At age 87 years, my memory of childhood is far from perfect, but some things stand out. I was reflecting on how blessed our family was for living along the shoreline of Guemes Channel and a  childhood before summers were totally occupied by children’s commitments of their summer vacation time. These are a few memories I was reflecting upon that I’ll share. There is nothing profound here. Just pleasant thoughts that were significant to me.

Anacortes Fish Canneries

I was brought up in the town of Anacortes, Washington. When I was a youngster it was a small town and people generally knew each other. My parents owned a neighborhood grocery store on Commercial Avenue, the main street, and 7th street. Our home was at the end of Ninth Street above the Guemes Channel and  over looking the water. The Sebastian Stuart fish cannery, painted a fading  red color, was below our house. In the summer time the cannery operated around the clock while commercial salmon fishing boats were catching fish. The salmon they caught were brought to the cannery as well as all the other salmon fishing canneries along the shoreline. The canneries extended from shore out over the water on wood piling supports over the water. The canneries operated around the clock, canning the salmon, while the catch was going on. The canneries included Sebastian Stuart, Carroll’s Cannery, Fisherman’s Pack and  Farwest Fisheries  among others. They were a major source of employment during the summer as were the dozens of purse seine boats with crews of up to seven men. We didn’t have many  child labor laws when I was growing up.  There was employment picking strawberries along with the canneries and a number of summer jobs for children for all ages.

The canneries had been around a long time. The first cannery in Anacortes was opened in 1893, and by 1915 eleven canneries were built along the Guemes Channel on the north shore of Fidalgo Island, By mid-century, Anacortes held claim to the title of “Salmon Canning Capital of the World,” according to Bret Lunsford’s book, “Croatian Fishing Families of Anacortes.” Over time, regulations and consumer preferences changed. The last salmon cannery closed in 1998, but seafood processing is still an integral part of the city’s character and economy.

The Cannery below our house, like all the other canneries, had a large scow tied to the dock alongside the cannery. A conveyor ran from inside the cannery to the tied up scow. It transferred the parts of the salmon that were not used in the canning process. When full, the scows were towed to Ship’s Harbor, a  location down the shore some distance from our house. There the Robinson Fertilizer Plant processed the fish parts that had been collected from the canneries  and converted it into fertilizer. The location of this plant was easy to find because of the pungent smell that the fertilizing process caused.

My uncle, Ernest Babarovich, mother’s brother,  would go to a cannery during the salmon fishing season where he would sit by the conveyor with the fish parts going into the scow. He would collect fish heads which were not used in canning and cut out the cheeks as well as the neck area below the head. The canneries used mechanical devices for cutting the heads and tails from the salmon and the machine made a straight cut  across the fish to do it.  Because of the curve of salmon head, there was left a portion of salmon meat below the head. The checks were a circular area on each side of the head with meat. These two fish parts of the salmon were  considered a delicacy, at least by Croatians. They would eat some of this collected salmon and can the rest.

The beach below the canneries provided a place for a young boy to explore and play when the tide was out. The railroad tracks ran all the way from down town  along the shoreline all the way to Ships Harbor and the Robinson fertilizer plant. This was a wonderful “sidewalk” to get to all of the canneries. The canneries were built on pilling driven into the beach with the cannery above and extending out into the water. On low tide you could walk on the beach under the cannery above and among the pilling supports. There were “sea creatures” that lived on the sand and also on pilling below the cannery. For a young boy it was like a secret cave to explore. The sandy beach was also suitable for wading and if really brave even swimming. Best of all, you couldn’t be seen very easily so it was a “secret place” when the tide was out.

Past the Robinson plant the tracks extended to an area where the Washington Ferry Terminal is now located, then called “the lower canneries.” Once these canneries processed fish too. Years back they were mainly staffed by Chinese immigrants. There were a number of cannery buildings at Ship Harbor that are all gone now except for some pilings. A few of the buildings stood there, abandoned, until the 1980’s, when they were finally torn down. At one time, the cannery community at Ship Harbor included, in addition to the main cannery buildings and warehouses, bunkhouses and mess halls for workers, an office building, a general store, a blacksmith shop, a carpentry and paint shop, houses, sheds, pig pens, chicken coops, net houses and net racks.Some buildings remained when I was a child. There was a large three story house that had been an enormous mansion for the superintendent I think. But, when I was a child it had long been abandoned. The front door was missing and windows broken out. The inside was available to explore and play inside. A long walk down the railroad tracks to a place of great adventure.

The Carnival

Every summer, when was a child in Anacortes, a traveling carnival would come to town. There was a circus too, that came to town as well. They would set up in the open field on the water side of commercial Avenue because there was nothing there but a field. In fact, years before, that was where the Anacortes football team played games. It was the location for both the circus and the Carnival. The carnival would arrive in a caravan of trucks, unload and set up there, erecting the various rides, tents and equipment. There would be the usual sideshows, games of chance and opportunities to spend money. The traditional games, including throwing a ball at the stacked bottles to knock them all over and win a prize, to riding on devices meant to scare you to death and a mild merry go round. There was the hammer, a base and a tall column with a bell at the top. The challenge was to hit the base and drive a device up the tower to ring the bell & win a prize. There was a man who guessed your weight and if wrong you got a prize.  One of the sideshows featured unique people with physical disabilities. Another favorite of mine, was a long box with a target inside at the end. The challenge was use the provided rifle and in three shots shoot out a solid colored circle area on the target. The prize was a new 22 rifle. I suspect the target circle was made just large enough it was impossible because no one ever won the prize. There was also a tent you where you paid to watch a boxing match. A boxer in shorts with boxing gloves from the Carnival would challenge anyone in the audience to fight him and the winner would get a money prize. This older man had cauliflower ears, tattoos and sagging muscles. Each night there was an immediate acceptance from someone in the audience who would change, put on gloves and get into the ring,. They would put on a show and as I remember, the audience would vote on who won. The setup was suspicious because the same audience member volunteered each time and he obviously was with the carnival. One year, however, some Anacortes high school seniors decided to have one of their members on the boxing team jump first and volunteer. The high school student won the match. The unhappy carnival people, insisted they couldn’t pay the prize money until the carnival shut down late at night and otherwise stalled payment of  less than what he was entitled to. I recall that later there was a controversy about the high school  student who won the fight being  ineligible for high school sports because of the collection of money at the Carnival. Somehow it was resolved in the student’s favor.

Fireworks

The 4th of July, Independence Day, was always a big day of celebration in Anacortes and most small towns surrounding us. There would be events, parades and speeches. Flags would be displayed. But, for me, the importance was the arrival of fireworks stands for purchase.  The biggest and best fireworks stand was located on the outskirts of town, along the road to and from Anacortes. There was a flat area along the road just out of town where the stand would set up,  There an enormous fireworks stand would offer a great variety firework devices, many of which would be very likely illegal to sell as being dangerous. This was not a time of “safe and sane” fireworks. The inventory included Rockets, giant firecrackers and explosive devices of all kinds. I remember the thrill of the sky rockets and explosive devices that made bomb loud noise on firing.  My memory is that I would ride my bike from our house at the end of ninth through town and to the fireworks stand outside of town, but that is a long distance and I may be wrong. Somehow, I got to this stand every year. I would buy as much as I had money for in a variety of fireworks. Rockets that shot into the air exploded, devices that had the force of a small bomb, firecrackers small and very large. I would set them off in the field next door to our house and shoot rockets out over the bank towards the water. I would find inventive ways to use the firecrackers including exploding them inside of tin cans, blasting them into the air. In short, I’m lucky I didn’t lose a finger or hand.

The Anacortes of the 1940s was quite different in many ways than the Anacortes today. It was a wonderful place to grow up with variety of activities along the water and in town as well I was fortunate grow up there. I