." (CLICK TO ENLARGE - Sometimes Twice)And again again, nearly the same point of view and following the "great fire" that razed about 30 city blocks on June 6, 1889.The Maynard Building in 1994, a century after it took the place of the pioneer Dexter Horton Bank Building. A page from the Feb. 25, 1906 Seattle Times "jubilee special." The Maynard building is at the bottom left corner when it was still named, like its predecessor there, the Dexter Horton bldg.Another page from the 1906 Times Jubilee special, this one showing a few Seattle banks. Dexter Horton is printed at the center of the montage.
. . . FOLLOWS A SMALL SAMPLE OF PIONEER WASHINGTON STATE BANKS
BANK OF CHENEY, then. This comparison can be found in Jean and my book "Washington Then and Now." We intend, at least, to put the entire book up on this blog within the year. (Courtesy, Cheney bank NOW. Actually a very hot summer day in 2005.FIRST NATIONAL BANK, CHENEYREDMOND BANKSOUTH BEND BANK, exteriorSouth Bend Bank, InteriorWAPATO BANK, then (This too appears in the book "Washington Then and Now.")WAPATO BANK now, with Howard Lev visiting from Seattle to study the progress of his Yakima Valley goat horn peppers for processing into his Mama Lil's condiment. The second person is not identified.OAK HARBOR BANKCONWAY BANK - An old one but no longer a bank with cash deposits or lending policy here. This view was snapped by me, I think, either in 1970 or 71 on a trip with the band The Youngbloods from Seattle to Bellingham where they were expected to play that night at WWSU - and did. The Conway Bank was by then Beck's Bank, the home of sculptor Larry Beck, seen here crouching on the bottom step with the pill-box hat, sort of. The camera that recorded this snapshot was probably Fred Bauer's. He holds a Shazzam pose on the left. Fred is an old friend and superb artist. He has been "gone" to California for nearly 40 years exploring ancient forests and raising exotic birds. His brother John is behind him. John's art is furniture - lavish furniture - and wood sculpture. The other of the Memphis Bauer boys is Joe who is front center and smiling. Joe was the band's drummer. The poser with the big black hair is Banana, guitar, piano and much else. I do not know the man behind him (interrupt: Ed Garrett writes with a comment - below - that the standing man behind Banana is a new band member named Michaeki Kane.) nor the woman leaning at the top of the steps, although I do have a faint memory of her costume and her hair. Next to her is artist Charles Larry Heald, who after moving to California - eventually near Fred in Humbolt County - is now back living in the Skagit Valley and painting. Larry is one of the three celebrated Heald brothers - all artists. All were part of Helix, the local tabloid of the late 60s. The oldest brother Maury is past. Paul Heald has a studio in Columbia City, here in Seattle. Beck's Bank was a favorite stop for many when traveling between Seattle and Bellingham. For me that was in the early 1970s. I forgot the figure at the center in the big fur cap. I don't recognize him, but would he recognize himself? Much is hidden. (And now much more is revealed with Larry Heald's comments on this slide - in the "comments section" below, I presume. )A silly repeat of Fred Bauer's Shazzam pose - from memory. I posed and Jean took it when we were headed for Bellingham in 2005 either to take shots for the book "Washington Then and Now" or to lecture - or both. (Jean also took the repeats for the Cheney and Wapato banks above.) By then Larry Beck was long gone both from his bank and from this mortal coil or veil of tears or human comedy. Larry - Lawrence - died in the spring of 1994, and his passing was noted with a great wake at Golden Gardens. Part Alaskan native his ashes were distributed in Puget Sound - and delivered there ceremonially by a very long and large dugout canoe moved by many paddles and much chanting. Larry "left his mark" on that place with a piece of permanent art at Golden Gardens, 12 feet of steel and named Atala Kivlicktwok Okitun Dukik, "The Golden Money Moon." (Look it up.) Inside Beck's Bank in Conway but on another occasion in the early 70s. Again Fred Bauer's camera most likely and this time he made the recording too. Larry Beck is up in his loft, and his Skagit Valley neighbor and friend the painter Larry Heald is seated on the couch on the left.
Members of WAC gather by the forest to study it and perhaps plan some trails. Some of them wear WAC labels. Not, of course, to be confused with WACS - here meeting with Conductor (briefly with the Seattle Symphony) Sir Thomas Beecham for a concert or a show-us-the-score at Ft. Lawton in 1942. Note the sign. Smoking was then still often required.
But
Rather to be considered with Horace Sykes - on the right - who also wears a WAC label. (We may have shown this pix of Horace earlier.)
A few of Joe's friends joined him last evening at Margaret Bovingdon's home for a delicious repast of something so complex it required a recipe to concoct. I'm accustomed to rice with veggies. This was that too but much more. Joe's friends, left to right, Pliny, Ella, Julie and hostess Margaret show, it seems, their shared delight in Joe, his good humor and what Joe described at the time as the "pleasures of the feast." A slice of pear remains on the right.
