DONALD D. DOUGLASS
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I always thought of Pasco as my home town because that is where I grew up. Actually, I only lived in Pasco for six years – 1912-1918.
We moved from Ritzville, where I was born in 1903, to Pasco in June 1912. We rented a house on 10th street which was about a quarter of a mile from the old dock on the Columbia River. For a curious nine year old boy it was very exciting. For me the river was particularly fascinating what with stern-wheelers, ferries, swimming and exploring. I spent a lot of time there and before the summer was over I learned to swim down at Capt. Brown’s beach alongside the dock. I also met a lot of new friends, among them, George “Brick” Kerr, his brother Leigh, Buster Ellison, Elmer Evans, Norm Nelson and Sam Hatch. We comprised the nucleolus of the “Red Row Gang”, so called because we all lived in or near “Red Row” – the local name for the houses built by the NPRR for employees, which were all painted box-car red.
As a gang, over the next few years we explored about everything in the vicinity including hopping freights to swim in the irrigation ditch on the Kennewick side of the river. It was dangerous but exciting to pile on a drag in the yards and jump off west of Kennewick when the freight was slowed down due to the steep grade to Kiona.
One of our favorite haunts was “Indian Island” a sandy bar about halfway between the railroad bridge and Sacagawea Park. On the island there were a few tall poplar trees and some low brush where we made our camp. When the river was low we could wade out to the island, which had once been an Indian burial ground. We spent a lot of time there searching for Indian relics, particularly after a windstorm, which would uncover beads and arrowheads. At one time I had a jelly glass full of flint and obsidian arrowheads. On some Saturdays we would hike down there taking a long a couple of Campbell’s vegetable soup for our lunch. We heated the soup over an open fire in a Union Leader tobacco can which was about the size of a lunch pail, with a cover and a handle on the top. Once we even had baked salmon with our soup. We captured the fish in the shallow water, cleaned it and coated it with mud and baked it in the fire. When it was cooked the skin and mud coating peeled off leaving a very nice baked salmon, which we thought was delicious.
One spring “Brick” Kerr and I found an “abandoned” row boat in a farmer’s driftwood boom. (Every farmer along the river had a boom consisting of several logs linked together with one end fastened ashore and the other anchored out in the river. Driftwood, logs and other debris collected in the boom, providing the farmer with stove wood.) We dragged the boat out and hid it in some brush. Next, we “borrowed” some tar and covered the bottom to make it seaworthy.
Equipped with homemade paddles we set sail for Indian Island, down river from the launching site. We really felt like DeSota when we beached the boat on the Island. We immediately started our ongoing search for relics. Suddenly either Norm Nelson or Brick Kerr let out a screech. I don’t recall which one it was but it electrified us all. Brick or Norm had uncovered a baby skull. That was too much so we left the boat on the beach and skedaddled for home. I assume the island disappeared when the McNary Dam was built, flooding the whole area.
I spent so much time down at the river that I got to know Capt. Brown pretty well. One day he asked me if I’d like a job as roustabout on the “Hanford Flyer”. Needless to say I was delighted and the very next morning I started to learn what it meant to be a roustabout. The Flyer was about 40 feet long with a cabin aft and a long needle-nosed bow. There were leather seats in the stern and along the sides of the cabin, and curtains that could be lowered in bad weather.
We left Pasco about 7 am and went across to Kennewick where we picked up the mail for Ringold, and any passengers bound up river. After we pulled away from the dock Capt. Brown said “Boy, take wheel and steer for that red barn on the opposite shore.” He then retired to the rear of the boat to smoke a cigar and chat with the passengers. (He always started the day with a pack of EL ----- cigars a Pasco-made product.) When we drew abeam the red barn the Capt. yelled, “Now head for that white house up river on the west shore.” You can imagine how proud I was to be allowed to take the helm of a boat like the Flyer.
Approaching Ringold, the Capt took over and he would usually say “Boy, we’re running a little late so take that bag and run up to the Post Office and be back in two minutes.” I ran up and back as fast as I could and just as I reached the dock the Capt. started backing off and I had to jump to the deck of the bow to get back aboard.
When we arrived at Hanford, the Capt went ashore to have his lunch and transact business. As he left his instructions were, “Sweep out the boat and then load that freight that is sitting on the dock. I’ll bring your lunch when I come back.” That particular day, I remember that the freight consisted of about fifty boxes of peaches, which I stacked in the middle of the cabin. The Capt. brought me a brown bag lunch from a Chinese restaurant, but not having eaten anything since 6 that morning it tasted superb.
We arrived back at Pasco about 3:30 pm and my job was to unload the peaches, sweep out the boat, and fill the gas tank. The latter I found was a job I didn’t relish. The gas was stored in 55 gallon drums up on the steamer dock about 20 feet above the deck of the Flyer. First I went up on to the dock and stuck a rubber garden hose into the drum and dropped the other end down on the boat. I then returned to the boat and to start the gas flowing I sucked on the end of the hose until the gas came and then I shoved it into the gas intake. Everyday I got a mouthful of gas and it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Capt Brown was a very enterprising man. He lived in a house boat at the dock and not only operated a bathing beach along with his wife, and provided boat service up river but also sold excursions on the “Elanor B” a boat he built about 1913. His next venture was a dance pavilion. In addition to the freight shed on the dock there was a large open area. In this spot he put down flooring over the dock planking and put up a tent to cover it. Apparently there was not enough steamer traffic at that time so it did not interfere with the freight business. Every Saturday night the town of Pasco turned out to trip the light fantastic. I was even allowed to sell tickets.
In 1912 the high school and the elementary grades were all housed in one building which I think was called the Longfellow School. We all walked to school and most of us went home for lunch. I started in Miss Enke’s fourth grade. Our desks had hinged tops with a cabinet below where we were supposed to keep our books and writing materials. Elmer Evans’ desk was in the back row and from that position he could hit me in back of the head with a spitball which he did occasionally. One day when I attempted to retaliate, Miss Enke caught me and I was sent to Principal Nick’s office for punishment. He reprimanded me severely and I had to hold out my open hand to be whacked once with a ruler. However, the last laugh was on Elmer. One day Miss Enke inspected our desks and when she opened Elmer’s desk she found it full of gum and candy wrappers (Elmer worked at the Crescent Drug after school). As the result Elmer had to stay after school and help Mr. Dewey, the janitor clean our room.
About 1913 or 14 a new school was built on the east side and to help fill the class rooms and relieve the overcrowding at the Lincoln School a couple of classes were transferred including mine. It was a long trek up Lewis Street and then across about 14 tracks to get there. Sometimes we were late as the road was blocked with freight traffic. Soon after that the railroad built the underpass which is still in use today.
In the 1900s the population of Pasco was largely of English, German or Scandinavian extraction, and everyone else was considered a foreigner. There were no such things as Women’s Lib, Civil Rights etc. When I think back on it I realize most of us were pretty intolerant. A black was a coon, a Chinaman a chink, an Italian a wop or dago, a Swede a squarehead, an Irishman a Mick and anyone from the Balkans a Bo hunk.
I remember one event that illustrates the general attitude of the people that I knew. There was a hollow about a hundred yards below our house in which the town had built a temporary bunk house for a crew digging the town first sewers. The foreman lived in a small shack about thirty feet away. One day I came home from school and found my mother and all the neighbors watching a shooting match between the foreman and a couple of men in the bunk house. The foreman would fire from a window and the men in town would fire back. Finally the foreman decided to make a break for it and ran out but he did not get far as one of the men rushed out and cut him down with an axe.
The Italian brothers were arrested and charged with murder. When their trail came up my mother was subpoenaed as a state’s witness. On the stand, she was asked by the prosecutors if she could identify the two men, to which she answered rather huffily, “Of course not, I wouldn’t know one “dago” from another.” She was promptly dismissed. She was a good Christian woman, God bless her, but her answer to the Prosecutor only reflected the generally accepted attitude which prevailed at that time.
One of the big summer attractions in Pasco was the annual visits of one or two large circuses. In those days they traveled in 60 to 70 car trains and they stopped in Pasco, probably because they had to feed and water the livestock, yet they always seemed to fill the tent for a matinee and an evening performance.
About three weeks before the arrival of the circus the advance crew showed up to post bills throughout the countryside on barns, walls, billboards, in fact on any vacant space available. The head man always called on the railroad people for favors to help put on the show. In return he usually handed out a few passes and since my father was Chief Clerk to the Superintendent he usually had enough for the whole family.
The train arrived some time during the night and by 5 am they started unloading, and of course all the “Red Row Gang” were there to watch.
I remember particularly the Sells-Floto Circus – not as big as Barnum & Bailey which had just merged with Ringling Bros – but it was a full blown circus including sideshows, three ringed tent and a Wild West show. The day began with a parade in morning.
“Brick” Kerr didn’t have a ticket for the show so he went to the tent master asked for some sort of job to earn an admission ticket. The outcome was a job leading a lama in the parade. They outfitted him with a fancy red tunic, about two sizes too big for him and a paper-mache helmet with a dyed horse hair plume, which was fastened on with a screw which in turn rested “Brick”’s head and which bored a hole in his head. However, he remedied that by stuffing a handkerchief in the top of the helmet and came down the street looking very proud. He drew a lot of applause from the town’s people, particularly form the gang who all envied him.
The evening performance concluded with the Wild West Show which featured cowboys and Indians chasing each other around the arena. The climax was the appearance of “Buffalo Bill” Cody who put on a shooting exhibition. Riding a beautiful horse he went to the center ring where for ten minutes an assistant threw colored glass balls into the air. Buffalo Bill blasted every one of them and we all decided he was quite a marksman. I found out later why he was so good. His 22 shells were loaded with dust shot which fanned out like a shotgun shell when fired. I also remember that we wondered why the tent wasn’t full of holes and of course the dust shot was the answer.
The show ended about 10:30 pm and by one or two in the morning the tent was down and the gear loaded on the train which took off for Yakima, the next top on the tour.
Most of the boys my age were always looking for an opportunity to earn a little spending money. Some of them were pretty lucky to have regular jobs. One who was the envy of the rest of us was Harvey Ellison who worked for the P.P. & L. His job was to turn on and off the street lights. Except for the lights in the center of town all other were controlled by a switch located about five feet up on the pole supporting the light. Every day at sun-up or sundown Harvey rode his bicycle all over town flicking switches on or off.
Elmer Evans worked as a delivery boy for the Crescent Drug, another prized job because he had access [to] the fountain.
For a while I worked for Mr. Alexander who ran the Pasco Table Supply – a grocery store. In those days most women phoned in their orders in the morning and we spent a lot of time bagging staple and weighing produce to fill the orders which were delivered in the afternoon by a horse and wagon. Once in a while I was allowed to make a delivery or two. On one occasion I made a delivery to the alley of a house on Tacoma Avenue. That the house was one of ill-repute there was no doubt. (In a town as small as Pasco, everyone knew about everyone else.) When I arrived I was met by a black woman coming out of the woodshed with a coal scuttle full of bottled beer. She told me to take the order onto the kitchen, which I did. As I was about to leave in walked a woman that I recognized as the Madame. She checked the order and then thanked me and handed me a silver dollar which was quite a tip in those days. In fact it was four times what I earned for working a full day at the store.
One summer I worked for the NPRR on an extra gang up in the Yakima canyon where we were relaying steel and rebalasting the roadbed. Before I was through I became a full-fledged “gandy-dancer”. I did every thing from water boy to flagman. As Flagman I would go down the track about a half mile and put two guns (torpedoes) on the track about 100 yards apart. When a train came along the engine hit the guns warning the engineer to slow down and proceed with caution.
We lived in “outfit” cars parked on a siding at Rosa. I bunked with Paul Colvin, the timekeeper, and Gus Kontos, the foreman. The gang consisted of about 40 Greeks most of whom were recent émigrés and spoke very little English. They treated me rather diffidently at first but when I brought out my Kodak Brownie camera they all wanted me to take their pictures, which I did. They wanted to send them home and from then on I was accepted as a member of the gang.
This was retyped, with spelling corrections only from a letter that Donald D. Douglass wrote himself. It is not dated. This letter was found in the archives at the Franklin County Historical Society and Museum
