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A NOW & THEN APRIL FOOL’S SPECIAL
Are These Quirky Tales for Real?
Certainly plenty of weird things have happened in the Seattle area and beyond — but have all of these?
By Clay Eals and Jean Sherrard
Through the decades, we’ve all seen them: the wacky people or experiences that make us laugh, cry, roll our eyes — sometimes all three. Often they’re enshrined in photos that rarely make the history books. But what’s April Fool’s Day for if we don’t flaunt such images and mess with the annals of time?
We at “Now & Then” dug out some of our favorite quirky images and asked local history compadres to do the same. We boiled them down to 10 vignettes.
Below, enjoy these off-the-wall snapshots of yesteryear, but keep your guard up for tomfoolery. Think of each “Then” photo and vignette below as a mystery, and of the corresponding “Now” (which you can find when visiting the link below each “Then” vignette) as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us history!
And don’t forget to click here to see The Backstory!
Quirky tale #1:
Discovering a vicious sea monster
Long before radio and TV (and certainly the internet), newspapers abounded with eyewitness tales of dreaded sea serpents. It became almost a sport to try to prove such sightings. In 1906, a group of natty gents took matters into their own hands, showcasing visual evidence of such a find. At Rainier Beach, they wrestled a sharp-toothed beast to stillness just long enough for a photo to document their temporary prize before rolling it back into Lake Washington.
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!
Quirky tale #2:
Sculpting faces in raw meat
Where horsemeat once was peddled in the Pike Place Market — during wartime rationing in the 1940s — now stands Mr. D’s Greek Delicacies, a take-away restaurant serving customers for more than four decades. Along with classic Hellenic fare, owner Demetrios Moraitis, 89, creates art in the bizarre medium of gyro meat. Over the years, Mr. D. has carved lamb busts of notables — from Market savior Victor Steinbrueck and Zorba the Greek to Barack Obama and the 2016 matchup of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!
Quirky tale #3:
Bashing a bicycle, Balch-style
In the 1970s, zany Dick Balch was a mind trip. In ever-present TV ads, the hippie-ish huckster with a high-pitched giggle wielded a sledgehammer to clobber cars at his Federal Way dealership. The man drew attention! Promoter Ben Laigo understood this. So when he launched the first official Seafair Bicycle Rally & Picnic in 1972, he persuaded Seafair Queen Lynn Garcia to pose in Balch’s lot to “smash” a 10-speed with a sledge. Ever the ham, Balch joined in the scene with a giant grin.
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!
Quirky tale #4:
Notching another official Seattleite
On Oct. 7, 1937, the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer showcased this cheeky photo. In it, cigar-chomping Eddie Rivers, a popular PR and advertising man for Seattle’s Hamrick-Evergreen Theaters, chose a unique way to announce the birth of his third child. Named after a popular song, Rivers’ daughter Charmaine was, he insisted, a “first-class attraction” appearing for a “long-term engagement some five weeks ago.” He credited the booking to “A. Stork.”
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!
Quirky tale #5:
Facing a nun-too-subtle challenge
For amateur photographer Max Loudon, who documented his lively bachelor life in the early years of the 20th century, this snapshot of six Benedictine nuns in their habits during a visit to Seattle’s first world’s fair, the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition of 1909, is one of a kind. What expressions! From grin to grimace, the sisters’ enjoyment of the AYPE seems … mixed. Loudon noted their provocative question: “How do you tour a city like Seattle?”
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!
Quirky tale #6:
Shining light on a riverside petroglyph
South of Fall City, the Raging River sometimes sloshes at high levels, but not enough to obscure a mysterious marker carved onto a 5-by-6-foot piece of riverside granite. Depicting a salmon and the sun, the petroglyph sits flat, as if on a tabletop. When hikers stumble upon what seems like ancient art, they’re stunned. Shouldn’t it be highlighted on some guide map? Well, Fall City historians don’t like to disclose its precise locale. Best not to invite vandals, they say. So in obscurity, its legend lingers.
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!
Quirky tale #7:
Fishing for a streetside dinner
Infamous Gutter Creek, running down First Avenue before the Denny Regrade reshaped much of the city’s topography, was notoriously muddy. Returning salmon could even be caught in its shallow freshets at certain times of year. In our “Then” photo, snapped between 1903 and 1906, an enterprising young fisher trolls for his dinner. A small crowd observes from the sidewalk in front of the Virginia Bar, erected in 1903 at the southwest corner of First and Virginia.
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
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Quirky tale #8:
Pigging out on the shoreline
He hid it well, but Seattle Mayor Carl Hinckley moonlighted as a bedraggled buffoon on the downtown waterfront in 1908-09. Masquerading as “Uncle Hiram and His Pig,” he induced his porcine partner, Betsy, and various dogs to perform crowd-pleasing tricks, while his hay-filled “Studebaker” wagon poked gentle fun at his campaign contributors. Hinckley built a following as what the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called “one of the best impersonators of the original down Easterner in the country.”
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!
Quirky tale #9:
Doppelganging a Dorpat
On a 2005 trip to Paris, his first since age 16, our favorite Seattle historian, Paul Dorpat, then 68, was on a mission. Newly available birth records from a Grand Forks, N.D. hospital questioned his family history. In a double whammy, he learned not only that he was adopted in 1938 but also had an identical twin, Denis Poisson-d’Avril, who had moved to Paris after World War II with his own adoptive family. Hoping to visit this noted Left Bank philosopher at his Sorbonne digs, Dorpat serendipitously caught a glimpse of his twin at a sidewalk café and without a word sat at an adjoining table.
IS THE ABOVE VIGNETTE TRUE OR AN APRIL FOOL?
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!
Quirky tale #10:
Sinking an unexpected hole
It was an encounter too close for comfort. Here we have evidence from Nov. 12, 1957, of a little-known and quickly hushed-up incident in which an asteroid entered the earth’s atmosphere and crashed onto a boulevard on the north side of Queen Anne. It left a massive hole before rolling down a wooded slope to Aurora Avenue North.
The ‘quirky photo’ of a pig, pulling a “Studebaker” wagon needs a wider historical view. The Studebaker brothers built the Conestoga wagons that traveled west across the country. When Studebaker was building cars, in the 1950’s, they offered a Conestoga station wagon.
The “now” photo at the Dick Balch dealer is actually across the street from the actual location. The actual showroom is now gone and a goodwill sits in its place. The service department building is still standing behind it though. It’s now a bus place.