UPDATE:

On April 28, 2021, the Association of King County Historical Organizations ( AKCHO) announced its selection of Magnolia: Midcentury Memories as winner of the group’s annual Long-Term Project award. The award ceremony, to be held via Zoom, is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 25, 2021. Congratulations to Monica Wooton and all others associated with this project!

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on Aug. 20, 2020
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Aug. 23, 2020)

For Magnolia baby boomers, it happened at the midcentury

By Clay Eals

Grab a giant popcorn. This week’s “Then” premieres a triple feature.

The photo comes from a project that enlisted 60 writers to document baby boomers’ youthful years in the Magnolia neighborhood. Just-released Magnolia: Midcentury Memories is the third coffee-table book assembled this century by volunteers and represented by the Magnolia Historical Society.

With 448 pages and 450-plus photos, the volume dives into everything from military family life at Fort Lawton (now Discovery Park) to peninsula-wide immigrant roots and racist redlining, from mudslides along the Perkins Lane cliffs to the demise of the Interbay garbage dump.

In our “Then,” the marquee points to the photo’s date (mid-June 1963) and our first feature, the Seattle World’s Fair. The book notes that Fort Lawton was considered for the 1962 exposition site and that from the Magnolia Bridge locals could see the eventual fairgrounds take shape.

Among memories of the fair from then-upper-grade students – most who attended Queen Anne High School, which peered over what is now Seattle Center – is that of Cheryl Peterson Bower. In the book, she tells of securing two autographs, for her and her sister, from Elvis Presley, who was at the fair to star in the marquee movie. But the crooner “signed both sides of the paper dead in the middle, making it impossible to share.”

Parked near the marquee is our second feature, a midcentury house mid-move. This symbolizes a time 14 years prior when Magnolians vigorously debated whether 20 homes to the north should be condemned to make way for a combined junior high school and fieldhouse. What The Seattle Times labeled “Seattle’s most explosive community controversy in many years” ended with a go-ahead. Some houses made dramatic treks in 1950-1951 to vacant lots nearby.

“It was quite a sight for a 5-year-old to see her house being driven down the street,” Karin Barter Fielding says in the book. “It was such a big event for the family. I still talk about it.”

Our third feature is the Magnolia Theatre itself. Opening Nov. 25, 1948, with Cary Grant in “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” it was the largest commercial building in the shopping district, dubbed “the Village.” Seating 985 people, it became a true community center.

Michael Musselwhite, who worked there 1959-1963 as a teen, writes that a tavern was barred from buying on-screen advertising “because children were usually in attendance” and that changing the marquee each Monday evening took two students, a tall ladder and 2-1/2 hours.

A Magnolia blockbuster, the book uses only the right half of our “Then.” So consider this photo the widescreen version!

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

You can view the Aug. 23, 2020, online Zoom launch of Magnolia: Midcentury Memories by visiting the website of the Magnolia Historical Society. Also, by clicking on their names, you also can view portions of the launch devoted to chapters by authors Brian Hogan (part 1), Brian Hogan (part 2), Skip Kotkins, Whitney Mason, Michael Musselwhite, Greg Shaw (part 1) and Greg Shaw (part 2).

Below are three additional photos, as well as nine clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column. As a bonus, right at the top you will find a nearly five-minute video featuring Monica Wooton, editor of “Magnolia: Midcentury Memories.” Enjoy!

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on Aug. 13, 2020
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Aug. 16, 2020)

A colossal contribution, and a blast from Paul Dorpat’s present

By Jean Sherrard

This week we drop in on our “Now & Then” column founder, Paul Dorpat.

For 37 years, his witty wisdom (and wise wit), drawn from deep wells of history – and a vast collection of old photos – provided a weekly fount of delight for thousands of fans. Clay Eals and I take ongoing inspiration from Paul’s legacy, but Dorpat ain’t done yet.

Having recently moved from Wallingford into senior housing near the Pike Place Market, he has overseen the contribution of his extensive archive of historical books and manuscripts, as well as more than 300,000 images, to Seattle Public Library.

“I hope my donation will inspire others to do the same,” Paul says. “When we protect and share our history, we can give our community a depth that’s truly resounding.”

Andrew Harbison, the library’s assistant director of Collections and Access Services, concurs: “We’re thrilled to receive this incredible gift and look forward to making the collection available for the public to see and enjoy.”

But that’s not all.

Along with the rest of us, chafing at the isolation imposed by COVID-19, Dorpat continues to collate his many thousands of hours of documentary film and video, dedicated to making this treasure trove available for future generations of historians and documentarians.

“For me, revisiting the past,” Paul says, “has always been a blast.”

WEB EXTRAS

A few more bonbons for friends and fans alike.

Here’s one of my favorites. When Paul and I took a 2005 trip to London and Paris together, we met up with our dear friend and colleague Berangere Lomont (a professional photographer who has through the years served this column as our Paris correspondent). While strolling in the 5th Arr., we did a double take. Paul’s doppelgänger was sitting at a street-side cafe table! The photo op was too good to be missed. Paul sauntered over to the adjoining table and sat down, pretending to examine a menu.

Berangere took the still and, trying unsuccessfully not to laugh, I pointed the video camera.

More recently, Clay Eals managed to capture a video of Paul feeding gulls on the waterfront (the perfect accompaniment to my still photo used in the column).

And in no particular order, a clutch of Paul pix throughout the years.

Stay tuned. More to come…

 

 

 

 

 

 

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on Aug. 6, 2020
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on Aug. 9, 2020)

The unseen letters of ‘Doc’ Maynard reveal poignancy and pride

By Clay Eals

Talk about destiny.

Chris Braaten entered this world Aug. 14, 1950, inside Maynard Hospital, a long-gone First Hill facility named for Chris’ great-great-great grandfather – the storied Seattle physician and promoter David “Doc” Maynard, who befriended and named our city for Seattle, the Duwamish and Suquamish chief.

The birth merited a Seattle Times blurb quoting Chris’ mother, Margret. “We have a lot of Dr. Maynard’s letters and papers at home,” she said. “I think Chris will get a thrill out of looking them over a few years from now.”

Today, Chris has delivered on his mom’s hunch, donating to the Southwest Seattle Historical Society 35 handwritten letters unseen by the public, including 25 by Maynard from 1850 to 1873, the year he died at age 64, and five by his second wife, Catherine.

It’s a priceless, scholarly gift to a fitting repository. The historical society’s Log House Museum stands just east of Maynard’s late-1850s farmsite near Alki Beach.

The letters total 112 pages that once had been slipped between magazine pages in a damp family shed at Seola Beach at the south end of West Seattle.

Chris, of Tucson, began to “look them over” 30 years ago. With a typewriter, he transcribed the earliest 17 of the faint missives. (A niece later transcribed two others. A brother-in-law digitized them all.)

Maynard’s letters addressed his grown children, Henry and Frances, whom he had left and failed to lure to Seattle from the Midwest. In 53 transcribed pages, the gregarious tippler whom “Skid Road” author Murray Morgan said “preached the gospel of Seattle’s certain greatness” waxes at length, with misspellings, about everything from coal mines to Catherine’s motherly instinct.

Throughout are poignant fatherly yearnings. “In you two,” he writes Feb. 26, 1854, “are wraped (sic) my troubles and anxieties & my bitter in these my latter days.”

Maynard also touts his territorial appointment as “agent” for local Native Americans, for whom he sought inter-tribal peace during their wars with settlers on Puget Sound.

There can be no avoiding his privileged promotion of white settlers at Native Americans’ expense. “They will fight,” he writes on Nov. 4, 1855. “There is no reason why they (sho)uld not, but we must conquer them.”

Still, on March 30, 1856, based on business and medical transactions with them, Maynard takes pride in building a “friendly feeling.” On Nov. 28, 1858, he says he must close because “the old Indian chief after whom I named the town of Seattle is here to talk with me.”

The museum will preserve and finish transcribing these unique letters and use them in exhibits and a possible book. As Chris’ mom foretold in 1950, this prospect will give students of Seattle “a thrill.”

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

The “If These Walls Could Talk” tour of the Maynard house, held Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020, was a wholly online experience via Zoom and a fundraiser for the Southwest Seattle Historical Society.

A follow-up Zoom session on the Maynard house, featuring Phil Hoffman, historian, and Mardy Topeke, owner of the house, is set for 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020, sponsored by the Mukilteo Historical Society.

The Southwest Seattle Historical Society panel was composed of three experts (see the next three photos):

Below are seven additional photos, as well as six clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column. As a bonus, you will find a 40-minute video of the Maynard letter-donation ceremony. Enjoy!

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on July 30, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on August 2, 2020)

In civil rights, what has – and hasn’t – changed in 57 years?

By Jean Sherrard

1963, the year of our “Then,” and today, arguably much has changed:

• The Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• The Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• The Fair Housing Act of 1968.
• School desegregation.

So why do we often feel stuck in quicksand? Protest signs spaced 57 years apart could have been written by the same hand.

Nationally, amid a vision of hope, the summer of 1963 produced profound turmoil:

• On June 11, Gov. George Wallace stood on the University of Alabama steps, blocking entry to two Black students until the National Guard cleared their path.
• On June 12, NAACP leader Medgar Evers was assassinated outside his Jackson, Miss., home.
• On Aug 28, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place at the Lincoln Memorial, culminating with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s indelible “I Have a Dream” speech.
• On Sept. 15, four young Black girls were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Ala.

In Seattle, 1,000 marchers gathered on the hot morning of Saturday, June 15, at Mount Zion Baptist Church at 19th Avenue and East Madison Street and were inspired by the words of Rev. Mance Jackson, pastor of Bethel Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (today’s Curry Temple CME Church at 172 23rd Ave.).

Jackson called for “a plan of action,” demanding fair housing and employment practices for Black citizens, whose 10% jobless rate tripled that of the city overall.

“The time is now or never,” he said. “We declare war on … America’s greatest enemies: discrimination, segregation and racial bigotry. … We will have to sacrifice and suffer. Somebody may even have to go to jail.”

Our “Now” is from Thursday, June 4, 2020, 10 days after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody convulsed the nation. After days of angry protest, police erected a temporary barricade at 11th Avenue and East Pine Street, separating them from Black Lives Matter demonstrators.

Late in the afternoon, a small group carrying bouquets of lilies and helium balloons pushed to the front of the crowd. A Black protester shouted an obscenity, stripped to his shorts and hopped the barricade, hands aloft. Alone, he advanced toward a line of squad cars.

Behind him, the crowd seemed to catch its breath. Some pleaded for him to turn back and avoid arrest. Others took up a chant: “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Shortly, the protester was arrested and taken into police custody.

In 1963, King challenged us to envision a world in which we can “hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” Then and now, accomplishing that arduous task is our civic duty.

WEB EXTRAS

Also, check out our 360 degree video, narrated by Jean, shot on location at 11th and East Pine.

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on July 23, 2020
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on July 26, 2020)

Joltin’ G.I. Joe DiMiaggio was once on Fort Lawton’s side

By Clay Eals

Where have you gone, big-league baseball stars? Our nation turns pandemic eyes to you. Woo-woo-woo.

This lyric update of Paul Simon’s “Mrs. Robinson” may capture the mood of diamond fans who, because of a season stalled by the coronavirus, have been left with visions of the past.

One such apparition is Joe DiMaggio. Some call him baseball’s best. He also could be the most fabled, not just because Simon enshrined him in song. Joe’s troubled marriage and poignant devotion to second wife Marilyn Monroe, post-divorce, is the stuff of legend.

DiMaggio’s 13-year big-league career – topped by a 56-game hitting streak in 1941, never equaled in the majors – came in New York Yankees pinstripes, after three stellar seasons with the Pacific Coast League San Francisco Seals.

So why, in our “Then,” is Joe in uniform for Fort Lawton, the longtime Army post on Magnolia Bluff that Seattle transformed in 1973 into Discovery Park?

The answer lies in World War II patriotism. Like other stars facing a new draft, DiMaggio enlisted instead. He played in Army Air Forces exhibition games in 1943-1945 to entertain troops in California, Hawaii and New Jersey.

En route to Honolulu in early June 1944, the elegant outfielder played at least two games at Fort Lawton. He arrived May 16, four days after finalization of a divorce from his first wife, movie actress Dorothy Arnold, and soon suited up for the fort.

Coverage of his Seattle stint was cryptic. “A team of soldiers which could probably win the World Series played a baseball game here yesterday, civilians barred,” stated a May 25 blurb by Royal Brougham, Seattle Post-Intelligencer sports editor. “Price of admission to the diamond performance by Joe DiMaggio, … etc., was an Army or Navy uniform. There are times when being a G.I. isn’t so bad.”

The wartime games were not Joe’s sole Seattle stops.

For the PCL Seals in 1933-1935, says historian Dave Eskenazi, he hit .411 (30 for 73) against the Seattle Indians at grassless Civic Field, site of today’s Seattle Center. In 1933, at just 18, he played there in eight games while compiling a 61-game hitting streak, still the second longest such feat in pro baseball history. (The longest: 69 games by Joe Wilhoit of the Western League’s Wichita Jobbers in 1919.)

In retirement, the Yankee Clipper often revisited our city. He lunched with Seattle baseball legend Fred Hutchinson in 1959, coached for the Oakland A’s against the Seattle Pilots in 1969, dedicated the “Hutch” cancer center in 1975, golfed in a 1980 tourney and tossed out first pitches for the Seattle Mariners at the Kingdome in 1978 and 1985.

What’s that you say, local baseball fans? Joltin’ Joe was never far away. Hey-hey-hey.

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are five additional photos, as well as 35 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column. Also, as a bonus, see the four images at bottom of a signed Fort Lawton ball from 1943-1944!

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on July 9, 2020
and in PacificNW Magazine of the print Times on July 12, 2020)

There’s no covering up the message of this masked boy

By Clay Eals

When we weigh how to respond to big issues, we often ponder the effect on children, who represent the future. That’s what makes this week’s “Then” so potent.

Standing alone, staring at the camera (and seemingly at us) is a nameless preteen, labeled only as a newsboy. Behind him is the box office of the vaudevillian Pantages Theatre, on the east side of Third Avenue near University Street. The stark sign reflects an order on Saturday, Oct. 5, 1918, by Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson to close theaters, churches and schools and cancel public gatherings to slow the flu pandemic.

We don’t know who posed the masked boy or why, and we can’t find evidence that a Seattle newspaper published the photo. But the boy’s example bears a plea: What will we do today for the sake of tomorrow?

Curiously, public policy on masks that autumn was halting. Masks were absent from initially publicized anti-flu tips, which included using handkerchiefs for sneezes and avoiding crowds. Kissing, too, was disfavored. With a straight face, The Seattle Times reported, “This practice should be stopped except in cases where it is absolutely indispensable to happiness.”

But momentum was building for masks. Their first mention in The Times (other than gas masks for overseas combat) came Oct. 10, when the Red Cross was said to be making them by the thousands. An “urgent appeal” bid women to assist in their manufacture. On the lighter side, a fashion article Oct. 18 proclaimed flu masks, especially chiffon veils, “a necessity in milady’s wardrobe.”

Finally came official action. On Oct. 24, the city ordered barbers to mask up. By Oct. 26, the order covered restaurant workers and counter clerks and, by Oct. 27, messengers, bank tellers and elevator operators. On Oct. 28, masks became mandatory on streetcars.

Noncompliance arrests began Oct. 29 (punishment: $5 bail). Stores capitalized on the cause. The Criterion millinery at Second and Seneca advertised, “You are as safe in this store as you are on the street.”

Some officials grumbled. Thomas Murphine, utility superintendent: “I know now how a mule feels when its head is shoved into a nosebag.”

Newspapers beseeched cooperation. “It is easy to be cynical and skeptical,” the Seattle Star said in a front-page banner on Oct. 30, “but knocking and scoffing aren’t going to keep down the toll of deaths.”

One day after the Nov. 11 armistice, in tune with jubilation over the Great War’s end, Seattle’s mask orders and theater closures were rescinded.

In today’s pandemic, who knows when or why masking will cease, but the century-old plea remains: What will we do for the sake of tomorrow?

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

We extend special thanks to Tom Blackwell, Ron Edge, Ann Ferguson, Eric Flom, David Jeffers, Lisa Oberg, Karen Spiel and Marian Thrasher as well as Jenn of Seattle Area Archivists and Joe at Seattle Public Library Quick Info for their invaluable help in digging up info to pin down the location of our “Then” photo.

Below are three additional photos along with 90 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and other online newspaper sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column. As a bonus, at the very bottom is a 2007 “Now & Then” column on masks by Paul Dorpat!

 

UPDATE:

BJ Cummings’ book The River That Made Seattle: A Human and Natural History of the Duwamish won the 2021 Virginia Marie Folkins Award for Publication of the Association of King County Historical Organizations. The award was presented May 25, 2021. Congrats, BJ!

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on July 2, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on July 5, 2020)

Seattle arose from a tortuously transformed Duwamish River

By Clay Eals

When we think of waters that define Seattle, which ones come to mind? Puget Sound and Elliott Bay, with Lake Washington and Lake Union close behind. Perhaps Green Lake. Don’t forget the Lake Washington Ship Canal.

But what about the seemingly invisible Duwamish River, harnessed (some say ravaged) beyond original recognition and poisoned beyond palatability? Shouldn’t it rise to the top?

That’s the question behind a new social and environmental history book with a provocative title: “The River That Made Seattle.” Is it really true that the Duwamish “made” our city?

Author BJ Cummings – serving for 25 years in leading roles for Puget Soundkeeper, the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, Sustainable Seattle and the University of Washington Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences’ Superfund Research Program – “makes” a potent case.

For starters, she says, most of the waterways that surrounded and fed Seattle once drained through the Duwamish. Also, and not incidentally, the river is named for the tribe whose chief’s bowdlerized name became that of the city.

Cummings further points out that, contrary to commonly told history, the city’s first white settlers (she calls them “immigrants”) were not those who alighted Nov. 13, 1851, at Alki Beach but rather those bearing the names of Maple, van Asselt and Collins, who roosted two months earlier along the Duwamish.

In time, city-builders’ projects diverted or dried up feeder rivers so that by 1920, a watershed of more than 2,000 square miles had shrunk to fewer than 500. The spaghetti-like course of the Duwamish itself also had been straightened and the channel widened and deepened to make way for enormous ships and an industrial identity that nearly erased a tribal homeland.

Even so, portions of the original riverbed survive – some barely. One is shown in our “Then,” taken in 1891 from a bend in the Duwamish west bank (present-day South Park) called Cassell’s Point, named for longtime Seattle railroad engineer John Cassell, who may be the gent pointing the umbrella. This spot also lies across from where Chief Seattle paid his final visit to the river.

Though we strain today to imagine the river before unwieldy industry and its persistent pollutants transformed it, Cummings bears a bottomless affinity for its past via her long ties to the tribe and others who care about the Duwamish.

“This trashed river made its way into my heart,” she says. “There have been seven generations of immigrant history and 10,000 years of native history here. The city was built on the back of the river. The river gave the city the riches and the infrastructure it needed to grow, and it’s time for us to give back a little of that love.”

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are two additional photos, a video link and a clipping  from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Also, scroll to the bottom to see a 1945 report on sources of pollution on the Duwamish River.

(click to enlarge photos — Clay and Paul advise, ‘Click again’)

(Published in the Seattle Times online on June 24, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on June 28, 2020)

In challenging times, the Post Office delivers human connection

By Jean Sherrard

When it opened in October 1852, Seattle’s first postal station was little more than a mahogany desk in Arthur Denny’s log cabin at what is now First and Marion.

It had been 11 months since the Denny Party landed at Alki Beach. The urge to connect with the outside world was strong. Even a pocket-sized post office offered settlers a sense of stability.

For The Seattle Times, Arthur’s daughter, Louisa, wryly recalled perching on her dad’s desk as he sorted mail when a boat came in: “It was not a monumental task, as there was very little mail coming and going.”

Decades later, however, our “Then” displays a hive of activity at Seattle’s downtown post office at the northeast corner of what is now Yesler Way and Post Avenue. The scrawled inscription, “Waiting for mail at Seattle’s Post Office,” explains the long lines, adding cryptically, “Mostly strangers.”

The note may offer a calendar clue. By late 1886, with an economy recovering from three years of recession, hundreds of “strangers” arrived seeking jobs. The newly employed no doubt eagerly queued for mail from families they had left behind. By fall 1887, crowds abated when the post office hired four mail carriers and began the tradition of free delivery.

To document today’s version of this practice, with permission from Seattle’s postmaster I recently joined 12-year postal veteran Azuma Ohta on her appointed rounds, starting at the Seattle Carrier Annex at Fourth and Lander, where days begin with sorting letters and packages.

Beyond snow, rain, heat and gloom of night, every carrier bears scars from being chomped by dogs, clawed by cats and stung by bees and wasps. Azuma is no exception. Twice-bitten, with one attack by a canine whose owner left a door ajar, she still identifies as a “dog person.”

During the pandemic, postal workers older than 60 and otherwise at high risk have been allowed to take several months off. Younger carriers have filled in, so Azuma has been working 75 hours a week, more than during the hectic holiday season.

Another unexpected effect of the coronavirus has been to boost the contents of carriers’ mailbags. “People are hungry for physical connection beyond Zoom and email,” she says. “They’re sending more cards and letters than I’ve ever seen before.”

Tagging along on her Capitol Hill route, I can see that Azuma is a beloved fixture. Passersby sing out cheerful greetings. She has watched babies become adolescents and witnessed love and loss, marriage and divorce.

Tim King often meets her at his door for a chat. “We adore Azuma,” he says. “She brightens our days, and these days can use some brightening.” By any measure, that’s a monumental task.

WEB EXTRAS

Be sure to visit our Seattle Now & Then 360 channel, where you can listen to and view this column in glorious 360 degree color! Jean narrates.

 

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on June 18, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on June 21, 2020)

Five-cent Triple XXX took root here as a popular 1930s brew

By Clay Eals

Before Google, there was “Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.” My aunt Dorothy Johnson, sensing my pending writing career, presented 17-year-old me with the red-covered, 970-page reference treasury for Christmas in 1969.

Today I reach for Brewer’s to seek the origin of the term “XXX.” The sober tome has a coherent answer:

“X on beer casks formerly indicated beer which had paid the old 10s (shilling) duty, and hence it came to mean beer of a given quality. Two or three crosses are mere trademarks intended to convey the impression that the beer so marked was twice or thrice as strong as that which paid this duty.”

Thus, in 1920, when Prohibition took effect nationally, a Texas firm took note, appropriating the term by marketing a new, non-alcoholic beverage by the name of Triple XXX root beer. Soon, capitalizing on the automotive craze, the soft drink spread throughout the South via sales at barrel-shaped drive-ins.

The brand expanded west in the late 1920s, and the first of more than a dozen stands in our state took root along busy arterials. A Seattle Times ad called such franchises “a gold mine.”

The Triple XXX in our “Then” image opened in 1931. Owner Otto A. Kuehnoel (pronounced “KEE-no,” with a silent “L”) claimed a fortuitous site across McClellan Street from the Seattle Indians’ Dugdale Park and two blocks northwest of stately Franklin High School. The double-barreled drive-in drew droves of minor-league baseball fans and local teens to quaff 5-cent mugs of innocent brew.

Dugdale burned in 1932, but from its ashes Sick’s Stadium (later renamed Sicks’ Stadium) and the Seattle Rainiers arose in 1938, when Franklin phenom and future major-leaguer Fred Hutchinson became a draw. The late Bob Kuehnoel (Otto’s son) told me in a 2000 interview that “Hutch” and other players were mainstays at Triple XXX.

“That’s where all the action was,” said Kuehnoel, who washed dishes and swept the parking lot after school. “So many of these ballplayers practically adopted my mom and dad. It was like home to them.”

Intriguingly, the twin barrels were not a mere advertising shell. “One barrel was my parents’ bedroom, the other was mine, and my brother slept in the middle,” Bob said. “My bedroom was right over the pinball machines and the jukebox, so I learned at an early age to sleep through anything.”

Triple XXX barrels faded from the local scene by the 1960s. (A former barrel still operates as a Chinese restaurant on Lake City Way, and a Triple XXX thrives in Issaquah, though its barrel is flat, not three-dimensional.)

In these coronavirus days, all manner of take-out – and root beer – endure, and a fun mystery remains. Why the redundancy in “Triple XXX”? Not even the aptly named Brewer’s can say.

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are three additional photos, four vintage Triple XXX menus (including two from Kuehnoel’s Triple XXX) and one Kuehnoel’s Triple XXX calendar, as well as 14 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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(Published in the Seattle Times online on June 11, 2020
and in the PacificNW Magazine print edition on June 14, 2020)

Keen-eyed kid embodies Seattle’s zeal for 1942 scrap drive

By Clay Eals

You might call Jerry Calnan a scrappy little sheriff.

The 5-year-old leveled an intense glare when photographed in October 1942 sitting on an old water heater and guarding other castoff metal near his Beacon Hill home in South Seattle.

With zeal similar to today’s quest to slow the coronavirus, Jerry spent two days protecting items amassed by his neighborhood for a massive regional scrap-metal drive to support the U.S. military during World War II. Overnight, however, before Army vehicles could arrive to pick up the load, metal rustlers made off with nearly half the heap.

“He had placed several of his toys – old automobiles and trucks – in the pile,” reported The Seattle Times on Oct. 15. “A neighbor boy took some of them, and Jerry, with his sister, Mary Ellen, marched right down and put them back.” A photo caption added, “That was when Jerry decided to buckle on his toy pistol and holster.”

Theft was a challenge addressed by the Oct. 4-18 volunteer drive, which matched efforts nationwide. Ads in Seattle’s three sponsoring dailies – Times, Post-Intelligencer and Star – urged “every boy and girl” to “appoint yourselves guardians of the scrap metal piles in your block.”

Stories, editorials, photos and cartoons displayed boundless fervor. Full-page ads cited scores of items to contribute toward recycling and military-equipment building, from vacuum cleaners and garden tools to golf clubs and washing machines. Visiting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt even cited the Seattle campaign in her national “My Day” column.

The word “scrap” blanketed headlines, sometimes rhyming with the racist pejorative for the war’s overseas enemy. Others declared: “If you want to keep these fighters ‘in the scrap,’ then you must get busy and ‘get out the scrap.’ ”

Humor also held sway. Sports columnist Sandy McDonald wrote, “One unhappy baseball fan telephones to point out that in his opinion there is a lot of old junk on the Rainiers squad that well might be scrapped.”

The total haul, divvied among West Seattle’s Bethlehem Steel, Ballard’s Northwest Steel Rolling Mills and other processors, was enormous: 67.4 million pounds, “or about 133 pounds for every person in King County,” said Leo Weisfield, salvage chair for the Civilian War Commission.

“Beyond any question, this unselfish, patriotic effort was the greatest promotion or drive ever held in Seattle,” he claimed. “The campaign not only made highly significant contributions to the nation’s war effort, but it developed a unified spirit among our citizens.”

Surely the success pleased young Jerry Calnan. He died far too soon, of cancer at age 17 in 1954, but today relatives recall an intelligent, adventurous, inventive lad with dark eyes and eyebrows – and that glare.

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

We extend special thanks to Bob Carney and Michelle Weinhardt (niece of the late Jerry Calnan) for their assistance in the preparation of this column.

Below are 16 additional photos as well as 64 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that were helpful in the preparation of this column. The initial extras relate to Jerry Calnan, and the rest address the scrap drive.