About Renton's Earlington

Grandma and Grandpa’s house was only a mile away in town behind the High School. It wasn’t long before we were riding our bikes back and forth. About mid way was Rutherford’s Triple X Drive-In on Sunset and Rainier. I have fond memories with friends enjoying the 2 for 1 Champ Burger special with fries and a root beer listening to Duane Eddy blaring Rebel Rouser on the jukebox.

Our neighborhood grocer was Ted’s. After school or doing my paper route I’d meet up with my pals for some penny candy or a bottle of pop. Mom or Dad would send us there about once a week for something but especially for the lunch meats and cheeses. No one I have ever known truly loved a great delicatessen more than Dad. Ted wrapped it up with wax and butcher paper and tied it with string. He'd pull a note card out from the drawer and write it down with a short pencil he kept perched behind his right ear. Dad would settle up later.

Ted Sipila was an iconic Renton character (and we had several in those days), with his skinny mustache, white apron, and the short stub of a cigar in the corner of his mouth. He always had one more thing to say then he'd laugh as we headed out the door. “Now don’t forget to say hi to your Dad!”

I remember causing a major stir one day on a Sunday drive with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle George. I wanted to stop at Dag’s and get a hamburger. Grandma and Grandpa never had a hamburger. In fact my Grandfather I don’t think ever had a meal other than what my Grandmother made for him, unless they had dinner with family or friends and those were rare occasions. They were quite perplexed.

But I got my way, thanks to Grandma, and had my 19¢ Beefy Boy burger. Mom on the other hand was not old school and for this little town she was a hurricane, a notable progressive and sometimes considered a radical futurist by some. Very social, Mom loved entertaining, parties, theater, art, Broadway Musicals, taking up causes, politics, and happy hour.

On Sunday nights if Dad didn’t have to work he’d take us to the Roxy Theater where we saw our fair share of westerns, detectives, and WWII movies. He'd often said, “I like movies about things that could really happen.”

We had a lot of laughs watching movies like Disney’s The Absent Minded Professor, The Shaggy Dog, and Son of Flubber starring Fred MacMurray. Speaking of things Dad thought could really happen, he was always concerned my brother Steve might actually blow the house up one day with his scientific experiments in the basement. Steve and neighborhood friend Gene built a radio telescope made from a big umbrella, aluminum foil, and a modified Heathkit shortwave radio. Turning the tuning knob created loud oscillating sounds that interrupted television reception within 500 feet and sounded like a science fiction movie. Wouldn’t you know it, one night out in the backyard listening intently for messages from space we had a major power outage. Dad (and a few neighbors) were certain Steve and Gene caused the blackout that darkened our area of town.

A lot of what needed to be done for the family and our home in those day's was on the barter system. Dad was a master at it and we got everything from our teeth taken care of at the dentist, a new roof on the house, cars repaired, the kitchen painted, and new carpet including installation by trading for music lessons.

It was a fun day honoring the past and pondering the future. Afterall, I'm a small town guy living in a great big amazingly amazing digital world. I enjoy the journey now more than ever before and the endless possibilities still ahead. Earlier in my life I spent way too much time trying to get to some place so I could become the me I really wanted, like it was a destination. Today, I'm filled with gratitude. There is no place I need to get to, I’m already here. It was a good day turning 62.

A long long time ago... In a galaxy far far away... I’m talkin’ Christmas here in the 1950’s. That was a time before time before time when we didn’t have high speed internet, social networks, or On Demand TV with a thousand channels to watch. (We only had 3 on a very very good day.)

René meets Santa Claus in person, 1955...

It was so long ago we used a rotary dial phone and competed for the party line and that is not a political statement! There was no digital anything, we were heathens living in a primitive analog world. Yet, even then, we were happy. We couldn’t blog, text, post, message, or fax. There was only us huddled in the frontroom around the stove or fireplace in winter. We were simply blessed with 4 warm walls, a roof, wonderful food, and love. Mom’s started planning the holidays in August because we’d only be able to communicate a half dozen times or so before Christmas using snail mail. Christmas trees had real aluminum foil called “tinsel”, not that plastic shinny crap we see now days that kinda sorta looks like shinny aluminum. Stuff was real, it was made in Japan! Tree lights got hot and you had to be careful how you placed them so you didn’t set the tree on fire (and don’t forget to put water in the stand!), and ornaments were made of glass, easily broken and potentially dangerous, and they came without a warning. And we survived.

A keepsake from Mom... one of my most treasured possessions. A simple little Christmas ornament made of painted cardboard and decorated with sparkles and beads. It has a round hole in back to stick a Christmas Tree light in so it lights up, from the early 1950's. Somehow it survived all these years. To me, it's priceless! On the back, it's hand ink stamped, Made in Japan.

I was helping a friend out last Saturday, but I’ll skip that story. We were at Hawthorn Stereo on Roosevelt Ave in Seattle so he could sell them some studio monitors to make rent. “Media says”... we’re recovering from this recession yet I know several friends that are having a hard time making ends meet.

While my friend makes his deal I wander around the store. I notice there's a room off to the side and step in to take a look. Oh my, it's like an audio museum, full of beautiful old radios, turntables, speakers and receivers. I'm in awe and at the same time trying to juxtapose my feelings about my friend having hard times and suddenly being confronted with my past through the filter of old audio technology.

What immediately captured my attention was the radios. Many of them were old, even when I was a kid. I remember seeing them everywhere back in the 50’s and 60’s.

My Grandfather had a big old round top Philips almost identical (but not quite) to the one in the picture. It was downstairs in the basement in his shop for many years. When I was in the 9th grade I asked him if I could have it and take it home.

Of course, being a respectable teenage boy in the mid sixties who loved Popular Mechanics and Popular Electronics magazines, I eventually had to take it apart!

I just had to!

When I think of it, that was a turning point. I didn’t really know anything about electronics then, I just started tinkering. I was curious.

I love this old technology made of steel, aluminum, hand crafted wood cabinets, and bamboo wicker weave over the speaker(s). No circuit boards, cloth braided wire coverings, resistors the size of your cats litter box potty pellets, hand soldered, big round tuning knobs (no transistors yet), and tubes that glowed and got really hot.

It was a mono AM world.

Truly these were works of art but for some reason it makes me laugh. I'm in a time warp about then and now. They were made with awesome materials and craftsmanship. So much care was taken to make an aesthetically pleasing object with one simple purpose.

I loved turning through the channels. Not only was this analog technology, but these were AM radios and you could hear all kinds of amplitudes getting modulated between the stations. It was almost like the first synthesizer, but I didn't know that yet.

Dad would have been 90 years old today. He was born in Newcastle, Washington in 1921 in a coal mining camp. The second son to George and Pauline Fabre. As a young boy he was inspired to be an accordion player like his Uncle Pete Delaurenti. That was in the midst of the Great Depression and money was scarce. But his Grandma Céline Boulanger believed in him, bought the accordion, and helped him pay for lessons.

Like all boys, there were times I wanted to be just like him, and times I didn't (especially in the 60's during the English Invasion). Yet time passed and I became a dad myself. As the saying goes, he got a lot smarter as I got older. Then more time passes and I find myself in my mid 40’s. I was getting ready for work one morning when it hit me. I looked in the mirror and, “Oh my God, I’m turning into the old man!”

It’s a guy thing... Towards the end of his life he was kind of a caricature of himself. Simply put, a real character who lovingly (and sometimes frustratingly) bordered on the eccentric. He identified so strongly with the working man, but in all reality I don't think he had a clue what their day was like. He was so totally oblivious as to how different his life experience was compared to their's.

Dad and Uncle Pete before WWII

He didn’t work a factory job 40 hours a week Monday through Friday like most. He would have worked them into the ground. Dad taught music lessons 5 and 6 days a week from his home studio and played clubs 4, 5, and 6 nights a week. He wasn't the big flashy Mr. Hollywood or Las Vegas type entertainer. He was a dedicated musician who if the truth be known, was quite shy.

Dad and brother Steve @ 1961

Yet, when he picked up his accordion and started to play the room was transformed. For the next few hours the toil and trouble of life was totally forgotten and the crowd was wisked away into a Twilight Time of joy and dancing. I witnessed this magic for several decades and it never ceased to amaze me.

He probably worked too hard and burned the candle at both ends. Yet he couldn’t have done it any other way I’m certain. He was simply wired that way, driven, always on a mission with urgency, always striving to be better. Yet somehow, he always managed to make time for us. Dad passed away in 1998 and I have to admit it seems weird when I realize he’s been gone for 13 years.

He was quiet spoken man except when he got mad. Fair, humble, honest, frugal, he’d help anyone if they needed it. Dad was a loyal Republican. He believed that was his best chance to keep the government’s hand out his pocket as he used to say. He’d always joke about his vote getting canceled because Mom was a Democrat.

Dad was a great story teller and I especially loved the ones about World War II. He had some amazing adventures and served under Patton with distinction. It wasn’t until years later that I connected the dots and realized he never talked about the bad one’s like the Normandy Invasion, Battle of the Bulge, and the liberation of the death camps.

Dad @ mid 60's...

He could get pretty upset about little things sometimes, yet when something big happened he took it all in stride. I remember when I was 15 and snuck the car out on a rainy Sunday morning to do my paper route. I got the right back wheel stuck in a ditch and had to walk a couple of miles home. I woke him up to tell him what happened knowing I was gonna die but he didn’t say a word until we were about half way there. Driving Mom’s car he kept looking straight ahead, nodded his head a few times and said in a quiet voice, “You know... You do some pretty dumb things sometimes.” That’s all he said, but the silence was deafening and my heart sank realizing I had disappointed him.

Dad started up his 52 Plymouth, rocked it back and forth a few times and got it out of the ditch. It didn’t dawn on me how we were going to get two cars back home. “You got it here, you’ll drive it back.” And away we went. Of course when we got home Mom wasn’t so quiet about the incident.

Now it's my turn already. I'm the oldest guy now. The kids are grown and I wonder about the childhood stories they share.

Happy Birthday Dad.

Thanks. I'm glad we got to talk.

We were bound to mete...

I’ve always had a passion for maps. It started back when I was a kid. We grew up in a small neighborhood on the west edge of Renton that was right out of the movie American Graffiti. We were a little isolated because Sunset Highway cut us off from the rest of Earlington Hill on the north and the railroad tracks were a border to the south.

The rules were quite simple for kids our age. We were free to roam just stay on our side of the highway. Across the street from our house was what we kids deemed, the "Little Woods" and to the west a couple of blocks and down to the end of the alley past Taylor’s pasture was the "Big Woods.”

Mom would yell out the front door for us in the little woods, but Dad always sent our cocker spaniel Daisy to fetch us when it was time to come home from the big woods. We spent many a Saturday playing cowboys, explorers, and Tarzan, but our favorite was playing Army. There were about a dozen of us guys that were close in age. We’d divide up into apposing platoons and head into the bush on patrol to find and hide from each other. We had tree houses and secret camps. We built rafts at the pond and swung on rope swings that were tied high up on large strategically located trees.

We communicated with mirrors flashing light signals, imitated bird calls, and left encrypted messages for our allies regarding our whereabouts. Heading out in different directions we’d synchronize our watches to meet up at the big willow, the cave, or the secret sticker bush camp for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Planning was important and we spent a lot of time drawing very elaborate maps for our missions.

Twenty five years later I’d find myself working at my first title company and one of the cool things about it were the maps. We had subdivisions, short plats, surveys, and county assessor’s maps, both hardcopy and microfiche. My favorite maps were the Kroll Maps. These huge atlases were leatherette bound lithographed maps by section township range on heavy paper. The cartography was done by hand and they were beautifully detailed and colored. We used them everyday all day long to look up properties. On a busy day your arms got tired from hoisting them on and off the customer service counter. A Kroll Map set upright on the floor would come up almost to my shoulders and they were about 3 feet wide, weighing anywhere from 10 to 30 pounds, depending on the volume.

An open atlas displays a section or one square mile. We got so good at it you could give us an address almost anywhere in the county and we would instantly call out the volume, page number, and quarter section. We took great pride in that and enjoyed the shock value it had with the customer.

One of the things I really liked about these maps was getting a good indication as to how the property you were looking at was created. In title we get asked that question a lot. "What was this property before?" And, "Out of what parcel did it originate?" A lot of things 'run with the land' and what you can ultimately do with your piece of the American Dream dirt is determined by agreements that were made in the past. By comparing the older Kroll Maps with the annually updated assessor’s maps, we knew where to look next.

The Kroll Maps were truly a work of art and many skilled and talented people put them together. They were not only beautiful, but were created in such a way that they lasted for years even with heavy daily use and abuse. In the 1980’s here in the Pacific Northwest, having a full set of Kroll Maps was a very important calling card for business.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my digital maps! But nothing replaces that wonderful tactile sensation of mulling over a well made hardcopy map with your hands and eyes.

We were bound to mete, and I'm glad we did.