Ramblins of an old man 5/4/01

Ramblings of an Old Man

This is to be the story of Lakewood or rather, Lakewood as I remember it. For me this story begins in Dupont of old. My wife, Rosemary’s adapted great grandmother came to Dupont with the Dupont Company when they set up the dynamite plant. She ran the cook shack for the workmen. She had two daughters, Irene was Rosemary’s adapted grandmother. Irene had two daughters. Ruth was Rosemary’s adopted mother. Ruth married Gerald Palmer then a soldier at Camp Lewis. They adopted Rosemary. From Ruth, her sister Lucille and grandmother Irene who had married Joe Cookler [a chemist at Dupont] I got most of my stories about Dupont, Tillicum and Lakewood. Well, not all.. It is my feeling that they are tied together, interlaced so to speak. With American Lake touching all three, it binds them in my opinion. O.K. here goes. The whirlpools of American lake, I have never been able to verify this with anyone else but my wife’s family swore this is true. Years ago, I guess in the early 1900 to 1920, Tillicum had a very fine park with a high dive. There was a young lady putting on a diving exhibition. A large crowd gathered to watch. Grandmother Irene and two other fat ladies were in a boat out off the shore. All of a sudden someone yelled, “The fat ladies are drowning!” Everyone looked to see them going on. The boat was going around in a big circle and being pulled into a .big whirlpool. No one could do a thing, just stand there and watch as the boat was pulled down into the whirlpool. Just as it looked as though the boat was a gonner the whirlpool stopped. The fat ladies just got soaked. This was the only one they were personally involved in. At another time an Olympic diver passing through put on an exhibition of diving and swimming. When he finished his exhibition he dived in and came up some distance out in the lake. Then he proceeded to swim at considerable speed across the lake. When he started back a whirlpool started up and just swing back and forth on the lake until it caught him. His body was never found. As I said, I have never talked to anyone outside my wife’s family who ever heard of these whirlpools. But for years whenever I told them I was going swimming in American Lake it was always watch out for the whirlpools. It was in the 1950’s, I was working for Gene Freigang. His son, Clark, told me that he and two other kids were sitting on the dock at the Country Club when a skin-diver and a helper showed up. They said they had been hired by the club to check out the water right off the dock. They said there had been reports of debris down in the water just off the dock. Skin divers were unusual then, so the boys were intrigued and watch the whole procedure. The diver went in and went straight down. After some time the helper got real upset. He started walking back and forth, all the time looking into the water. He did not say anything, just kept looking at his watch. Finally the diver surfaced, but he was so exhausted he could not swim to the dock. So they all jumped in and helped him. After he rested and got his breath he told them what had happened. After he got down about 50 feet he ran in to a big whirlpool. Being held in by the whirlpool were tree stumps, logs and debris. He was caught in this whrilpool and it took all his strength and knowledge of diving to get out. For a while even he was not sure. I have never been able to verify this either, but I am sure that the Country Club would not want that to be general knowledge. So there you are. Who do you believe? Years ago, it has been thought that the lakes are connected by under ground tunnels. In those days Steilacoom Lake was just a big slew with beaver dams on it. If one of those dams broke that sudden rush of water might set up a siphon that would create a whirlpool. Who knows if the lakes are connected, if there ever were any whirlpools??

The area we know as Lakewood was called the pairie area by the pioneers because there were very few trees. This I learned from the sisters of the Visitation Villa. Every year they had an old Indian burn off their fields to kill the weeds. The Indian told them that Indians had done it for years, long before the white man. They did it so trees would not grow and the grass would grow tall, so the tribes would have a good place to camp near the lakes. This I do know, when I moved to Lakewood in 1947 there was not nearly as many trees as there are now. The elevation of Steilacoom Lake is now controlled with a small dam where it flows in to Chambers Creek. About 1950 when I was working for Freigang, I rebuilt the old one. There was some snow on the ground making it slippery. I carried some materials down the bank and slipped. As I fell I turned over to catch myself. I must have thrown the materials up in the air because it came down right on my head driving my face into the ground and smashing my glasses. Those were tough times for us, so I went without glass for some time. In 1947 we bought a lot just off Alfaretta on Lexington, a block down from Parklodge School. This has turned out to be a great place for us, as we are still here. I have watched Lakewood grow around us and some of that growth I was involved in as a carpenter I worked on many buildings in this area and as an observer I have watch Lakewood grow to what it is today. There are so many stories, I don/t know where to start. There will be no beginning. I’ll tell them as they come to me. Years ago I worked for Bob Wooten on a house for coach Darrel Tally. I don’t think he was coach then but he became one of the best track coach’s Clover Park ever had. My son, Roger will attest to that. Years later I added an addition on that same house and later a three-car carport. Now back to the story. A few years later I worked with Bud Wooten and Cal Wooten, Bob’s brothers, they were the sons of Nelly Wooten, who I understand had a lot to do with Clover Park school district in the early years. Mr. Wooten [I can’t think of his first mane] built Lakewood Center, at least the first buildings. I heard a lot of stories about that job. The painter who worked on it was Al Klappsten and he was working for Friegang when I worked there. Al told me about Norton Klapp who had the Lakewood Center built with a movie theater so his second wife did not have to go to down town Tacoma to a movie because she liked movie’s. Mr. Clapp also had Al build in basement of his home a full set up of miniature trains. Al said he had never had so much fun building anything in his life. When it was done it was something to see, mountains, valleys, tunnels. Mr. Clapp would sit right in the middle of all this and operate everything. I still envy Mr. Clapp, all that still sounds like fun to me. The senior Mr. Wooten, as I understand was a great carpenter and builder. The boys were all great carpenters and good people to know. As builders they had their troubles. Al Klappsten told me when Norton Klapp divorced his second wife he set her up in a fancy dress store in Chicago and sent him back there to paint it. AL is gone now but he was one of the best painter’s I ever know and I was proud to call him a friend. .

The Lakewood of to day as you might imagine is quiet different today than when we started building our little house 36 X 16. One thing that attracted me to Lakewood, of course being from Minnesota; was the ice arena on Steilacoom Lake.

I was told that the ice arena building started out as a dance hall in the 1920’s. The door in back on the lake level was used in prohibition times to bring liqueur in from the lake. I never heard if there was a still on the lake or if they just stored the liqueur in a remote spot. I worked with Gif Markum who told me his wife danced one of those marathon dances there. She and her partner lasted for some three days but still did not win. I don’t know when it became a ice arena but it had been one for some time when I first went there in 1942. Right across Steilacoom Lake was Steilacoom point. When I framed a house on that point in 1954 or so I met the two brothers who owned the point and had owned it since it was a circus yes at one time there was a permanent circus set up on Steilacoom point. And these two brothers were part of it. They were very interesting to talk to and if I had the time I know they could have told me a lot about Lakewood. As I have said before “life and living is for the young, history is for the old.

Lucelle, Rosemary’s aunt told me of riding the trolley car’s from Dupont to Steilacoom to Tacoma . She said when they passed the fox farm in hot weather they would have to hold their nose’s because the smell was so bad .that fox farm was where Madrona Park ,the part facing Steilacoom blvd., is now. Another trolley line from Dupont to Tacoma traveled right through what is now Park Lodge School. When I moved here in 1947 there was a building on the corner of Gravely Lake and Avondale. I was told it was the old trolley car stop at that time an old couple lived there, can’t remember their name, there was a young man living there to and I though he was their son. When I was working on the Gene Freigang house that is now Villa Reality, the old couple died shortly after I saw a different couple over there. Later that day the young man came over, as we had gotten to know each other, he said did you see those people at my place and I said yes well he said they told me that they are my parents but I don/t know them I never saw them before in my life and they just moved in on me. He told me that he know that the old couple were not his real parents. That a circus had set up on the Villa property and some woman had ask them to take care of their baby and never returned to get it so they raised him. I told him he had better find out if they were his real parents or not. So he did he came back in a few days and said they were but he said I don’t know them and I really don’t like them how can I get them out. I told him that legally I think it might be pretty hard but if he really wanted to get them out to move out himself turn off the electricity and water and see what happens. So he did, after about three days they left. As I understood it that young man had inherited quit a bit of money along with the house. That house was remodeled in to a duplex for many years and is now a bank. There was another trolley station along Bridgeport way at about 88th. That old building was torn down just a few years ago. My son don bought a house on Decovin Street a few years ago turns out it was part of the old university that started off the end of Alfaritta Street. Don’s house was the Deans house, most of the house is still the same as it was some years back an old man knocked on Don’s door and ask him if he could show his friend the fire place where when he was a student at that school and it was a live in school, that if he got good grades the dean would have them over on Friday evening to roast marshmallows. He told Don that some times they would walk over to the trolley and ride in to Tacoma. The only part of the old school left is now an apartment house now I was told that the school operated only a few years then moved to university place, that’s how it got it’s name. They built a bigger school building that after the university move to Spokane and became Whitworth Collage that building became part of university place school district. It to was torn down a few years ago and replaced. The school on 27th. And grandview.that is.

I bought a piece of property on 59 avenue north of 100th street some years ago, it had an old house on it turned out it was built by one of the original lumber men and I have forgotten his name...It did turn out to be a good investment for me too.

After I was discharged from the army in 1946 I first completed High School at Lincoln High While doing that I took advantage of my Army Medical training and got a job at Pierce County Hospital. When I finished school I joined the carpenters union local 470. I then went to work for Russ Kral as an apprentice carpenter. One of my first jobs was to go with Russ to a house he was building on alfaretta St. in Lakewood a home for Ret. General Hamilton. As I waited for Russ I looked across the street at some vacant land Russ saw me looking at it an told me he know the man who owned it and gave me his phone number. I called we met and I bought this lot for $600.00 from a Mr. Seabeck. Shortly after we started building our little house 16’X 36’. One bedroom one bath a living room and kitchen with eating area I think it took us 10 years to really finish it and even then we were adding on to it. By 1962 we needed a lot more room so we gutted the old house and remodeled it add on to it so we ended up with some 3000 square feet. How wonderful it was just perfect for our family.

In the early 1960’s while working fore Jimmy Cecreto we built a circle of duplex’s I think 10 they were fairliner prefab’s . We just set them up on concrete slabs and finished then. They were behind the bowling ally that burned later. They had to doze in a lot of gravel to fill in the slew that was there. These duplexes were west of Davison Rd. and adjacent to the south boundary of the then Ville Plaza. Twenty or thirty feet out from the south boundary and about in the middle of the new city buildings. They had to doze in a lot of gravel to fill the slew that was there. At the southern edge about 50 feet out from the duplexes that you have to come in from Wildair Road. to get to Vern Grubert was the dozer operator and he decided to see how deep the slew was so he started to dig down into it . I was working near by so every once in a while I would check on him. He was in that hole so deep I could not see him. I heard nothing for a while then I could hear " CHUG CHUG “ The motor running very slow I looked out and could not see him so Iwalked out and looked into the hole . there he was GHUGing VERY SLOWLY SO AS NOT TO SLIP OR SLIDE BACK IN. He was in white pumas and trying desperately to back out. When Vern finnly did get out he told me that was the closest he had ever come to losing a dozer and probably himself here was no way of knowing how deep that pumas was but Vern said it was deep. Pumas is the result of vegetation growing, dieing and building up over thousands of years. When we first moved to Lakewood the Lakewood Center was still young. The grocery store in the southeast corner, the Drug Store and soda fountain in the northeast corner the restaurant and theater in the middle and the country store to the west. The country store was sort of a hardware store but much more. It was always fascinating to brows through. Before we had children we would walk to theater on a nice evening and for 50 cents see a fairly new movie. Those were the carefree days for us but they did not last long. The Dentist Dr. Klopping (s) had his office up stairs over the drug store. The offices are still there; If you were good he would give you a ticket to get a ice cream cone at the soda fountain. Now that soda fountain was first class. There were always three or four girls working there and they were all busy. The restaurant was first class to, a bit expensive but exhalent food. I think we had one of our wedding anniversary’s there oh we ate there other times to. There were some houses along Gravelly Lake Drive, by Lakewood Center some already converted to business. All were moved or torn down. On the northeast corner of Gravelly Lake Drive and 98 Street, they built a new Texaco gas station. I got to know the man who operated it I can’t remember his name but I do remember him, he was a big man and from New York City. He really did not tell me why he was here but I think I figured it out. I talked to him a lot while he ran that station and one time he told me he had lined up some property and was planing a nightclub. A few months later he said I have had a liqueur license applications in for six months a I can get no answer from then did I know what was going on. I told him that as long as Norton Clapp was head of the liqueur board he would never get one. Clap did not want any competition for Lakewood terrace restaurant. A few days later he told me I was right he had checked it out and that was the problem he sold the station and left here. As I said I have my own ideas what he was here for and I’m sure it was that night club and I feel the New York mafia was trying to get a foot in here. In the triangle between Bridgeport way 100 Street and 59 Street are some houses that look like stocco homes and they are but they are also concrete pre-fab panel structures. 4 foot X 8 foot panels . these houses were built in the late 1930 ,s. the panels were pre cast in a warehouse of Bridgeport way and 116 th. Where Lakeview light is now. I worked Kenny Furbush who told me his dad (who had only one arm) was the concrete mixer and form pourer. These concrete panels were the exterior walls and basement’s when he could not get local FHA approval he went to Washington DC and got direct money from H.U.D. to build what is built but he never got local approval, he moved on.