History: It’s all about connections

Anumber of years ago, I was sitting on the sofa in the late Mary Daheim’s living room. On the end table next to me was a book titled “A Hoghead’s Random Railroad Reminiscences.”

The author was George Leu, who had been a railroad engineer (hoghead) for the Great Northern Railway and its successor, the Burlington Northern.

History Files

BY TIM RAETZLOFF tim@abarim com

In the opening pages of the book Leu describes a visit to Alpine, Washington, in December 1940. There were buildings standing. Mary had always contended that Alpine was totally burnt in 1929.

I wasn’t above needling her about reading books that she had. “Who has the time?” was her response. I mentioned this story to co-Alpine researcher Teresa Anderson. She wanted to see the book, and searched high and low for it while helping with the estate sale at Mary’s Queen Anne home.

The book wasn’t there. Teresa found that the King County library system had the book at the Skykomish branch and would deliver it to the Issaquah branch near where Teresa lives. This gave me a chance to look at the book again.

In the same pages where George Leu describes his visit to Alpine, he mentions that the engine that day was Great Northern locomotive No. 1246. I had missed that the first time I read the book.

The Great Northern locomotive No.1246 may not be quickly recognized by everyone, but it was iconic for everyone who grew up in Seattle in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Locomotive No. 1246 was in the Woodland Park Zoo until 1980 when it was removed to “improve the zoo.”

Suddenly the book meant even more to me than it had before. Here was a connection between my childhood, and my adult interest in the ghost town of Alpine.

I love connections, and it is one of the things that I love about history. I don’t buy the old saw that “those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.”

I do buy that history is a connection to our parents and all the others who have gone before. I enjoyed reading my great-grandmother’s daily journal from 1890. It wasn’t fun. She lived a hard life. The connection that I can feel is the important thing to me.

On the way to a Sunday Mariners game, I showed my daughter, sonin-law, and grandkids the building where Wyatt Earp had his “sporting house” on Second Avenue in Seattle. A connection from old Seattle to new. A competitor of Earp’s was Friedrich Drumpf. I imagine most everyone knows the name of his grandson. Connections.

Two months ago we went to Port Orchard to pick up some Alpine photos and memorabilia from a descendent of an Alpine family. Among the wonderful (to us) items were several photos taken at the July 4, 1925 parade in Alpine.

The photos looked like ones we already had. Closer examination showed the photos were actually two sets taken at the same time and place by different photographers. Two people had thought the event significant enough to record it. Two families, one in Tonasket, and one in Port Orchard, had thought the photos important enough to keep. The families don’t know each other, although their forbearers did. Connections.

We found photos and a travel diary of a road trip taken on May 29, 1922. In Easton, Washington, the diary and photos led us to the location where a gas station once existed. When shown the photo, a man in Easton exclaimed, “That’s my grandpa’s gas station.” Connections. That led to us helping the nascent Easton Historical Society digitize photos.

The pleasant surprise in historic research is that I never know when the connection will appear. My role seems to be to bring others together, but occasionally the connection turns out to be personal. On a trip to visit a cemetery nearly 20 years ago I met a young woman who insisted I had to meet her parents.

Her dad turned out to be my second cousin.

The connections are, of course, closer for people who grew up together. Mukilteo natives have connections to other Mukilteo natives. Skykomish natives have connections to other Skykomish natives. Those of us from Rainier Valley in Seattle bump into others even though we have traveled different paths to reside in.

The connections of history run deep. That is what someone is missing by not taking an interest. Failing to learn from history is so much poppycock because we each interpret history differently.

The connections are real when they grab you by surprise.