The old racism! I grew up in Oregon and my neighbor was an old woman who had been born and raised there, grew up in a logging camp. How she hated Indians! She must've been one of the last ones with this particular form of racism. We kids didn't understand it. We didn't even know a single Indian. How could she hate them? I had chronic ear infections when I was little, so she told me about how she had an earache when she was little, and this Indian man held her down and blew some kind of smoke in her ear, and she never had an ear infection after that. She concluded her story with "He was just a dirty old Indian."
It’s so bizarre when you see someone who hates another group and they’re the only person who feels that way. No institution behind it or anything, just them keeping a light on for how everyone in that group is bad, hoping someone else hops onto their ship.
Hurrah for your talent at recounting these fantastic tales. I grew up in the olden days in Puyallup and Tacoma and most of my relatives sound a lot like your town folks. Like you, I escaped into books and as soon as I turned 18 I headed to California, which was a whole different country than it is today. So I escaped from there and now own a used bookshop in Oregon. I would love to read more from your world.
Dude, I grew up near Oly (Nisqually Valley, a place with its own dark PNW mojo) and Aberdeen/Hoquiam always freaked me out. I went there many times to watch high school sports (Black Hills League) or passing through on trips to Westport or Ocean Shores or the razor clam beaches, making Grays Harbor a usual meal stop. It was always rough, tense, and surreal, like entering the scene of horror movie before the blood flows. I have much more to say about this excellent essay but in the meantime it's great to discover more terrific writing from my old neck of the woods. This is one of the best pieces I've ever read about Western WA, and I'm keen to check out more.
It is nigh-impossible to find historical weather data. I remember wanting once to look up how hot it was on a particular day that held personal meaning, and was ultimately frustrated in my quest.
Why this should be so, in an era when supposedly everything is available online, I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
Is there some sort of paid service that has a monopoly on this information maybe? I can’t think of any other reason it wouldn’t just be freely searchable from the weather service. I was a bit surprised I couldn’t find it.
I don't know, but it's been this way for literally decades. I fell in love with a guy in the summer of 2002, and I wanted to see how hot it was on a particular night we had spent together, barely touching because of the heat, and even back then I couldn't find weather information from a few months previous. And I'm typically pretty good at finding things!
It’s because of how data is gathered and stored. This kind of data isn’t useful for enough people for someone to put it into a single database. It’s scattered and ephemeral by nature. The correct question is not why the data is unavailable but how it becomes available. But because weather is so location dependent, even if the data is somewhere, it’s a big project deal put it together so it’s searchable. IMO AI might do it but isn’t that good yet. Also AI too is only as good as the data it has available.
This is spectacular! Ah, the strange nostalgia for all the crazy! I remember playing on an all-star basketball team in high school with a white kid from a rez border town named Springdale—a very small Aberdeen-esque town that was home to three taverns at one point—one where only Indians drank, one that was mixed, and one where only white people drank. This kid wasn't a skilled player. He was just absolutely fearless and strong and single-minded. There was a play where he ran down the court and just leveled an opposing player. My teammate was immediately apologetic. The other kid wasn't hurt much. But my teammate got kicked out of the game and he just kept saying, "My legs didn't listen to my brain."
Even by my brothers year some of that crazy was leaving. I went to one of his junior high basketball matches once and the coach started to really get into it with a player, only for him to cry out “I’m just a little kid!”
Hey I'm from Aberdeen! About 12 years ahead of you in school it looks like? Weatherwax Class of 91. I love this essay and I believe every one of your stories.
I still go back about once a year to visit my mom and get to hear all her stories of the absolutely insane shit that goes down inside and outside of her senior low-income apartment building, which she thinks is just totally normal stuff. Did you know there's an entire subculture there of elderly meth addicts? The ones who started doing crank in the late 1980's (helped a lot with logging and working graveyard at the mills) and just never stopped or died or switched to something else, and are now in their 70's and 80's still buying yellowed powder nuggets from the now-elderly guy running the sketchy car dealership.
Whenever I visit I am struck by how many people don't have jobs because they're on disability benefits and they ride their bikes everywhere because they lost their drivers license. I think a lot about the people who never left that place, what their lives looked like. I think about my extended family - uncles aunts cousins, everyone still there except the ones who overdosed - and I wonder a lot about what my life would have been if I hadn't left the day after I graduated high school.
The story we told was that the Watchman did a bunch of acid in the 70's with a group of friends and he went on a bad trip so they dropped him off with a briefcase at the bus station downtown, told him they'd be back at a certain time. And his bad trip never ended.
I was the class of 2004! My stuff always sounds crazy to other people so I’m glad there’s so many people from Aberdeen, or who know about it, showing up.
My wife wanted to be close to family so we’re a bit further toward Olympia but just ugh. I try not to drive there because it can get so depressing. Walmart parking lot after welfare checks come out is like a whole other planet.
"If you have to ask yourself, “Who would live in a place where it rains that much? Who could stand to go that long without daylight?” then the happy answer is, “Not you.”
Indeed.
My take is that the gloom (as well as the tectonic activity) happily keeps away many of the people who would flock here.
Your stories are so well told. I've been through Aberdeen a few times, on the way to the coast. It's definitely different than Seattle and its suburbs. But so close to Washington's amazing, huge, often empty beaches.
Having grown up in Puget Sound area I’ve been in Aberdeen a few times. Never once without rain so I can vouch for your descriptions of the weather, big trees, etc. But the rest of your captivating tales I’ll just have to take at face value…with pleasure. Enjoyed every word.
Great essay... I'm from Snohomish County, there was a lot of weirdness and 'local color' up here too. My dad's family have been in WA for 5 generations, used to run a feed and farm supply business. Rural Washington has a unique character, a little different depending on which part, but all 'Old Northwest'. It's sad what's happening now, so much homelessness and gentrification (no one seems to realize how interrelated these problems are). anyway, great to hear a voice from the real Northwest. By the way, did you ever hear words from 'Chinook Jargon' growing up? I remember 'high muckymuck'...
I always heard mucketty muck but I might be misremembering. You know how it is with names you can’t pronounce unless you were born here. Most everyone who wasn’t white was Native or Hispanic. Lots of stories there I should write down as well.
Hey, you must be the one person in the world who knows what it was like where I come from—B.C. logging camp. With extra feudalism, because the foreman’s word was law. If he thought you were a trouble-maker, you were gone, since the company owned all the houses and his wife was the schoolteacher.
I’d love to hear a conversation between you and (other substackers) Rob Henderson, and Coleman. What grit, humor and great stories you have! I’ve never been to Aberdeen but count me among those who couldn’t take the gloom of the Pacific Northwest. I lasted there less than a year. Although there’s also something creepy about the constant sunshine of Southern California too.
I’m friendly with Coleman on Notes. If I ever actually do a podcast I could reach out to him. I’m pretty sure Rob Henderson is out of my league, though. (No offense to Coleman)
The old racism! I grew up in Oregon and my neighbor was an old woman who had been born and raised there, grew up in a logging camp. How she hated Indians! She must've been one of the last ones with this particular form of racism. We kids didn't understand it. We didn't even know a single Indian. How could she hate them? I had chronic ear infections when I was little, so she told me about how she had an earache when she was little, and this Indian man held her down and blew some kind of smoke in her ear, and she never had an ear infection after that. She concluded her story with "He was just a dirty old Indian."
It’s so bizarre when you see someone who hates another group and they’re the only person who feels that way. No institution behind it or anything, just them keeping a light on for how everyone in that group is bad, hoping someone else hops onto their ship.
Hurrah for your talent at recounting these fantastic tales. I grew up in the olden days in Puyallup and Tacoma and most of my relatives sound a lot like your town folks. Like you, I escaped into books and as soon as I turned 18 I headed to California, which was a whole different country than it is today. So I escaped from there and now own a used bookshop in Oregon. I would love to read more from your world.
Dude, I grew up near Oly (Nisqually Valley, a place with its own dark PNW mojo) and Aberdeen/Hoquiam always freaked me out. I went there many times to watch high school sports (Black Hills League) or passing through on trips to Westport or Ocean Shores or the razor clam beaches, making Grays Harbor a usual meal stop. It was always rough, tense, and surreal, like entering the scene of horror movie before the blood flows. I have much more to say about this excellent essay but in the meantime it's great to discover more terrific writing from my old neck of the woods. This is one of the best pieces I've ever read about Western WA, and I'm keen to check out more.
Catching up on this all I want to know if if you stopped at Breakwater, Billy’s, Bridges when it was open
As far as people being late to pick you up, my mom was epic in this regard. She usually came 1-2 hr late.
One time she said she was late because there was a cake in the oven. I said, "Wait! You were two hours late. How long does it take a bake a cake?"
She said she put it in after she should have left to pick me up.
It teaches self-reliance, for sure!
Funniest ever. I think parents teach parents teach patience and tolerance without even knowing they are doing that.
I don’t know if I was really grown up before I had my son.
It is nigh-impossible to find historical weather data. I remember wanting once to look up how hot it was on a particular day that held personal meaning, and was ultimately frustrated in my quest.
Why this should be so, in an era when supposedly everything is available online, I will leave as an exercise for the reader.
Is there some sort of paid service that has a monopoly on this information maybe? I can’t think of any other reason it wouldn’t just be freely searchable from the weather service. I was a bit surprised I couldn’t find it.
I don't know, but it's been this way for literally decades. I fell in love with a guy in the summer of 2002, and I wanted to see how hot it was on a particular night we had spent together, barely touching because of the heat, and even back then I couldn't find weather information from a few months previous. And I'm typically pretty good at finding things!
It’s because of how data is gathered and stored. This kind of data isn’t useful for enough people for someone to put it into a single database. It’s scattered and ephemeral by nature. The correct question is not why the data is unavailable but how it becomes available. But because weather is so location dependent, even if the data is somewhere, it’s a big project deal put it together so it’s searchable. IMO AI might do it but isn’t that good yet. Also AI too is only as good as the data it has available.
This is spectacular! Ah, the strange nostalgia for all the crazy! I remember playing on an all-star basketball team in high school with a white kid from a rez border town named Springdale—a very small Aberdeen-esque town that was home to three taverns at one point—one where only Indians drank, one that was mixed, and one where only white people drank. This kid wasn't a skilled player. He was just absolutely fearless and strong and single-minded. There was a play where he ran down the court and just leveled an opposing player. My teammate was immediately apologetic. The other kid wasn't hurt much. But my teammate got kicked out of the game and he just kept saying, "My legs didn't listen to my brain."
Lol! I love that line.
Even by my brothers year some of that crazy was leaving. I went to one of his junior high basketball matches once and the coach started to really get into it with a player, only for him to cry out “I’m just a little kid!”
I’ve never forgotten it.
Hey I'm from Aberdeen! About 12 years ahead of you in school it looks like? Weatherwax Class of 91. I love this essay and I believe every one of your stories.
I still go back about once a year to visit my mom and get to hear all her stories of the absolutely insane shit that goes down inside and outside of her senior low-income apartment building, which she thinks is just totally normal stuff. Did you know there's an entire subculture there of elderly meth addicts? The ones who started doing crank in the late 1980's (helped a lot with logging and working graveyard at the mills) and just never stopped or died or switched to something else, and are now in their 70's and 80's still buying yellowed powder nuggets from the now-elderly guy running the sketchy car dealership.
Whenever I visit I am struck by how many people don't have jobs because they're on disability benefits and they ride their bikes everywhere because they lost their drivers license. I think a lot about the people who never left that place, what their lives looked like. I think about my extended family - uncles aunts cousins, everyone still there except the ones who overdosed - and I wonder a lot about what my life would have been if I hadn't left the day after I graduated high school.
The story we told was that the Watchman did a bunch of acid in the 70's with a group of friends and he went on a bad trip so they dropped him off with a briefcase at the bus station downtown, told him they'd be back at a certain time. And his bad trip never ended.
I was the class of 2004! My stuff always sounds crazy to other people so I’m glad there’s so many people from Aberdeen, or who know about it, showing up.
My wife wanted to be close to family so we’re a bit further toward Olympia but just ugh. I try not to drive there because it can get so depressing. Walmart parking lot after welfare checks come out is like a whole other planet.
Strong coffee and flannel are survival implements not merely something from the grunge era.
My entire closet is basically just plaid of some kind.
"If you have to ask yourself, “Who would live in a place where it rains that much? Who could stand to go that long without daylight?” then the happy answer is, “Not you.”
Indeed.
My take is that the gloom (as well as the tectonic activity) happily keeps away many of the people who would flock here.
Keep Western Washington Weird!
Feels like a small town from Stephen King' book. Amazing that it also has seemingly disproportional amount of notable people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:People_from_Aberdeen,_Washington
It does feel like there’s some weird improbability vortex there
Your stories are so well told. I've been through Aberdeen a few times, on the way to the coast. It's definitely different than Seattle and its suburbs. But so close to Washington's amazing, huge, often empty beaches.
Having grown up in Puget Sound area I’ve been in Aberdeen a few times. Never once without rain so I can vouch for your descriptions of the weather, big trees, etc. But the rest of your captivating tales I’ll just have to take at face value…with pleasure. Enjoyed every word.
Wonderful story! Well written. Exuberant really. 😎
Great essay... I'm from Snohomish County, there was a lot of weirdness and 'local color' up here too. My dad's family have been in WA for 5 generations, used to run a feed and farm supply business. Rural Washington has a unique character, a little different depending on which part, but all 'Old Northwest'. It's sad what's happening now, so much homelessness and gentrification (no one seems to realize how interrelated these problems are). anyway, great to hear a voice from the real Northwest. By the way, did you ever hear words from 'Chinook Jargon' growing up? I remember 'high muckymuck'...
I always heard mucketty muck but I might be misremembering. You know how it is with names you can’t pronounce unless you were born here. Most everyone who wasn’t white was Native or Hispanic. Lots of stories there I should write down as well.
Hey, you must be the one person in the world who knows what it was like where I come from—B.C. logging camp. With extra feudalism, because the foreman’s word was law. If he thought you were a trouble-maker, you were gone, since the company owned all the houses and his wife was the schoolteacher.
Our town was all union so I can’t quite relate to that part but I bet the aesthetics felt about the same!
I’d love to hear a conversation between you and (other substackers) Rob Henderson, and Coleman. What grit, humor and great stories you have! I’ve never been to Aberdeen but count me among those who couldn’t take the gloom of the Pacific Northwest. I lasted there less than a year. Although there’s also something creepy about the constant sunshine of Southern California too.
I’m friendly with Coleman on Notes. If I ever actually do a podcast I could reach out to him. I’m pretty sure Rob Henderson is out of my league, though. (No offense to Coleman)