Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 2, February 2003

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STAN'S LOOKOUT

Memories: Growing up in the '30s

By STAN STAPP

FORTY-FOUR YEARS AGO I wrote the following column about my life in the Wallingford neighborhood as a pre-teenager in the '30s. It was the second one of a series, with several more to come. The column recalled incidents of my relationship with my younger sister, and was titled "A Letter to Pat."

It was printed in the May 27, 1959 Outlook. I've occasionally written about other family members this way, too, printing the results in the Outlook (the family newspaper located in our basement for many years).

* * *

This is the letter I wrote:

Dear Pat:

I should have answered your letter earlier, but as you may have noticed I've been so busy answering the letters of Outlook readers that your letter got sidetracked. Anyway, not much news here that you haven't already read in the Outlook.

But if you've been following the Tempest Storm discussion, perhaps you can tell me if the papers in San Leandro print pictures similar to those in Seattle or do California papers censor more thoroughly?

(Tempest Storm was a famous stripper who came to town, playing at the Rivoli Theatre at First and Madison. The Outlook accepted her advertising, but the Times and P-I didn't until after I'd written about it. Although Tempest showed no more skin than the girls do today, I received some 60 letters, for printing such filth in a family newspaper.)

I was thinking of you last weekend while hosing down my driveway and the hose spray nearly sent a pebble through my neighbor's greenhouse. It reminded me of the time we were kids and I accidentally broke our next-door neighbor's window with a rock. You and I and several kids had been playing with rocks on our front porch. When we quit, I brushed them off the wide porch railing with my hand, intending them to fall in the alley.

But one rock traveled too far, right through the living room window next door, whizzing between Mrs. Bowen and a floor lamp.

I skedaddled to the back yard with the rest of you, trying to look nonchalant. When I was questioned, I lied, suggesting that maybe it was some "big kids" I'd noticed walking up Woodlawn Ave. who had broken the window.

But Mother must have discerned an apprehensiveness on my part for soon she had her arm about me and I told her the truth. She did not beat or even scold me, but just had a friendly little chat. Brother Art repaired the damage and that was it for the moment.

I have never forgotten that incident, and am sure that Mother's handling of it did more to impress on me that "honesty is the best policy" than if she'd tried to beat it into me.

Rocks were pretty important to us as little kids then. Do you remember the day I was teaching you how to throw them straight? We were in our backyard for the lesson, throwing in the general direction of Gillespie's house which was under construction. From out of nowhere strode a carpenter carrying a heavy plank on his shoulder and right into the line of fire.

Boy, the language he used when you bounced that stone off his head, and him helpless to change directions or duck, even if he had seen it coming. That was the last lesson in rock throwing I ever gave you!

Then there was the day that Harold Moffet and I got into a fight with Bill Finlay. Bill finally beat it home bawling when one of us "split open" his head with a rock. Afterwards I claimed it was I who had hit Bill, and Harold said it was he. We never did settle that point.

But do you remember the day that I GOT IT! We were in the alley just south of N 42nd playing "indoor," as we used to call it. (I think it's called softball now). I was catching and Cleo Watts was batting. She missed the ball but conked me on the head with the bat. (Some of my readers may have decided that what's wrong with me!)

Remember how we used to gamble, playing such games as "Pollyanna" with dice, and betting on the horse races? Some might have thought us wicked to be using the play money I printed to bet on the ponies at Longacres. But it was probably the best lesson a youngster could have in explaining the futility of trying to beat the ponies.

I was the bookie, accepting all bets, using the Seattle Times racing form each day as a guide to entries, and paying off on the published results the following day.

Naturally, I soon discovered that the odds assured me a steady income, while the bettors discovered they couldn't possibly win consistently.

Brother Art, being older and wiser, wasn't worried about the betting, but he was bothered about the play money I was printing in the basement. He felt my craftsmanship was getting too good for comfort and cautioned me against getting in trouble with the government for turning out counterfeit bills.

The money did have a certain medium of exchange among us kids, for I found that it would buy someone's labor for mowing the lawn, or running to the grocery store, and likewise it would work the same for the others.

The trouble was that inflation set in, and I was having to print new bills and in bigger amounts. The price of lawn mowing rapidly rose from $25 a backyard to more than $3,000. But, what the heck, I could print a $10,000 bill as easily as a $20 one.

What a terrible day it was when Cleo and you robbed the "Ashwood Bank" (Ashwood was the name of our "country," halfway between Ashworth and Woodlawn avenues) and stole all my currency. It took us boys three days to find where you had hidden it, tied by a long string and lowered into the vent pipe of an old shack on the vacant lot adjacent to the alley.

Remember the show in Junior McCain's attic put on by the ARC (All a Round Club)? The neighbors gamely sweltered through the affair on a hot summer night. I didn't think of it then, but wonder now if anyone thought you three girls who did the tap dance were "indecently dressed?"

But at least they couldn't have complained about the caliber of phonograph music. The Hungarian Rhapsody played by a symphony orchestra must have been safe enough.

You were kind of a crusader by the time you got to Hamilton Junior High. I recall you organizing a "strike" when one of the girls who was to get an Honor Pin was struck off the list. It was either for having dated a boy, or for wearing "whoopie socks" (ankle socks) to school. You were the ringleader in getting the other 19 Honor Pin girls to refuse to accept theirs unless the eliminated girl was included.

Which she was.

Gee, what a lot of memories come back once you get started: How we used to ride clear to Lake Union sitting on a planer-end (kindling) mounted on a roller skate ... the day Harold Moffet set fire to the vacant lot in the morning and hid in the garage until it got dark and his Dad came home and found him ... the time I banged on the bathroom door, shouting "I can't wait! I can't wait!" thinking you were holding me up, only to have two young women, pupils in Dad's music school (in the Living Room) walk out on red-faced me ... and how we both worked for the Outlook at an early age, at first extricating papers from the folding machine and jostling them into routes for the carriers ... how Art used to read "Les Miserables" to us ... and how awful it felt to be a non-conformist the day Mother dressed me in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit so I'd look like a little gentleman in my Central Presbyterian Sunday School class ... well, I could go on and on, and so could you ... but didn't we have a lot of fun when we were kids, rocks and all.

Lots of love

from your Big Brother Stan.