Sample Memories and Photos from the Book
Sample Memories and Photos from the Book
"The whole beach was our summer playground. Playing on 'log boats' in the water and making wonderful sand castles on the beach. Sometimes we would all bring sack lunches—otherwise we'd go home for lunch and head back to the beach as soon as we were done. Occasionally, some of the neighbors got together and as soon as all of the Dads got home from work, they joined us at the beach, making a great bonfire for roasting hot dogs—and we'd all stay until dark. How lucky we were to live at Alki!"—Camille Peters |
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"My mother, Evelyn Brewer, was the first employee of the Spud Fish and Chips shop. I occasionally enjoyed its fare. My brother Lee peeled potatoes while in high school and I inherited the job when he and Bob went off to war. As both Jack and Frank Alger, owners of the Spud, were also inducted into the service, my mother managed the Spud all during WWII. Everyone called her 'Mom' and it seems that everyone in West Seattle knew her.
She worked there until about 1949 when she opened her own Spud shop in Rainier Valley near Franklin High School.
She retired from there in about 1954. During the war years, she was a surrogate mom to many lonely servicemen stationed in the area.
She hoped someone would do the same for her two eldest boys in the Army Air Corps."—Glenn Brewer "There was time during the war that the Spud nearly had to close down because they didn't have enough grease to cook the fish and chips. So the community banded together to save the Spud by using some of their ration tickets to buy grease to donate to the Spud. There was a party and to get in, you had to donate a tub of grease." —JoAn Fulton |
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"In the classroom, boys and girls were integrated, but on the playfield never the twain did meet. The girls games of choice seemed to be rope skipping and hopscotch. The boys usually engaged in their seasonal macho type games, but to the hustlers and predators, the game of choice was migg (marbles). Fortunes were won or lost on the hard packed dirt soil on the edge of the playground next to the Schmitz Park road. Shouts of 'van steelies,' 'van doughbabes,' 'van toes,' 'van flatfleet,' and 'van fudgeknuckle' were heard and the vernacular only understood by the participants. The winners swaggered into class like movie gunslingers, the pockets of their dirty cords bulging and jingling with their spoils. The vast majority of us flat pocketed losers slunk into class, but still harbored the mistaken notion that we could someday win big." —Doug Viney |
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"I remember the bandstand which was over to the left of where the bathhouse studio is now. It was midway on the promenade built out over the water. I remember it so well and they would have concerts on that bandstand on Sundays. I'm sure that my folks and all the other older people really enjoyed that music....They did have open areas that you could come up to and buy hot dogs or sandwiches. I remember that they served orangeade or Orange Crush. The lime rickey, I can remember to this day smelled just like the bathhouse."—Gertrude Stevens |
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"They had a big figure eight, I believe they called it, where they hauled those little cars on tracks. You'd get in this little car with four wheels and they'd pull you up the hill up high, maybe a hundred feet. Then they'd turn the car loose and it'd go around this figure eight and make several loops before it came to the bottom. That was considered quite a deal. Then they had another thing that they called the Canals of Venice.
They had a little boat and you'd get in the thing and you'd sit in this boat and go through this little canal. You would go in and they'd draw the boat through and make its different circles. There were different scenes of Venice painted on the walls. Our biggest experience was to go on the merry-go-round. At the time, I think the merry-go-round was the largest in the world. What we used to do was sit on the outside seat, and as you went past the little arm which was sticking out, you tried to grab a little metal ring out of a holder. Pretty soon, if you got the brass ring or a gold ring, that entitled you to a free ride. We used to go on that merry-go-round a lot. When I went down last year to the Puyallup Fair, darned if I didn't ride on the merry-go-round. I had a lot of fun."—George Shephard 
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I walked out there and pulled in a 16 pound King salmon. And that was during the war, and there were shortages, and several people called me up and wanted to claim that old dodger."
