Our Legendary Local

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Other Legendary Locals

Last Saturday, when I was done mowing my Ilwaco lawn and had showered, my houseguests and I drove to Ocean Park, at the other end of the Long Beach Peninsula, to attend a book signing at Adelaide’s Book Store. My friend Sydney Steven’s was signing her latest Long Beach Peninsula book, Legendary Locals book there.  We missed her book talk, but still got to chat with her.  My friends purchased two of Sydney’s books and I even picked up O is for Oysterville for my youngest granddaughter, Lydia, who had been quite jealous of my purchase of LegendaryLocals for her older sister Linda the weekend before. My friend Jo bought Dear Medora, one of my favorites, but then I love everything Sydney writes.  She may be a retired teacher, but she still has much to teach the rest of us about the history of Southwest Washington and does so in a very entertaining way with her pen, her blog, and around the dining table.

 

After Adelaide’s we went across the main intersection in Ocean Park to Jack’s CountryStore.  Jack’s is amazing.  It has been serving the Long Beach Peninsula since 1885 and if you can’t find it at Jack’s, you probably don’t need it.  Actually, when you shop at Jack’s you will probably find things you didn’t know you needed!  I knew what I was after.  Jack’s sells a wide assortment of patterned oil cloth by the yard.  Vinyl is all well and good I suppose, but for a table cloth that lasts and wipes down easily you can’t beat oil cloth.  I grew up with oil cloth on my grandmother’s kitchen table and besides being practical, it is homey to me.  I was happy to purchase three yards of lavender gingham, pick up a gallon of bleach and a half gallon of milk.

There isn’t room to list all of wares of this large rambling store, but some of the things we enjoy are their wide assortment of candy from our childhood and old fashioned toys.  This Spring Dave and I made a special trip just to get balsawood airplanes for our grandson Gabriel.  It used to be that you could pick them up at any store.  Now you find Styrofoam things that just don’t fly the same.  Last weekend I couldn’t resist purchasing two cloth bags to use as gift bags for my granddaughters.  They were just too charming and will hold some cupcake flavored chapstick I also couldn’t resist along with some books.  Ah, the life of a grammy. 

Next weekend we have a trip to the Oysterville Store where Sydney will be doing another book signing.  The store has recently changed hands and renovated.  I am anxious to see it!

 

Christmas Miracle

 

I had a Christmas miracle on Christmas Eve.  I was cooking Christmas Eve dinner at my ninety-year-old mother’s apartment when there was a knock on the door.  When I opened it there stood an angel, but at first I didn’t know it was one.  He was dressed like a Long Beach police officer and he asked if I owned The Bath House there in Ilwaco.  I confirmed that and he told me that he thought we’d had a break-in because the door at the front of the building was torn off and laying in the yard.  I chuckled and said that I’d been unable to lock the barn for months and that to the best of my knowledge the storm on Dec. 15th had caught the door and torn it off the one-hundred and thirty-one year old building.

Now Officer Cutting, had tracked me down at my mother’s because he’d seen the door laying in the yard, talked to my neighbor and found out where my mother lived.  Someone else might have knocked on the door of our house, found no one home, logged what he’d done and gotten on with his shift.  This nice young man had taken the time to prop the door in the doorway and track me down.

I explained that my husband has been working out of state since June and that I’d not yet figured out what I was going to do about the door, but I assured him that there’d been no break-in.  “Do you have a screw driver in that barn?” he asked.  I told him there was, grabbed my keys and followed him the six blocks back to our place.  Officer Jeff Cutting proceeded to nail a piece of 2X4 to the inside of our elderly barn and then screw the hinges back to the barn.  Not only was the barn door back up, but it looked like I’d be able to lock it when I return to our year round home in Gig Harbor following New Years.  As Christmas Eve truly became eve I thanked Officer Cutting for the best Christmas gift I could have received and wished him a Merry Christmas.  He smiled and wished the same to me.  Then I texted my husband that we’d had a miracle and to call me ASAP.  When I finally got to speak with him and related the story he was as overwhelmed as I.  It is as frustrating for him as for me to have him 1,500 miles away when things go wrong. Officer Cutting parents must be very proud to have such a nice son.  We are very grateful to him and heartened that such young men are willing to serve the Long Beach and Ilwaco communities.

Maybe Ignorance IS Bliss

My friend Sydney Steven’s blog this morning was about blissfully sleeping unaware that an earthquake had occurred off the Queen Charlotte Islands last night.  This caused a tsunami warning that stretched all the way to the southern tip of Vancouver Island that points right at the State of Washington.  I should have been so lucky, but my granddaughter’s piano concert and a late night snack with my grandson meant I was awake when Joanne Rideout of KMUN’s The Ship Report began posting NOAA reports on Face Book last evening about the time I ought to have been calling it a night.

I am reminded of another night during which I slept perhaps too well.  In 1964 my mother, father and I spent Easter Vacation (it was still called that back then) at my grandparents’ beach house in Seaview, Washington on the Long Beach Peninsula.  We had neither telephone nor television and when we weren’t out on the beach we read for entertainment.  Then we went to bed.  That Good Friday was no different than any other night and does not stand out in my memory except in terms of the following day. 

That night my parents and I did sleep blissfully unaware that there had been a tidal wave warning (they weren’t called tsunamis in 1964—at least not by us) in the night.  Saturday morning was the first we heard about it from a neighbor boy, Christopher, who wanted to know why we hadn’t been at the gym at the old pink high school in Ilwaco the night before.  “What?” I’d asked him.  It seemed that the sheriff’s department had gone up and down the Peninsula with a bullhorn advising people to evacuate to the school which sits atop of a hill of sorts compare the to the relative flatness of the Peninsula.  Christopher said that he’d enjoyed laughing at the teenage girls in their bathrobes and big hair curlers (another thing we still did in the ‘60s).  I was glad for several reasons.  First of all, there’d been no tidal wave on the Peninsula so we were alive , second we’d had a good night’s sleep and third, when I got back to Tillicum Jr. High in Bellevue on Monday I enjoyed bragging how I’d slept through a tidal wave.  My girlfriend Deby Bingham thought it was hysterically funny.

Last night my mind was turned to my mother who fifty years later lives in an apartment in Ilwaco and has a tsunami bag.  Ironically on October 12^th they’d supposedly had a test of the tsunami preparedness up and down the West Coast.  There are big flying saucers on poles located along the Peninsula that are supposed to issue warning.  I’ve heard them test it and thought God was speaking from the clouds.  There are supposed to be robo calls to the local numbers warning people to evacuate.  My mother has received those calls in the past, but not this time.  Because she’s 90 I had warned her so that she wouldn’t freak out.  This summer I spoke to Jackie Sheldon, the manager at my mother’s apartment building, and she told me that she’s arranged for buses to arrive to take the largely old and infirm residents to higher ground. 

So last night as KMUN’s The Ship Report gal posted NOAA updates about the seemingly ever expanding area of the warning and sat 150 miles away unsure of what I’d do if suddenly the Washington coast was included in the warning area.  I really panicked when it reached southern Oregon and northern California and Hawaii, but seemed to skip over Washington.  Had NOAA left something out?  Finally round midnight Rideout posted that the warnings had been reduced to advisories along BC and OR so I turned off the light and went to sleep.

My mother has a tsunami bag.  In it she has bottled water, a can opener, and a fifth of bourbon.  The latter has puzzled us since she asked my husband to buy it for her.  My youngest says that she’s going to get blind drunk and ride out the storm in her second story apartment.  Based on the tsunami practice this month that may be her best bet, but just last week she had me buy her a thermos for her bag.  She says that she’s going to make coffee if there’s time.

Razor Sharp Clam Memories

My job was to stomp the beach

When I was growing up my grandparents had a beach house in Seaview, Washington on the Long Beach Peninsula.  That was where I learned to eat razor clams.  I can’t remember a time before razor clams were an important part of my life.  Fried or in fritters, they were a special part of going to The Cow Palace as my grandmother named their house. Clamming was an important enough activity with our family that my father painted razor clams on the front window shutters.  They are still there fifty-five years later.

My father was an excellent clam digger.  I loved it when I knew that we were going to go clam digging because it meant that most probably he’d wake me in the middle of the night to go along.  Back in those days we called my grandfather’s collection of clam shovels clam guns.  That was before the advent of the cylinder shaped clam guns that eventually came to be made of PVC pipe.  Daddy loaded the shovels, buckets, and kerosene lanterns into the trunk of our old Ford and off we’d go. 

Sometimes we drove out the Seaview approach onto the beach and headed north in search of good beds.  Sometimes he thought that Oysterville had the better beds and we’d work our ways south on the beach.

My job was to stomp the beach for the little telltale clam holes and to rinse the clams and count them when we thought we had a limit.  Limits were much higher in those days, I think around 30 and licenses were not required.  There didn’t seem to be red tide, at least not that I ever remember hearing about and no one ever got sick on the clams we dug.

When we got back my mother would stand at the old farm house sink and clean the clams.  It was back breaking work.  In the ‘60s Daddy heard that if you dunked the clams into boiling water for just a second or two and then plunged them into cold water the shells would come way from the clams with little to no loss of flesh.  He built a wire basket for this operation and it worked well.

Sometimes my mother fried the clams.  Other times she got out Grandma’s meat grinder and ground the clams for fritters.  When her arm got tired I’d stand and turn the crank.  I loved the fritters, but I’m not as big a fan of dough as I once was and don’t think I’d like them that way as well as I do fried.

My father liked to tell the story of the time he and his best friend Smitty went out clam digging.  It was dark and the clams were plentiful.  They’d lost count, but figured it was dark, that they had their limits and were heading back to the car when a voice came out of the darkness, “How’s the clamming this morning, fellas?”  A Fish and Wildlife man turned on his flashlight and had them dump out their clams to be counted.  To their utter amazement they had exactly the right amount for two limits and thus were spared any fines.

When I brought my children back from California we moved onto the Long Beach Peninsula.  My friend Christopher offered to take the older boys clam digging and since he’d grown up on the beach—literally—I thought there was no one better to teach them.  The first clam season after we moved there we piled into my old Buick station wagon and the boys got their first taste of clam digging.  Unfortunately, the mist rolled in and we got soaked, but the boys proved to be good diggers.  “Thanks for the experience, Mom,” Josh told me a little sarcastically as we slogged back to the car.

Now my friend Christopher has been many things in his life, but he is as flawless clam fryer as he is a clam digger, so while the children shed wet coats and shoes to dry in front of his wood stove we cleaned the clams and Christopher cooked them.  Hmm, hmm, hmm.  Well, the boys didn’t think so.  For the duration of our life on the Peninsula they would dig for me, but not consume which actually worked out pretty well as far as I was concerned.

Nowadays you need a license to dig and it’s only good for those days you pay for, not for an entire season. Dave and I haven’t been clamming in a few years and clamming is open this weekend.  Unfortunately we won’t be on the beach, but I can smell the clams frying in butter and wish all the diggers good luck. I know for a fact that Christopher digs whenever he wants a clam and I don’t think he’s ever been caught or gotten sick.  Considering that he gave his youth and sanity in Vietnam I hope he keeps right on digging.

Sydney of Oysterville

Although out of the scope of our South Sound Neighborhood and since I’ve never demurred from sharing neighbors in our larger electronic world, I’m sharing a smooth coastal gem I found on the beach on the Washington coast. Most readers know of my love for and the large portion of time I spend at the Long Beach Peninsula. I lived there fulltime for only three years, but my family’s love of the place goes back generations and my own childhood summers were spent there.

During the time my children and I lived on the Long Beach Peninsula I was fortunate enough to meet and work in the same school as Sydney Stevens. At the time Sydney taught a first, second, third split class at Ocean Park Elementary School, but it was obvious that Sydney was more than a wonderful teacher who organized things like “Mother Goose Week” whereby the rhymes we all grew up with, but were falling out of children’s common knowledge, were taught and culminated in everyone dressing up as their favorite character and parading around the little school—she was passionate about the Peninsula.

Sydney’s family went back generations on the Peninsula and she was passionate about preserving and teaching the children about the rich history that was all around them. Although she’d lived elsewhere during her adult years eventually the soft salty breezes and even the wild storms called Sydney home. A teacher by trade and a historian by heart she combined the two and published little children’s books about the history and culture of the area.

Once Sydney retired from teaching she got serious about writing. I wrote a blog about her collection of letters from an aunt who grew up in Oysterville, Sydney’s family home, in a much simpler time a couple of years ago. What I didn’t know was that she also began writing a blog. So I am here today to introduce you to Sydney Steven’s. Check out her blog http://sydneyofoysterville.com/

PS The little church you see in the background of the picture of Sydney is where Dave and I married 20 years ago.

Fall Morning at the Beach

Morning on the Long Beach Peninsula was Fall dewy this morning. At the beach the dew can be heavy enough to make a stranger believe that it rained in the night. I wore my sloggers when I walked the dog just before daylight and could hear the surf which is about a mile away as the crow flies, but two miles to the nearest beach approach if you are not a crow.

Speaking of crows, we have a lot in my neighborhood at the beach. They help to keep the bug population of our yard down and pick up the junk sloppy people leave lying in the road. There’s a big Douglas fir beyond Viola’s house that is a crow apartment building. I have a friend in Kilpsan who hates crows and will shoot at them with a BB gun, but I like them. Here and in Gig Harbor I talk to them when I walk the dog.

Poor Viola. She’d be so unhappy if she could see her little cottage next door to our Victorian. Her parents built the cottage in 1912 and after they passed away she lived there until passed 90. She never married and relied on her nephews, of whom there are five, to help her with the yard and house. While she was alive they would let the grass grow to knee depth. They got better about cutting the grass after she died which made me madder than a hornet. One of these aging nephews actually lives in the community so his tardiness and thoughtlessness to his aunt is unforgiveable. She was an interesting old lady and I wish I’d made more of an effort to spend time with her when I was here while she was still alive.

The oaf who could never mow her yard painted the cottage the year before she died, but only on three sides. The side that faces up the hill and in a direction Viola never went was left unpainted. He did a bad job, too. He didn’t scrape or prime and the paint is flaking off like crazy. It’s been about 14 years since he made his attempt and now the side he didn’t paint actually is in better shape than the three he did. I know plenty of people who would like to buy that cottage, but the brothers won’t sell it because their mother was born there. Apparently their sentimentality doesn’t extend to preventing the place from falling down which is what will happen eventually. One of them has a son who has made a few attempts to shore up the foundation and for reasons unknown tried to cut down Viola’s lilac tree. That made me mad, too. Those lilacs were a deep beautiful purple and since the house is almost always empty I would go over and cut bouquets of the sweet smelling stuff for my mother in the Spring. There are plenty of blackberry bushes he could have hacked on. Why he chose the lilac is anyone’s guess. Well, the lilac is getting the last laugh. The stump sent up shoots last Spring and I predict that there will be flowers again by the next one. Viola loved her flowers and sometimes I prune her roses just to keep them going. I don’t know if the nephews notice that someone is tending them and frankly I don’t care. They are bunch of nimrods as far as I’m concerned.

Our barn is slap up against Viola’s property so we get a good look every time we go out the backdoor and head toward the barn which is also where our own little cottage is as well as the laundry facilities. This morning I trudged over there in the dewy grass to put the shirt I spilled chowder on last night in the washing machine. I travel light on these weekend beach runs and that shirt was supposed to go with the skirt I brought. When I rounded the corner of the barn to go down the walkway to the cottage and utility room two errant yellow flowers greeted me from the toilet/planter that sits by the side entrance to the barn. Dave and a friend talked me into using an old toilet from the big house as a planter. I wanted it where the whole town wouldn’t see it so it’s like a little secret garden. I have strawberries planted in the bowl which the deer think are salad and fuchsias in the tank since the spot doesn’t get much sun. Two little plants popped up on their own this summer so I just kept watering them and I have no clue what they are or where they came from, but they make me smile even though the side of Viola’s garage is just feet away and so sad.

Actually, I probably shouldn’t talk yang about Viola’s nephews. It’s not like our house is looking, too great paint-wise just now. It’s been even longer since we painted, but Dave scraped and primed so the paint has held up much better. Last year we had the Southside of the house reshingled and left them bare. Painting at the coast is problematic. Once the ocean mists and rains find a way under the paint you’re done for and the wood can rot quickly. Dave was a tough sell on the unpainted look, but finally came around when the thought about having to pay someone to paint as he gets older. So the Southside is bare. We had intended to have an addition put on the North side this Summer, but the recession put all home improvements on hold. Well, not all.

Dave got in frenzy and decided that the mold and moss on the North side didn’t look good and so he spent his vacation scrubbing, priming and painting the back of the house.

The other improvement we made this summer was the addition of three arbors at each of our three front yard gates. My middle son has built us three brick walkways, two from each street on our corner and one from the driveway, to the front porch so that my elderly mother and her sister can get into the house. They aren’t speaking just now so they won’t be coming over at the same time until maybe Thanksgiving. The walkways improved the look of our yard greatly and left an area that I’ve turned into a memory garden for the adults in my life who’ve passed away. Dave picked out the arbors and I have to admit that for someone who had no sense of aesthetic when we married nineteen years ago, he did a good job. I admired them once again when I walked back to the house from the barn this morning.

There’s always something that needs doing with a house that’s 128 years old so I guess it’s good that I am forced/have the excuse to come to it so often. My excuse for being here takes a long time to get ready to go anywhere anymore. I used to get all wound up and try to rush her, but the more you rush my mother the slower she gets. I think it’s a control thing, but I just breathe and go with the flow. If I say boo I will just get a tongue lashing anyway and then everyone’s upset so I listen to NPR on the radio or read until she’s finally dress and ready to go.