I’m sure we always think our fathers are a little weird when we’re growing up and then we sometimes think our children are a little weird when we’re raising them. That thought crossed my mind as I sat in my car waiting for my wife Peggy to get some allergy shots from her doctor. I had just finished walking four times around the block. I would have walked one more time, but it was a little warmer than I prefer when walking.
I was sitting in my Chrysler Pacifica. The Pacifica has a number of quirks, but then so do I. As I grew up our family bought a brand new Chrysler Windsor in 1952 and then replaced it with the same model in 1953. In 1960 we bought a new Chrysler with fins and a long haul from the drab colors of 1952 and 1953. Our new Chrysler was dubonnet. I inherited the 1953 model. In 1965 the dubonnet was traded in on a black Chrysler Imperial.
It must have been 1960 when my dad mentioned he had seen a row boat for sale that needed some work. He asked if I thought I could repair and re-paint the rowboat. I said, “Yes” and we drove dad’s Ford Ranchero over to pick up the row boat.
Our motel in Ponders Corner was the closest motel to Fort Lewis. There was an access roadway behind our property along a chain-link fence. On the other side of the fence was I-5. We had seen it built from start to finish. As soon as they laid the freeway, I rode my way up and down the empty freeway from Ponders to Clover Creek and beyond. We picked up the row boat from the bed of the Ranchero and sat it in a little clearing of scotch broom.
Our motel had the freeway on one side of us and the highway on the other. Directly across the street was Lakewood Lumber & Hardware. They had almost everything we needed for building and repairing at the motel. We also bought a 22. automatic, and a 22. air pistol. I was deadly with the air pistol and faced down several soldiers from Fort Lewis who tried to break into motel rooms. Soon I had the paint I needed. I took care of few minor repairs and had the row boat ship shape in no time. I knew no fear.
I had just started reading an article from the July/August copy of the Smithsonian. I had just began reading the article: Catch The Wind with the kicker description “This innovative craft taught millions of Americans to seize the breeze.” That innovative craft was called the Sunfish. The first version was built in the early 1950s. They were less than 14 feet in length and sold for less than $200. In today’s world we would add another two thousand to the price. The Sunfish opened up the world to sailboat racing and just plain fun. The phrase associated with the Sunfish is “Anybody can sail them.” The creators of the boat were inducted into the Sailing Hall of Fame in 2021. The whole article is only five paragraphs. The story brought back lots of memories.
As a junior at Clover Park High School in 1963 our school band had a band party at another student’s home on Lake Steilacoom. I don’t recall any booze but we were all having fun. There was a canoe and three of us decided to take it out in the lake. We capsized three times just getting into it. We paddled out into the lake enjoying ourselves when a fellow band member ran out onto the bridge and jumped in the lake and swam to our canoe and flipped it over. My fellow paddlers swam back to shore. Although I had swim lessons at American Lake, they didn’t transfer well to Lake Steilacoom. As I said, I knew no fear and simply held on to the canoe and brought it back to its home on the shore.
La Casa (The House) Motel was our home, but my dad wanted something more entertaining. We looked at a house in Purdy that faced out onto the bay and had a small path down to the water. It needed some repairs, but like the motel, we easily took care of that. I think the main reason we bought the house was because it had a name – La Casita (The Small House) and we felt the connection to our home as a motel.
We eventually sold it and bought another house away from home in Burley Lagoon, just a couple miles away from La Casita. We cleaned up the property on Burley and made some repairs. We must have taken the row boat there, but all I really recall is mom and dad and me in inner tubes fighting the tide as it pulled us away from our house. My mom wasn’t scared, but was a little worried about being swept out to sea. My dad and I just kept paddling and we got back to the shore.
Our next purchase was a turn of the century three bedroom inn, with a cabin next door to it. We never stayed there either as a family. I over-nighted there with my buddies a time or two, but the inn was about 70 feet above the water with no easy access down. The row boat must have stayed in Burley.
Like my mom and dad, Peg and I and our kids stayed nights at a couple of homes we owned, but never really called home longer than months or a year.
I’ve never had the urge to buy a rowboat, but have gone with friends in their cabins and sails. Peggy and I enjoy watching colorful sail boats from our kitchen window and looking out on Vashon Island and the entrance to Quartermaster Harbor. Although we could watch the boats from our deck, we sail most effectively from our kitchen table, which has a wonderful sail boat painting hanging beside our window to the world . . . and our dreams of catching the wind.
My friend, Don Doman, I thoroughly enjoyed your writing this morning. It caused me several flashbacks which returned me to the previous century.
I invented, a game I call “Stump The Chump”. You Don bring up a subject or tell a story such as your reference and story descriptions of the I-5 Freeway in this article.
“Stump The Chump” challenges me to come up with my own story that relates to your topic. If I come up with my own story, I win. If I fail to come up with my own story, you win. My story does not have to be better than yours as this is not a “one-upmanship” challenge. I just have to come up with a story, period.
So, join me in a rousing game of Stump The Chump. When you were a kid in Tacoma / Pierce County and they were building the I-5 Freeway behind your motel, I was a kid in Seattle / King County and they were building the I-5 Freeway in Seattle and Tukwila, Washington. We often rode our bikes to the construction site.
Joe’s Stump The Chump stories:
Part I: My pal Biff and I rode our bikes down to the I-5 Freeway construction site where huge earth movers were moving mountains of dirt from A to B. As the earth mover passed by us, we jumped behind the rear tire of the earth mover and then rode up towards the sky because the earth mover compressed the soil like a sponge and when it passed, the soil rose back up to where it was before being crushed by the earth mover. Great fun, but I hasten to disclose we always jumped behind the last tire, never in front of the front tire. We were not dumb kids. We were just fun kids.
Part II: The I-5 Freeway went right through my high school girlfriend’s family home which sat on 5 acres in the middle of the freeway. Every time I drive North on I-5 and pass through the 5 acres, I am reminded of my first girlfriend and her family.
Part III: The I-5 people had to buy my pal, Dana’s, family home that sat on the hill above the I-5 construction site. Dana’s house started to slide off the hill and headed down towards the valley floor and I-5. Dana and his parents did not like the idea of all that vehicle traffic driving through Dana’s bedroom, so I-5 bought Dana’s house and they fled to Montana where the I-5 Freeway could not get them again.
Don, thanks for the memories.
Joseph Boyle – A pal from your past.
mmmmmm . . . I guess #2 is correct.
Following up, however I have four different stories and only one is true blue for an ex-policeman . . .
Thanks for the little game . . .
Guess #1 – I had a little Piper Cub working/flying model about a foot in length with a small gasoline engine on a fifteen foot tether. I first used it right after they laid the south bound traffic lanes. It got loose as I was flying it around in circles on our side of the I-5 fence and flew out into traffic on I-5 and almost caused a pile up.
Guess #2 – One of the TVs in a motel room wasn’t working so my dad asked me to run it out to Tillicum for repair. I had sipped a little wine the night before at a December party, but didn’t think it had affected me at all. I was going a little too fast as I entered the on-ramp and there was a thin coating of ice on the road and I spun out of control. I was driving my dad’s Chrysler. It suffered no damage, but the TV hit the floor of the car hard.
Guess #3 – I prided myself on my throwing arm. I could throw a golf ball size rock all the way across the freeway. The last time I threw the rock I threw it while traffic was just entering Ponders . . . and kept watching until traffic interfered and was hit by my rock.
Guess #4 – A customer at the Biltmore Motel, just down the street from La Casa, had two car salesmen stopping over for a couple of days. One became ill and the guy in charge needed someone to drive one of the Italian cars to show to prospective Auto New Car dealers. We stopped at four or five dealers as we drove all the way to Everett. I made $30 for my driving.