An Island In Time II

If one is Jewish, coming of age happens for girls at age 12 and boys at age13.

W.H.O. (the World Health Organization) says, “Adolescence is the period of life between the ages of 10 and 20.”  I look at it as the doormat of adulthood, or when the endocrine glands send out hormones to run rampant in rapidly growing bodies and slower growing brains, between the end of grade school through junior and senior high school and into college. This is the time in life when one transitions or snaps out of childhood into a contributing and functioning (in most cases) member of society. Of course, there are some rites of passage along the way: Scouts, graduations, passing the driver’s test, jobs, dating, registering for the Draft as well as assuming other habits, responsibilities and/or fulfilling family expectations. Coming of age is the interesting and challenging time of life between puberty and adulthood. 

This period in my life occurred during the 1950s in Seattle and on Fox Island, located in Puget Sound, 50 miles south of Seattle. Though only 50 miles apart on Puget Sound, the only similarities in the two places were Coke machines and bikes!

The city of Seattle was where kids played football, hockey, basketball, kick the can, piggy wants a motion, keep-away, tag, and street baseball. We could roller skate and go trick-or-treating. There were fire trucks, milk trucks, police cars, ambulances, bakeries, markets, drug stores, soda fountains, door-to-door salesmen, restaurants, banks, libraries, taverns, burglars, robbers, and concrete streets with street lights.

 On Fox Island we went fishing, crabbing, clam digging, boating, BB gunning, camping, beachcombing and tree climbing. We used slingshots, hatchets, axes and saws; had picnics, rock fights, tug-of-wars and teased the neighbor’s bull. Mail-order catalogues, general stores and magazine advertisements provided merchandise. Our roads had no speed limits, and were mostly dirt, with about two miles in blacktop. Fires were sometimes successfully put out with garden hoses or wet burlap sacks. We could actually get lost in the woods. The County Bookmobile was our bi-weekly library. Landmarks were things like a big tree, the cemetery, the general stores, the church, the dump, the schoolhouse, the post office and places named by the Island’s early explorers and settlers like Towhead Island, Tanglewood Island, the Brickyard, the Sandspit and Smuggler’s Cove. Shoreline landmarks were the ferry landing, the concrete dock, Big Rock, and the Navy Barge.

When school was out for summer, I’d get my summer haircut and be ready to “be myself” for almost three months. I would immerse myself in another world and breathe the salt-scented air while engaging in activities suited to carefree country living.

I always was filled with excitement when we approached the ferry landing at Titlow Beach, a few hundred yards south of the newly reconstructed Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The ferry trip alone was worth the hour-long journey from the hustle-bustle of “civilization” because sometimes I would get to steer the vessel for a few minutes under the watchful eyes of Captain Hunt who would tell me which way to turn the ship’s wheel, and best of all, say, “Okay, pull the whistle chord!” This was a whistle that was so loud that it could be heard for miles around. I could sense that because of my age (11) the trip of 1950 would probably be the last time of whistle-tooting.

            Once upon the Island, the atmosphere was what I imagined it might be to visit a small foreign country. Most of the approximately 300 permanent residents dressed, lived and behaved a little differently than us summer folks.The majority of the narrow roads were dirt and traveled by foot, bike or in older vehicles. Gardens, orchards, vineyards, chicken coops, woodpiles and clotheslines abounded on the sparsely populated landscape. In the 1950s there was a trading post and gas station, a tiny post office, a dump, a two-room school, a cemetery, and a waterfront church.