PETERSON Roy 2010-6-1Roy+20… · History Interview with Roy Peterson.” Those who do not hold...

Issaquah History Museums 2010.6.1 Oral History Interivew with Roy Peterson

April 2010

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Narrator: Roy Peterson Date: April, 2010 Interviewed By: Monita Horn ROY PETERSON: I was born on July 30, 1927 and I’ll be 83 next July. I came to Issaquah in 1952 to be a schoolteacher and a coach. At that time, Issaquah was a typical small town that was kind of isolated. It had all the attributes of an isolated, dilapidated town. There were only two real sources of employment. One was the Alpine Dairy and the other one was the school district. The rest of it was just individual, wherever you could get a job at the time. Even had blackberry trucks come here from the North Bend Cannery. People could pick the blackberries out along the roads and cross property lines to make a few dollars. So, things had been a little grim here for years. And then, when they put in the floating bridge – 1943, I think it was – and they put Highway 10 through here, which came through Issaquah, things began to change a bit because there was now employment in Seattle and access to Seattle. There were people who had jobs there, and over by Bellevue, so it kind of brightened up the town financially. But the rest of it was still the same. The basic entertainment for the townspeople was the town football team, which played Enumclaw and Black Diamond, and played in a regular league. They had that for many years. It was financed by the Alpine Dairy mostly. There was Little League football, which was sponsored the Eagles. And then, there was the high school football team. Everybody played down here at Memorial Field. That was the basic entertainment for the citizens.


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The Orthopedic Guild, the women belonged to. It was very active. I was a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and we decorated the town for Christmas and so forth. At that time, the Labor Day was the big party, with parades and elected queen. They even had a ballgame. I remember playing in one of the last town team games and we played the Whidbey Island Navy team. They beat us 20 to nothing, incidentally. That was about the last town team that existed, as far as I can remember. And they had a lot of dances in those days. There were the dances in the fire hall that were every couple of months or so. There were dances in the Grange Hall. There were dances out at Vasa out at Preston. There was a roadhouse just east of town, close to Tibbetts Corner, but I never went to a dance there. I’m not sure that it was even operating when I was here. The businesses were still here, almost identical buildings they had that [went] all the way back to the beginning of the century. They were dilapidated, most of the buildings. The WPA had come in in the [19]30s and put in the sewer lines for the city. They also built the Gun Club building up there. There was something else that the WPA built, but I can’t remember now what they were. So, that’s the condition of the town when I came here in 1952. And, of course, the school was a central thing as far as the community, too; not only just for football, but PTA meetings and all the things that went with it. There was not any finance for kindergartens at that time, so those of us that had children that we wanted in kindergarten, we actually built a building over here on the school property just for kindergarten. The parents gathered up the money, hired a schoolteacher and provided the supplies for that.


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That building was used until the State came through financing the kindergarten program. That was a couple years later. The school district took over the building and they used it after that. And that was destroyed. I forget what year they finally tore it down. MH: Just before the Community Hall was built. RP: Probably. Anyway, that’s what I remember of the town. I taught school there in the junior high school, which had been refurbished. It was a three-story building and it sat there on School Hill. The high school was just across the street from it, and next to it was the gym – that was the high school gym – and there was an older gym that was the junior high school gym. And there was an old, old gym sitting alongside that they used for lunch programs for the kids. That building was actually moved down here to behind the City Hall. The businesses down here actually paid 500 bucks to have that moved down here, because the school district gave it to the city. And then, we went to the people and asked for an L.I.D. of $25,000 to refurbish it into the library building. And that’s what happened. They actually voted it in. We furbished that building, and it was right here where the senior citizen building is today. That’s what we did as far as a library building. Before that, we had a library that was in the City Council chambers. I was on the City Council for about 12 years, beginning in 1956, as I remember. Things were really starting to change, population-wise and activity-wise, so that in late [19]57 or [19]58, we had enough people in our population to go from a fourth-class town to a third-class city. For that, we would get seven councilmen instead of five. We would get mail delivery to the city instead of the general delivery, where we had always been before. That general delivery place was over here underneath the Masonic Temple.


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As a result of that change, the city was required to identify all the houses in the city, to come up with a plan for the street names, and so forth. Turns out, we actually had a vote of the people, and they chose not to go like Bellevue did and go with the county system. They were not in favor of all the numbers being “southeast” numbers, which happens if you have the county system. I remember at the next Council meeting that we said, “OK, people voted 80 percent for their own separate system.” And because we didn’t have any manpower, the Council turned to Clive Berry and myself and said, “Since we don’t have anybody to do this job, and you were ones that insisted that we do it, you do the job.” So Clive and I had to sit down with a map and put every house on that map in Issaquah. We had to put numbers on every house in Issaquah. We had to come up with a system to name the streets, and we did. We named the streets south of Sunset for pioneers, alphabetically, so we had Andrews, Bush, Clark, Darst, Evans, Francis, Gibson, etc. The streets north of Sunset were trees, alphabetical, which then is Alder, Birch, Cedar, Dogwood, Elm, like that. That’s how that came about. We still use that system today, only, as George Rowley came in and made his first development up on Cemetery Hill, he to name them mountains. And we said, “As long as you keep them alphabetical, it’s OK.” So, all of those are alphabetical at the Mountain Park. I don’t know what’s being done now at newer developments. Several years after I was off the Council, the City asked me for a list again of the names. I happened to have a copy of one that I put together, so I know they used it for a long time.


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So, that’s what happened as far as the town. There were some other changes in there, where we believed the streets would not go past the trestle, which was then at the east end of Issaquah. So, we numbered the streets from the trestle First, Second, Third, like that. That would eliminate the need for east-west addresses. But later that was changed by another council, and the division line was moved to the Front Street. The streets then were either northeast or southeast of Front Street, or northwest and southwest. That’s what we had tried to avoid, that differentiation. That’s the system as it is today. There were a lot of things that happened in that period of time, not the least the earthquake in 1965 or thereabouts. At that time, we lost the high school and the junior high school. They were both literally so wrecked that they couldn’t be used. That was a big problem, of course, for the town and the city and for the school district. It was interesting to note that you could follow the line of the earthquake fault by looking across from the Fish Hatchery area, where I live, to the northeast, and you could follow the lines of twisted chimneys on top of the houses. That’s the way you could follow the line. The bricklayers had a lot of business to do after the earthquake to replace those chimneys. In fact, we had the same thing with one chimney. There were a lot of interesting [things] that happened with that earthquake, but I won’t go into the detail of that. The main social organization in Issaquah at that time was centered around the volunteer firemen. They’re the ones that had dances. Most of the young men belonged to the volunteer firemen, so they would have social deals. Labor Day was a big celebration here, as I mentioned before. It was a rough deal. Our police had to hire off-duty sheriff deputies to try to keep order, because by the end of the day, the jail would be filled, and people would be fighting, some of them, and we had to protect the


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town. That was something we didn’t like about the celebration, and we knew we had to get control of it. I mentioned that the Junior Chamber of Commerce was just a group of young men; you couldn’t be older than 34 or something. That organization actually decorated the town the first time, with the boughs across main Front Street all the way up and down, and they had lights on the poles. We actually made them ourselves. Later on, the City couldn’t afford to put up signs of the names on the streets, and the Junior Chamber of Commerce got together and financed it. They went and put the metal street signs up, where you could find Alder and Birch and Andrews and Bush and so forth. They don’t exist now. I was a charter member, so I know about that. At the time I came here, there was a school at Preston which, I believe, went to the sixth grade. There was a school at Coalfield, which was a two-room school. And there was the Clark Elementary, which had recently been built, and the refurbished, three-story junior high school, and the high school. I believe that was the total quantity of schools that were in town. We had to go by bus from Tiger Mountain up to Beaver and Pine Lake and Newcastle, so the district was pretty large. When we were off our season, teachers and coaches would drive the buses as substitutes. As I recall, we got a dollar a run. [chuckles] Of course, you consider I was making $3,000 a year, so the extra couple of dollars a day added in there was a good deal. In 1990, we had two floods, one in January and one in December, as I recall. The water ran across the Fish Hatchery tanks and ran across Alder and several of the streets in town here. That was the first time that water had actually run in town since the time I had come. Sometime in the late [19]60s, the mayor of Seattle – Clinton – decided that according to the state laws, you weren’t allowed to have any


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gambling in your town. If you did permit it, then your council was subject to civil penalties. At that time, we had a bowling alley that had been built out here, and we had one pinball machine in there. We had a lot of punchboards in the taverns and so forth as well. So, we on the Council decided we’d better shut that down. We didn’t want to go to jail, plus we didn’t want to have a flood of machines and things coming out here to Issaquah from Seattle. So, we decided to try to control that. The mayor, Bill Flintoft, was not in favor of that, nor was the [Issaquah] Press. The mayor was upset because there was a $500 fee for having a license to have a pinball machine, and he felt we needed the money. Some of us thought, Well, if $500 is going to buy the power in this town, that’s got to stop. Then, he said he would crack down on the bingo game that supported the Little League football the Eagles had, and anybody flipping for coffee in a restaurant in the morning, he’d arrest them. [chuckles] So, things got kind of hot. It culminated in us being hung in effigy, all us City Council members. There was myself, Warner Erickson, Jim Stevenson, Wayne Ferguson and two more, but I can’t think of who they were. I think Tauno Erickson was there. But there was five of us with a “son” at the end of our name, so they were calling us the “sons of [inaudible].” Finally it got settled when the [Seattle] Times came out and they interviewed everybody, and then they put on a big front page deal on it to explain. Everybody understood then what was happening. We weren’t against the Little League football season or things like that.


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But when you’re on the City Council and things happen, it comes out differently in the paper. Sometimes you swear the paper doesn’t understand how to read anything. During that time, there was a push to build a park out next to the State Park with 500 trailer home sites. That was exciting for the businessmen to think that there would be 500 families that would come in. The problem was that in order to get the financing for that, they had to get a commitment from the City of Issaquah that they would have first choice for all water. That meant that if there was a problem with water, they’d shut off the citizens of Issaquah and the water would go to those 500 people. Now, that was a theoretical thing, but that was a commitment we had to make. And I, for one, was against it. But the Council went along with that because of the thought of having 500 new families in town. But there was a group up here at Mountain Park that took the City to court, and the City lost. Because at that time, our water system was over here to the east of town on the other side of the trestle, and there were springs that were backed up by ground lake and all of that. And, there was a tank there that was getting a little silty in the rainy times. So, it come out that, we had a little stuff in our water. That’s how our water system was organized. Then, when I-90 came along, they damaged some of the springs. At that time, we were asked to take money for the loss, and the City Council said, “No, we want more water.” So then, the State had to drill a well up there to get enough water back. That was the only time that changed the water system, other than they put the tank up at Mountain Park and that made the loop for the water. For years, we had a sewer plant down on the end of First Avenue on the creek. The City had the property, but they had to shut the sewer


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plant down because we then became connected with Metro. But they sunk wells down there trying to locate water. They went 125 feet down and never ran out of silt. They ended up going over here on the other side of Gilman Village on the other side of the Triple X, east of there, and they got into the springs, the aquifer, that runs under Lake Sammamish. That’s mainly our water here now, and it’s also the main source of water for Pine Lake and Sammamish. That’s how the water system developed. A few years later, when Montreux was built, they took the water from Bellevue and hooked it up there for that deal. That water, the Bellevue water, was from the Seattle system, and from the Tolt River system. In just the last few years, the City then looped into that system. So now, we have the combination of our well water from the aquifer and the water coming from Seattle – a closed loop, so to speak. When I-90 came along, the underpass here at Front Street and under I-90 was the only access to the other side of I-90 there. There was an access to the State Park if you went down to Exit 15. But it was a concern to me and the Council that if you had a conflagration at that entrance, at Front Street, the firemen would have a difficult time getting to it. At that time, our fire department was here in town, so they couldn’t get to it. After much argument and pressuring, they agreed to open up enough space where the railroad ran under I-90, where the railroad tracks [were], so that the City could build another street in there someday in the future to offset that. Looks like we might get that now, after all these years. [laughing]


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Oh! I remember back in the late [19]50s, early [19]60s, they had a terrible flu attack. Poor Dr. Hillery, the only doctor in town, spent most of his time racing around. He went home to home, you know. There was a grocery store in the IOOF Hall, Stevens Grocery. The young couple, Stevens’ son and his wife, actually were there and ran it. But they both got the flu and died. Their little kids went to the grandparents that owned the grocery store and they had to raise them, those elderly people. That was a tough deal, that flu. And I happened to personally get the flu, and Dr. Hillery made me stay in bed for two weeks. He told my wife if she didn’t take care of me, she might not have a husband. That was a tough deal for us. I don’t recall the schools being closed, though. There was the Red & White grocery store on Sunset here, right here in the middle of town. And there was that Stevens Grocery in the IOOF Hall. There was Tony & Johnny’s store, where the Mills Music is now, and there was a grocery store at the Grange Hall. So, we had a lot of grocery stores when we came in here. I think that’s about it. I can’t think of the rest of the stuff. There was a lot that went on during that period of time, from [19]52 on. MH: Let’s go back to that cafeteria library that was built. Where was it located, before it was moved down to the center here? RP: Well, I believe the old high school gym must still be up there. They didn’t tear it down, did they? MH: The green gym? RP: I guess it’s green, I don’t know. MH: It’s down now, but it wasn’t then.


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RP: The next building, the superintendent’s office was up in there, and that next building, the junior high school students’ lunch programs was in that building that I was talking about. That was the one they moved. I was told that was the old, old gym. Small, you know. I don’t know when they built that, but that’s what that was. I can’t think of any other development besides the Mountain Park during that period of time. George Rowley, who had built houses in Eastgate, built at their end, he came out here and bought the Cemetery Hill property back there and that’s where he started and he built his Mountain Park development. We pretty well went along with it, as long as he followed the regulations and things like that. Of course, we didn’t have building inspectors in those days. Jim Fricke was a Boeing engineer, but as a part-timer, he would do our City inspections as best he could. The only employee we had at that time, I believe, was named Helen Nelson. She was the city clerk. And Ed Seil, Ed “Nogs” Seil, was marshal. He had a part-time assistant by the name of Whitey Blanchard. I remember he would come in on important, overload things. And Jim Miles was the city superintendent. We did have a sewer plant down on the end of First Avenue NW. The fellow that ran that for the City was named Dave Morgan. I think it was Dave Morgan. I can’t remember the first name, but it was Morgan. His wife had a license place in a little store out by the highway. She lived on Dogwood. Lee Hepler had the Ford garage on the corner on Front Street and Sunset. Of course, it wasn’t called that in them days. Across the street to the west was a Western Auto Supply store, run by Cal Hood and his son.


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There was the post office, where we got our general delivery mail until we come up with our own program and got mail delivery. Stevenson was the postmaster. Coming this direction, Lewis had a barbershop. That little building was moved and it’s sitting over here on Front Street now. Clint Bradley had a dry goods place there. First time I ever saw a dry goods store where everything is on tables; nothing was on the shelves. Next to that was the Red & White grocery store, run by John and Dan Kramer at that time. And then, there was a tavern. May have been two for all I know, but there was a tavern there. There was City Auto Repair down there that was there operating. Across the street from that was the City Hall and the fire station. I didn’t mention it, but the fire station was manned totally by volunteers, volunteer firemen. In the station were two County trucks and one City truck. The County trucks would go out and fight the fires out in the County in the fire district around here. The City truck was used if there were fires in town, depending on which one. That was the technical deal, but the fire chief for the district, for the County, was also appointed as our chief. His name was Bill Doherty. There was disputes from time to time. One of them, the County wanted to the City pay for firefighting by the County firemen in town. I took exception to that. I asked the firemen, “Do you all live in town?” They all lived in town.


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“Are you ready to pay fees to the County in order for you to fight the fires in town?” That didn’t make sense to me. So, that died a slow death. They built the post office over here near where the current City Hall is. That was the new post office. Did I mention that building was to come down here for a library, and that the businesses here paid for moving it? That was because they finally realized that the liquor store moved out by Gilman, and there was talk about the post office being out there. There was talk about the library had to move someplace, and they were offered the space over there by the Hi-Lo for the library. They realized that they were going to lose a lot of their businesses, for people coming downtown here to either go to the library or the liquor store and post office, stuff like that, so the local businessmen ponied up the money. Going down that side of Sunset, there was the [Issaquah] Press, of course, on the other side, on South Front Street. The paper is still there now. I don’t recall any businesses behind there at that time. Going north on Front Street, there was a beer tavern, which had recently been built. I think there had been a restaurant there that had burned down. Then, there was Drylie’s ice cream and bus station, I called it, because that was where the [Greyhound] bus stopped. Next to that was Dormack’s ten-cent store. And then, there was Cussac’s shoe store, formerly a harness store. Next to that was Al Peters’ real estate office. And then, there was the Fischer meat market. Al Peters’ place had been Finney’s before.


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Then, there was Lewis Hardware. And there was a pool hall on the corner in the building that used to be Tony Wallen and John Hrcko’s grocery store. Then, there was the bank. It’s still there. Then, there was a space in there and I can’t whether there was anything in it, but there was a couple of houses. I know one of them had been where the paper once was printed. I have a few nails from that, I told you. They were handmade nails, so it was an old building. Reggie Thomas owned the property and he tore it down. Then, there was another house in there. Then, there was Wilfong’s little jewelry store. There used to be a bakery in there. Then there was Eagles-something – no, it was Reg Thomas’s furniture store. That’s what was there. I don’t remember if the hairdresser was there then or not. Across the street was Tony & Johnny’s grocery store, and the theater, of course. Then, there was a building there that’s still there, a building where Dr. Perkins’ dentist office is. There used to be a shoemaker in there but I can’t remember his name. And there’s Hailstone gas station, of course. Going the other direction, there was Lou Lawill’s drugstore on the corner of Alder and Front. Then, I’m not sure. I forgot about the florist shop, which would now be the furniture store. And there was a dry cleaners in there, too. And there was some kind of a place where maybe you could get a little food, but not a restaurant. Maybe it was a cigar store, I don’t know. Then, there was the Shamrock Café, which specialized in homemade pies cooked by Rita Shain. Bill Shain was in the real estate business, but that was also their place. And then, the IOOF Hall.


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[They were on the east side of Front Street], right where the Oriental restaurant is now, which had been Fasano’s. And then, there was another druggist in there. I can’t remember his name right now. Clem Stefani had the liquor store in there in that building. That was where the chiropractor Brown’s place is. The liquor store was a private deal then rather than a State deal. Then, there was a lady, Mrs. Johanson, who had a sewing deal in there. You could get buttonholes sewed on, and she had machines and sold thread and things like that. The next place was Andy Wold’s hardware store. That’s what I recall about the businesses [on Front Street]. There were some businesses out by Highway 10. I remember a hamburger stand owned by a couple of schoolteachers sitting out there where Pogacha’s is now. There was a sandwich [place] in there. Also, there was a Chrysler-Dodge dealer and repair shop there owned by Augie Vidonis. His daughter, Susan Vidonis, was in my fourth grade class. That’s why I remember her. Her last name changed to Ruby. There was a Mobil station on the corner of Front Street and Sunset. There was a Richfield out on Tibbetts Corner. And then, I can’t remember for sure, but at Highway 10 there had to be a gas station there, but I can’t place it. Seemed like it was a combination store and gas station. And behind that was called Frogtown. That was because it was kind of swampy and there must have been a lot of frogs over there. There was quite a few people of the city that lived over there. There was one business over there. I can’t remember what it was, whether it was a furnace repair or what it was, [maybe a sheet metal outfit]. And it seemed to me there was a nursery-type thing over there.


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That’s as far as I can remember as far as the stores. I told there was there was a Triple X up here on Sunset that was still operating when I moved here. I taught in the junior high school, seventh grade, I think it was, on the second floor. The building had been refurbished. Then, I had to go back to college every summer for two years, during which time I got a principal’s credential. Then, I went and taught in Clark Elementary in order to get some experience in teaching fourth graders, that level. They were building a new school out at Coalfield. There were a couple of us, Louie Orth and myself, who were candidates for that principalship. I gave up the coaching and I was a junior high school vice-principal under Joe Chotti, with the view in mind I was to be trained for a principalship. But that didn’t happen, because the superintendents changed – it was Deering, and before that it was Johnson. Ed K. Erickson, who was an Issaquah boy, was the superintendent who hired me. He then became president of Seattle Community College. After Ed K., a Johnson became superintendent. And after Johnson came Deering. After Deering came another Johnson, as I remember, as the superintendent of the school. He was from Ferndale. That Johnson went to school with me up at Western. His wife was in my high school class. She was a twin. Her sister was Flora. We were in the same high school together, Meridian High School. I was in World War II for 13 months. Didn’t get into any action, except I was on board a ship, the USS Montreaux, which was a troop transport. Then, I went out and I was a longshoreman in Bellingham. And I was a fisherman in Alaska, because I’d done that before I ever went into


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the Navy. My father was a fisherman in Alaska, trap fisherman, and we fished up there. And that’s where I went every summer, to go trap fishing up there. I eventually got my degree at Western and left there to teach school. And when I didn’t get the principalship out here in Coalfield, Bellevue had been after me to go have a principalship over there. They were building schools like crazy, so I went over there. Then, because I was a math-science major, Boeing attracted me away, and I went to work at Boeing in [19]56. I retired from there. I was the principal at Enatai School in Bellevue, but I didn’t finish the year. I got permission from the school to leave, because at that time, the pay was so low for teachers, they said, “OK. But we know we’re losing good teachers. Go ahead, but if you ever want a job, you can come back.” I know that I didn’t mention that we shot a bear off the junior high school playground one year. Kids would eat their lunch outside, and they would leave sandwich pieces and the stuff, and the bear would come down and scarf around in there like they would berries. But finally, we had to shoot it. We were afraid it would hurt a kid. Also, I used to take my science classes across Front Street South there and go to the slide piles that would come out of the mines. They were a wonderful source for fossils, so I would always take my science class over there. They’d pop them open and they were perfect fossils, perfect coal-type fossils. We walked across there, and I remember we still had to be careful because there was still a little slag burning in the ground close to Front Street. I should mention the fact that when I came here, there were two active mines that I knew of. One was the mine on the road to Renton, as you


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go up past Talus. Just past Talus a ways, there were bunkers there for loading into trucks that come, and there was a mine entrance there. There was also one underneath the road, because I used to see mules in harness sometimes underneath there, on the opposite side of the road. And then, there was a big slag pile there, which was next to the creek, you know, big. That’s what supposedly killed all the salmon off of that Tibbetts Creek, because all that slag was dumped out there. But it was still smoky, you know, still steamy. The other mine was in Newcastle, which is in Issaquah School District, and I used to drive the bus out there, pick up the Biama kids, whose father ran the Bianco Mine over there, a small operation. The Bianco Mine was a big one at one time. I also picked up the Phillips kids, who were the only black kids in the Issaquah School District. Then, that bus ran past Lake Boren, or whatever the name of that lake is where the Salvation Army is, down past Uniontown to Coalfield and then to Issaquah. That was the way that run, that mine. When I was still teaching school here, I had a couple of the Biama kids in class. Their dad just opened up a new mine up on Cougar Mountain, and it was down about 400 or 500 feet. I talked to the dad and told him that I’d always wanted to go down in a mine. He never let his kids go down in the mine, so they got to go with me. He took me down to the mine there, and it was operating at that time. I remember Matt Yourglich was one of the miners. He was one of my neighbors and he was one of the miners digging a parallel tunnel. That was as far as the coal mines go that I knew.


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We had to watch out, because we had to know where most of the tunnels were because we had a couple of sinks. We had a bad one in one of the roads through Mine Hill Road. I forget how that worked, but a couple of guys passed out down in the deal from the gas. I remember one of the policemen went down there. He was gassed. They were worried about that because it’s so quick that you lose oxygen. That was right practically in the middle of the road up there, that thing, so it had to be filled. The other time was the mine’s tunnel entrance south of the Fish Hatchery, along the creek, where the slag came down on top. During the Cuban missile crisis, I located Pete Favini and Matt Yourglich, two old miners, and I said, “You’ve got to show me where that mine entrance is, because if we have trouble with nuclear attacks and stuff like that, we better have a place so the people in town can at least try to get out of it.” I guess it’s a long tunnel there, so it was OK. So, we went over there and they showed me the timbers and everything – pretty near all grown over, but it was possible. Athat time, Bill Flintoft was still mayor. He appointed a guy as civil defense director for the City of Issaquah. I can’t remember his name now, Jack-something. MH: I remember, during World War II, driving through Coalfield, and the slag piles were still smoking. RP: Yeah, sure. On the back road, going to Uniontown, there was several of the entrances had been covered over with big piles of dirt. They were along that road there to Coalfield. So, that was the mining deal that I recall. I know there was a mine over here around Grand Ridge, but I never was to it. It wasn’t operating when I first come here. Walt Seil worked there years ago. He just died not so long ago.


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He had mined in there and knew where it was. I’ve never gone there. I guess you can take a tour over there. The only thing else that I can remember is that the first year I moved here, I couldn’t find a house, not one. It was just impossible to find a house in Issaquah, so I lived in High Point. That was Highway 10 then, of course, and there was a store there and a motel and a gas station there, right there at that curve there at High Point. We lived across the street, right across from where the cars park now to do the hiking up there. Of course, when [I]-90 come along, took it all out and there was nothing. MH: I think there was some guy whose name began with “F” that ran the motel? RP: I think it was Lofgren was the family name that had that, but it was 50 years ago, I don’t know. I just remember a Lofgren that seemed like he was the son of the guy that had the mill there. The mill got washed out several years ago. That’s what happened to the mill up at High Point. There was a dam that broke up in the hill there and it washed her all out. A lot of people got drowned then. I don’t remember when that happened. It was in the [19]30s sometime. MH: That’s correct. RP: I remember Bill Bergsma, his dad’s dairy, and Bill being our milk delivery man. And also, during Christmastime, he would come and throw candy and stuff in the door, and we’d leave packages out there to give to the kids. That was an exciting moment. He did a good job on that.


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And then later, his son-in-law even jumped into that and did some. He was a Harper. That was his name. He married Florence, I think that was her name. Anyway, that’s another thing that was nice. That milk we used to get delivered from there, it had about that much cream on the top of it, and you could lick that cream off the top of it. But then, he quit that and bought his milk from Darigold and delivered it like that. MH: When we first came here, we got cream topping from Smith Brothers. RP: Oh, yeah. MH: And Jim Flynn was the milkman. RP: Is that right? Warner Erickson was the milkman for Carnation. And he was on the City Council a few years after I was on there. I mean, he was on my route while I was there. He was one of the sons I told you about, Warner Erickson. I still hear from him. He’s still alive, he and his wife, Betty. They lived on Mine Hill. MH: Mine Hill was a part of the city by then? RP: Yes. It had its own water system the first time. There’s a draw up there. There wasn’t any houses up there or anything, but there was a draw right behind the cemetery, the deep little valley in there. They had a dam in there, and that was their water supply. Came out of a little stream that came down there and dammed it up. That was fine until we got enough people out here and sometime a dead deer would show up in the dam. That wasn’t very good, so we had to do something about that. They kept the water supply, though, for a number of years, and it was connected to their outdoor watering deals. The dam disappeared later. But that’s where Mine Hill got the water.


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MH: In 1938, where I’m reading right now, the Mine Hill people seemed to all belong to Bethel Chapel, and seemed to be a really closed group. RP: Yeah, they were. In a town like this, that’s what happens. In a little town, back like Issaquah was, almost isolated, because before Highway 10 it was difficult to go to Seattle. It’d take a couple hours, even at best. Nobody would really come by here because it wasn’t that much a deal. They’d go over the Snoqualmie Pass. They’d come through from the south end, they’d come through Renton up Sunset Highway. There were a couple of inexpensive motels catering to that. MH: What about the Houvar Motel? RP: Yeah. That was over here, though. That was on the corner of Front Street and Highway 10. MH: How do you say the name? RP: Houvar [hoo-vahr]. There was another one across the creek that Harry and Elaine Wolf owned. That was the Issaquah Motel. And then later, Catteral bought it and made offices out of the whole thing. That was put in there because of Highway 10, see. Same thing with Houvar and everything. Before there was Highway 10, there was a couple of motels in Issaquah, inexpensive ones where you could stay for all of 75 cents or a dollar or whatever it was. I remember that my folks and I and my brother drove down to California in 1935 in a Model A. It took us five days to get to San Francisco driving from Bellingham. We’d stay in auto courts, and I remember them costing between 50 and 75 cents a night. [laughing]


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That was what there was here in Issaquah, a couple of auto courts. They may even have been one out at Tibbetts, too, I don’t know. They could have had one over there. Because if you’re coming over the Pass, by the time you got to Issaquah, you were tired and you were ready to rest. But it was an isolated town, and so you had cliques that formed, sometimes on the basis of family, a family married a family. You’d have a clique being a coal miner, where the coal miners [would] get together and have a lodge or something like that. It was just that way. You could have it in church – one clique, everybody goes to that church. Of course, the Community Church was the Presbyterian and Methodist put together. They went together and put that one [together]. And there was the Catholic church right over here on Sunset. It was a mission. I always used to tease my Catholic friends. “You guys can’t even have a priest out here. It must be pretty tough place, you had to have a missionary come out once a week!” [laughter] [Alting R.] “Buck” Lee was the mayor when I went on the City Council. Buck resigned and Bill Flintoft became the mayor, because he was the City Council senior. So, there was left four city councilmen, and Bill Flintoft was the mayor. One of them was Clive Berry, the florist. One was me. One was Tauno Erickson. The other one changed and I can’t remember the name of the guy that was there first. Cal Hood had been there, but when he became the municipal judge, then somebody else went in there to that spot, whether it was me or whether it was another guy working for Alpine Dairy. When I first come in, I would go out and help Bill pack bodies out of houses and stuff like that. He’d get young, strong guys to help him pack them out. [laughter] I’d even take them into Seattle to the coroner.


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In those days, people would do whatever they could to make a few bucks. It was a tough, tough place to … not tough to live, but it was tough to have a few dollars in your pocket. Like I said, I remember the blackberry deals. There would be racks of blackberries down there at the Signal gas station, which was just west of the Mobil gas station. Antrum was his name. He was a little guy, a dwarf, and he had three boys who lived there. They used to have racks of blackberries, you know. People would bring them in and get cash for them; and then a truck would come once a day and take them out to this cannery, North Bend or someplace. When I came here, the florist was Clive Berry. He was right where this fingernail place is. You know where they’re fixing over at the furniture store, making two [businesses]? Right next to there, that little tiny brick building, that was where the florist was when I came here. Later, there was a florist across the street from the Flintofts. Didn’t last too long, but there was one there. I never dealt [with them]. Clive Berry was a good [friend]. We came from Bellingham and we were close friends, so I never had an occasion to go to any other florist. There may have been, I don’t know, but he was the main florist. There wasn’t that much business for a florist in a town like Issaquah. He built his own house over there. It was not too far from here at all. MH: When you were growing up, you mentioned that you alternated between Bellingham and Wrangell? RP: Yeah, Wrangell, Alaska. MH: So you moved up in the spring of each year, before you were through up the grade?


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RP: Yeah. MH: So you really had two sets of classmates. RP: That’s right, I did. I had the Alaskans there. Quite a few of the Indians lived up there and so forth, and I went to school with them. They had their own college out there at Wrangell, way out there. It was an Indian college of some sort, and they would bring in young Indians guys from all over and try to educate them, post-school. Yep, Wrangell was the place. I sold garnets on the waterfront to the tourists. There were a lot of tourists. You know, like how we have tourists going up there on a boat? There were a lot of them then. The Alaska Steamship, they would go up, the Northland Steamship, all coming out of Seattle. Canadian-Pacific ran out of Vancouver, and the tourists were coming up. I sold garnets up there when I was a kid to the tourists, telling them that they were blood diamonds from Alaska. [laughter] And I [sold them] bear claws. Again, those were the days when you really were after a buck, if you could get it, no matter what you did. There weren’t any jobs for young people. When I was coming out of high school, if I hadn’t had to go in the service, why, in the years before, I had a hard time getting jobs. There weren’t a lot of jobs around Bellingham. It was a tough time, so we learned how to make a buck here and there, and we weren’t too proud about anything. If we had to dig graves, OK, we’d dig graves. Whatever. MH: So, you graduated from high school when? RP: 1945, actually. MH: And then after that, you went in the service?


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RP: Yeah, I was in the service. I went in the service before I even graduated from high school. They did that in those days. They’d sign you up, and then the day you were released, why, you’d go from school to the boot camp. I grew up on a small farm north of Bellingham, between Bellingham and Lynden. Milked cows and all this stuff. But going to Alaska was pretty standard stuff, from the time I was one year old. I had my first birthday in Kake, Alaska. [We] ate a lot of fish in the winter. Boy, I ate fish. My father would bring home two or three cases of salmon, and then we’d eat salmon. My brother was so sick and tired of salmon sandwiches at school, you know, at school lunch – god! It was terrible for him. I liked it. I always liked it. And we ate of salt fish, because a lot of stuff, we were still salting things, you know. I’m sure in Issaquah, it was the same way. All the fish that come up the creek – my god! Millions of red fish come up, the kokanees. They would smoke them, cut, filet them up and smoke them when they first come up. So, there would be a lot of salt kegs of salted salmon, because they’d last all winter that way. MH: And then, to use them, you’d have to soak them, right? And even then, they’d be pretty salty. My mother would boil them up with potatoes and stuff like that. Got a lot of it. In fact, when my oldest son John went to Alaska here when he was 16, one of the things was “Be sure and bring back a keg of salt salmon.” So, he did. They helped him up there, the guys. So, we had a keg of salt salmon for years in the garage. The family wasn’t that crazy over it, but my family had it sometimes.


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RP: We had a Korean representative here that I dealt with. They bought some airplanes and I was delivering airplanes to them. I brought him out to the house because we had salt fish out of the barrel, and regular rice. It was like he’d died and gone to heaven. Funny thing, when the executive, the owner of the airline from Korea, came out, I had him out to the house here in Issaquah, and I showed him this barrel, this salt fish. And he insisted that I put two full fish into a bag and hand it to the pilot, when he takes delivery of the airplane, to fly back and give it to him, the boss. The Koreans loved that salt salmon. [laughter] MH: Yeah, boiling up potatoes sounds like a good Norwegian dish. RP: Anyway, I stayed here in Issaquah. When I went to work at Boeing, it was just as easy to live here as it was in Renton. That’s where I spent most of my time. And if I was in town negotiating for the Boeing Company, [I] handled all the contracts in South America, Central America, Africa and the Middle East. So I spent a lot of time in those areas negotiating airplane contracts. MH: You didn’t have to learn their language? RP: No. In fact, I tried. In Spanish, I’d pick up a few words and I worked at it so I could just for courtesy. They always liked to have it. But they really prefer when you’re negotiating that you don’t know the language. They can talk and dispute in the conference room – they were always in a conference room. And there would be maybe a board, an airline board. They wanted to talk, and if I could understand their language, I’d have to leave the room every time. I’d be constantly leaving the room. So, they really preferred that I didn’t know the language.


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Although, outside, on private stuff, why, then they’d like that. But no, the Middle Easterners didn’t want anybody in there. Certainly not any of the Spanish countries I’ve negotiated with – Venezuela, Columbia, Bogotá, Bolivia – I’ve been to all those countries negotiating airplane contracts. I did that for 25 years. It was fun, though. I enjoyed it. I got to take my wife several times, and that made it nice. I spent a lot of time in Iraq. I had her there for a month in Iraq. They were one of our best customers, the Iraqis. Bought every airplane we made. I was sad to see we went into Iraq. It was crazy. Never go into Iraq. It’s crazy, if you ask me. [laughing] I have three children, and each of my children had three children. And now their children are having children. It’s like that. My children are John, Roy and Linda. Linda is the youngest. There’s two and a half years between each one. My wife planned well, I guess. Now, I have nine grandchildren. I picked up two more granddaughters that wanted me to be their grandfather, and so I said OK. I picked up kids. One teaches school east of the mountains. And each of my kids was divorced, so they picked up kids as part of their new family. All of them, they did good the second [time] around. So I have people that call me “grandfather” or “great-grandfather” or “great-great-grandfather,” you know, that really aren’t through my line, but they’re there. I kind of treat them all like [family]. I’m glad [I have so many] because I’m all alone, and it’s tough to be all alone, because I’ve always lived with somebody. I’ve always had somebody with me, from the time I was a child. This is terrible, this living alone. Makes me panicky sometimes, when I wake up. But that’s what happens when you get to be as old as I am. [laughing] All my friends are gone.


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All of them are gone. All the guys who were firemen that I knew, they’re all gone. Cliff Alm lives in North Bend. He’s the only one that I knew of the whole batch of firemen, although one of my youngest sons was a volunteer fireman here, too. No, they’re all gone – Crosby and Schultz and the whole lot. There is a Chevalier that lives south of town, Dave Chevalier. He’s there, but I never see him. They’re all gone. Ones from my high school class are dropping off, too. Even though they were all farm people and they were in pretty good shape, they’re dropping off. I do go to high school reunions. In fact, six years ago, I went to a high school reunion and ran into what I thought was my cousin. She and I had gone to high school together 65 years before. We got together and she lived there for five years with me. But I couldn’t do it anymore. She was bad off. She couldn’t do anything, so I had to let her go. All her relatives lived in Bellingham, so that’s where she lives, in a nursing home in Bellingham in hospice care. That’s where I go every Wednesday. She still knows who I am, and I’m her sweetheart, so that makes her happy. MH: Was your brother older or younger? RP: Older. Seven years older. We lost a brother between us from whooping cough. He died 10 years ago, something like that. My mother lived till she was 92. She was a Swedish lady. She loved to dance. Really loved to dance. She danced until she was 90 years old up there. She was a good dancer, too. Hambo, and the Swedish waltz, and the polkas and the schottisches. The first dance that I went to at the fire hall was the first one where somebody actually invited me. Otherwise, I wasn’t part of the group.


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The popular songs, the ones they danced, were the Swedish waltz and the Scandinavian schottische and polkas. I’d grown up with all that, so I recognized the music. I thought, Well, there aren’t any Scandinavians around here in Issaquah that I know of. And I thought, How can that happen? Then, it occurred to me that there were miners here first; and then that broke down and the loggers then came through. Most of the loggers were Scandinavians. And by god, they wanted to dance. When they had the time, they wanted to dance. They wanted to dance and drink beer and all the good times when they’d come in on the weekend. I could just see this bunch of loggers coming into town, a little town, and wanting to dance; and they had to have little dances, and the girls had to learn to dance the Swedish waltz and the polka and schottisches. Next thing you know, a few years of that, the loggers are gone [chuckles], and what you have left is a group of young people that love to dance those dances. That’s where it all comes from. Even when my wife was still alive, we would go up to Vasa. Upper Preston had a dance there. They had a dance club. They still danced the Swedish waltz and schottisches and stuff like that. I fit right in. I had no problem. And there were Slavs and Italians and the Finnish. All those coal miners were different. [laughing] There weren’t any Scandinavians in the coal mines, really. They were all up in the woods. In fact, the mill was still operating in Preston, and there was a big mill in Snoqualmie. That was a big employer for people here. I didn’t mention that. I said Alpine Dairy and the school district were the biggest employers, but there were quite a few employers that were east of here that guys


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could work in the woods or drive truck [for] or something like that. So, there were those jobs. Not anymore, really. The mill was operating for sure when I came here. And there were still a few shingle mills around, but I don’t [remember]. Seems like there was one up above, up about where they’re building all these houses up there [in the Highlands]. Way back in there, I think there was a shingle mill operating then. You could always tell the shinglemen, they called the cedar blocks “bolts.” There would always be a finger or two missing on them. They’d lose their fingers to the machines. At least that’s the way it was in Bellingham. I never saw any here in Issaquah. Well, have I talked enough for you? MH: Well, probably. I guess you can go home and think about it, and if you want to talk some more, you can coma back another day. RP: I think I pretty well covered it, as far as the stuff that happened from [19]52 on. It wasn’t in a real chronological sequence, but it happened during those years. Like I say, I was on the Council for about 12 years, from about [19]56 to [19]67, when I went on to Bellevue Community College board of directors. The real activity I was in between there and [19]56 was schools. I taught civics, you see, in school to ninth-graders. I mentioned that before, but at that time, there were no primary elections for fourth-class towns, so the people who got nominated were nominated at a caucus at City Hall. Nobody went to the caucuses unless there was some issue that drove people out. I pointed that out to my civics class, and said people get controlled by groups in a town like Issaquah because of the fourth-class deal where there were no primary elections. So, if nobody goes to the caucus


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except those people that want to control the city, then they’re going to control the city. You’ve got nothing to complain about then. So I said, “This caucus is going to be. And you make sure your folks go. And you go, too. Just learn a little bit about how government is formed, starting at the lowest level in a fourth-class town.” So [chuckles] that’s how I ended up getting [nominated]. A bunch of parents did come, and the kids. And, of course, I got nominated for a Council position. [laughter] And I really didn’t want it. I had too many other things to do. But I just talked about civic duty and responsibility, so here I am and I can’t dodge out from under it. So, that’s the way that goes. [laughing] I was involved in the political parties for a number of years here, too. When I first come here, I think you could count all the Republicans on one hand. Dr. Hillery was one, and the rest of them unknown. In fact, when somebody asked me one time what I was, they were ready to pick a fight with me. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, being a Republican in this town.” Like I said, there was probably six of them, was all there was! [laughter] I never made the count. There were a few, but they wouldn’t dare mention it, because they’d get harassed something fierce. MH: I suppose that was because everybody was out of work, and the WPA really helped people. RP: Yeah, absolutely. Then there was the jobs, you know. Truck driving and things like that [were] union jobs, and the union was anti-Republican for the most part. I understood that. Yeah, that’s the way that worked with the town that way. We got $4 a meeting, twice a month, to be on the City Council in those days.


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I took the check at the end of the year and gave it to my wife. That was my Christmas present to her. She could go and spend it on anything she wanted. And you know what? Really, she just had a ball with that, because it was like 75 bucks or 100 bucks. And all the sales after Christmas, my god, she’d just died and gone to heaven. She’d come home with her arms stuffed with things she bought for the Christmas present. I remember that was good times. That was good times. That was a smart thing on my part. END

PETERSON Roy 2010-6-1Roy+20… · History Interview with Roy Peterson.” Those who do not hold...

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Transcript of PETERSON Roy 2010-6-1Roy+20… · History Interview with Roy Peterson.” Those who do not hold...