COOPER SCHOOL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

EDITED DRAFT

Mary Alice Fort Willi

Audiotape

[This is an interview with Mary Alice Fort Willi on May 23, 2003.
The interviewer is Judy Lyn Sweetland. The transcriber is Jolene Bernhard.]

 

JS: This is an interview for the Oral History Project for Youngstown and Cooper schools. My
name is Judy Lyn Sweetland. I’m the interviewer. Today, this is May 23, 2003. And I’m
going to be talking with Mary Alice Willi.

[Mary Alice corrects pronunciation of last name from WY-lee to WILL-y]

J: And it’s spelled W-I-L-L-I-E?

MAW: "I."

J: W-I-L-L-I.
OK. What was your maiden name there?

MA: Fort. [Spells name]

J: You went to school when?

MA: Well, that’s what I’m trying to find out here from this old report card.
[Looking through mementos] This was in the third grade... from kindergarten!

J: You started kindergarten at Youngstown in 1922. And you went there in first grade and
second grade --

MA: Actually, through the eighth.

J: Third grade you went to Thorndyke in Tukwila to take care of your great-grandmother?

MA: Uh-huh.

J: And then you came back to Youngstown to finish to the eighth grade.

[Showing a photograph to Judy]

MA: That was our home. And I know the address: 4023 Twenty-fifth Southwest.

J: That was your home?

MA: That’s where we lived. Just a little bit south of Andover Street.

J: Forty what? Say that again.

MA: 4023 Twenty-fifth Avenue Southwest.

J: Well, maybe we can start out by talking about your neighborhood. What do you remember
about your neighborhood?

MA: It was before Delridge was put in as a street, it was called Twenty-fourth Avenue. My
grandmother lived on Twenty-third Avenue, which was east of our home. I can remember
running up to grandmother's house often. She took in boarders. Often the laborers worked down
on the shipyards and down on the waterfront -- Harbor Island. My dad worked for his uncle
who owned a coal company. He distributed coal and wood to people who had those kinds of
stoves at the time. Not much in electricity. That was on north Lake Union.

J: How did he get to work?

MA: We had a car. In fact, one morning he started to work -- I remember it was a red
Studebaker -- he started down Twenty-fifth toward Andover Street to get on the road to the
north end. And his car caught on fire! It was excitement for the community at the time. We had
the fire engines come. I didn’t see it -- I must have been up out of bed and knowing that it
happened. I think after it did, you know, it was just kind of exciting. The car wouldn’t go for
awhile but they got it fixed.

J: He wasn’t hurt?

MA: Oh, no. He wasn’t hurt. He wasn’t even off of our street -- he was down the street. He
was maybe a half a block down toward Andover Street, which is still there. And the steel mill...
My dad did not work at the steel mill; that was the community business. You know, everybody
worked at the steel mill. My mother didn’t work out. Mothers didn’t do that, they stayed home
and worked. My mother was a seamstress. She sewed for people and that was kind of neat.

J: Did she make all your clothes?

MA: I can remember one incident -- I don’t remember what grade it was -- they were having a
"posture contest" among the students. And my mother made me a dress with pinstripes going
up and down. She said, "That would be good because it would make you look straighter." And
it did look nice. [laughing] I didn’t win but at least it did made me look straighter. That had to be
before we went to Thorndyke out in south end.

J: So, the first or second grade you had a posture contest?

MA: We had a posture contest. Could have been in the fourth grade but I doubt it. I just don’t
remember the years.

J: That’s OK.

MA: I’m not organized here.

J: That’s alright.

MA: Like I did say, there was a Maypole Dance. I’ll still look for that thing [photograph]
because I have moved that all my life. And Gino, who was --

J: Tell me about the Maypole Dance.

MA: I’ll tell you about Gino, who was the king of it. And I was the queen. He lived just two
houses away from us; he and his family.

J: Do you remember his last name?

MA: Lucchesini. L-U-C-I-N-N-I [Lucchesini]. Something like that. I might come across it.

J: And his first name was...?

MA: Gino.

J: With a "G?"

MA: G-E-N-O.
They had other children in the family.

J: Were they Italian?

MA: Oh, yes! My mother always knew where to find me on Sunday afternoon. Mr.
Lucchesini would invite me for dinner because I liked spaghetti. My mother asked him to please
not do that because then I wouldn’t eat when I got home. Come Sunday, Mr. Lucchesini would
say, "Oh, come on and eat! I’ll fix it with your mother." That got me in more trouble than I
should have been in. We were a close neighborhood. I don’t know if, in your work for this
project . . .

J: Yes, you can tell me about your neighbors.

MA: One of my neighbors was Erma Schwartz. They lived across the street from us. She and
her dad and mother were very active in the community club; were instrumental in getting
Twenty-fourth Southwest renamed to Delridge Way. He was a president of the community club
there -- I don’t know what years. Erma was a spinster; she did not ever marry. She and my
brother were about the same age.
She was active in the West Seattle High School Historical Society. She was the keeper of
the books for a long time. Just passed away a year or two ago -- she was in her nineties.
Promised to live to 104. That was her goal but she didn’t make it. They haven’t settled her
estate yet, so, I don’t know...
She got a job after she went to West Seattle High School, excelled in stenography and that
sort of thing. Got a job at Frederick and Nelson’s as the secretary to Mr. Street, who was the
manager of the Frederick and Nelson store. Held that position for many, many years.
So, she was a very active person.

J: Did you play with her a lot as a child?

MA: She was eight years older than I. I was not quite eligible for that. But they were very kind
to us during the Depression years. Her dad worked at the steel mill. I used to go over and fix her
mother’s hair -- her mother had beautiful gray hair and it was good quality. She liked it in waves,
not curls like we wear these days. I think I must have been nine or ten when I did that. Don’t
remember these number.

J: That’s OK.

MA: She was a very nice looking lady and wanted to be nice looking when they went to the
meetings. I thought everybody knew Erma, she was very active in the West Seattle High School
Alumni Association. That’s why I ask you if you knew Betty Broughton, who is the secretary
of that group.
I have to lay this Chinook [West Seattle High School publication] on my stool there -- it
just came last month -- with some of the people. But Erma already being passed away, her name
was not included. She was historian for years. Very, very talkative. Everybody knew her
because she’d speak her piece and she didn’t always agree with anything that was going on.
[Emphasis on anything]

J: Well, let’s go back to Youngstown.

MA: She went to Youngstown, too. Oh, yes, she was a student there.

J: Did you walk to school?

MA: I walked to school, yes. It wasn’t far from Andover to Gen... I don’t know whether
that’s Genesee Street where Youngstown is located.

J: [Showing Mary Alice a photograph] Is this the way it looked? This supposedly was taken in
1917.

MA: Yes. That’s a winter picture, that’s snow on there.

J: So, that’s the way it looked?

MA: And it wasn’t Cooper at that time.

J: No. No.

MA: Our Maypole Dance was done in the park across the street, which is still there but it’s
huge now. They even had a pool for the kids to wade in after we did our little dance.

J: The wading pool was there at that time?

MA: No, they built it --

J: Afterwards.

MA: Yeah. It wasn’t there when we did our dance. That’s where we did our dance, on the
other side of the street.

J: Oh, on that spot!

MA: We’d cross the street to the playfield. Now is this --

J: I don’t know when that was taken. That’s the north play field.

MA: The play field, yeah. The north play field.

J: That’s a more recent picture.

MA: Oh. It probably was just green grass when we were there. And maybe some swings.

J: What did you have in your play field when you were there?

MA: Well, we had swings.

J: Swings?

MA: Yes.

J: Anything else?

MA: Not that I remember. Probably. The boys played soccer. Soccer was the thing, football
wasn’t popular. They may not have invented it yet. They did somewhere.

J: Did they separate where the girls played and the boys played?

MA: It depended on what they were playing. Girls, when they got to the sixth or seventh
grade, took a half a semester of cooking or sewing. And the boys did manual training and
masculine things. You know. The soccer seemed to be played most and softball. Not the
baseball they play these days. The girls had a gym class.

J: You had a gym class when you were there?

MA: We had a gym class.

J: What did you do in gym class?

MA: Oh, probably jumped up and down and slapped our hands above our head just to make us
stronger and straighter and healthier. We did have a lunch room. We had an orchestra that
anybody could join if they could play. In fact, I did play the violin in school orchestra. Not well
but my aunt was a music teacher. She insisted that I play the way it was written; that isn’t how
I liked to play it. And I didn’t practice. I got my hand slapped quite often from Aunt Alice.
She would give lessons at our home on Saturday. She lived on Beacon Hill and she would
come over Saturday for pupils from our neighborhood. I was always the last one on Saturday.
She was tired and angry by that time because I didn’t practice enough to please her.
But we had a good time -- I mean, we weren’t enemies. But I disappointed her. I didn’t play the
piano in the orchestra. It was the violin.
I do have a violin downstairs. It was my dad’s. I think that was one of the things I used
when I was in the orchestra. It’s pretty sad-looking now.

J: So, you had a lunch room.

MA: We had a lunch room.

J: Did they cook the meals?

MA: Yes. I can remember that’s the first time I turned my nose up at oyster soup because it
had green stuff floating on it. I couldn’t stand to look at it, let alone eat it. But I was close to
home. I sometimes would walk home and eat. The older I got, the more I had to move on my
own. I wasn’t supervised. And we worked. We went to school half a day -- not a whole day --
when we were in the lower grades, as I remember. Especially kindergarten was just a half a day, a
few hours.

J: Do you remember your first day of school?

MA: I just remember how important it was. Mom had made me a special dress. I walked to
school, probably with Gino -- I don’t know that -- but because he was a neighbor boy...
He’s not in this picture either. They must have taken him out of this school and put him in
another one. They may have gone to a Catholic school or something.

J: How did your family come to this area of West Seattle?

MA: Because Grandmother had her home there and she had fixed it so that she could take in
boarders from the local businesses down on Harbor Island. She was a widow. Had raised the
two girls by herself. She and her husband, my grandfather --

J: It was your mother’s mother?

MA: It was my mother’s mother, yes. She was a very dear person. She had enough property
there that she had a big field of raspberries. And she would pick the raspberries and take them
down to the local grocery store, which was at that time facing the bend in the road of Delridge
that had a butcher shop and a grocery store and a vegetable stand. They would allow her so
much money for her berries toward her food. That was her way of making a living. ‘Course in
those days it didn’t cost like it does now. You could get by better. Fifty cents was a lot of
money. She used to give me fifty cents when I went to high school to buy tokens on the bus.
But I walked the biggest part of the time.

J: What do you remember about the changing of names of the school? Did it change while you
were going?

MA: No. It happened afterwards. When I thought about it, I was pretty upset because I
thought they should have sent notices out to the people that had been there before. But I know
that was ridiculous for me to even think about that. I didn’t realize they were going to change the
name of the school. I didn’t know who D.B. Cooper was, quite frankly [Frank B. Cooper]. I
might have been in high school, I don’t know. It seemed to me it had changed afterwards. I was
kind of upset when they closed the school because they thought it was going to fall down in any
earthquake. The darn school is stronger than... the bridge! [laughing]

J: I’ve heard that by other people.

MA: It’s still there! They were just wanting a new school, that’s where our money went.
The neighborhoods... The high hill on the east of Delridge was called Pigeon Hill. Delridge, of
course, before it was Delridge was Twenty-fourth Southwest. And Youngstown, we were also
known as Poverty Gulch. That was because the workers -- they were down on the docks and at
the steel mill -- were not the people that lived on the west side of Poverty Gulch. That was
when you changed your neighborhood to West Seattle.
It was everybody’s dream, I think, to eventually get to West Seattle. And now, when
you see West Seattle in the newspapers, you don’t know what part of West Seattle they’re
talking about. You’re talking about White Center or you’re talking about Pigeon Hill. It’s kind of
weird, they’ve included a lot in the name of West Seattle that wasn’t included at one time. They
were more exclusive then.

J: Did you feel that growing up?

MA: Oh, we thought that was funny. Sure. And we were lower class citizens.

J: How did you experience that? How did you know as a child?

MA: By hearsay. Our older brothers and sisters probably told us. My brother was six years
older than I and he went to West Seattle High School, too. As soon as he got through school, he
got a job -- I forgot whether he went to Boeing first or not. I think probably he did. The old
plant.
Anyway, it was just like you would say Greenwood is a neighborhood but it probably
has a different name now. They modernized it. West Seattle wanted to spread. If they needed us
for votes, they’d include us!
As I remember. I don’t really know, I just remember that we were Youngstown. That
was kind of beneath anybody that came from West Seattle designation. I don’t know how many
schools were in West Seattle. Jefferson. And that was when they knocked that old Jefferson
School down. I understand the guy that brought his wrecking equipment to knock it down --
because it was going to fall down anyway with the next earthquake, it was kind of in the class of
Youngstown -- he lost money on it because you couldn’t get it down in the time slot he had
anticipated. It went well over the time, just getting rid of the old school. And then the one up on
California Avenue is still there but it’s been re-done.
These are things that are just vague in my brain. I’m eighty-seven. Or will be this year!

J: You have a wonderful mind. You do very well.

MA: Not really, I’m foggy. But I’m like everybody else, I wanted to get to West Seattle. My
husband and I -- he was in the seventh grade when he came up from Gray’s Harbor area. His
mother had passed away. We knew each other at that time and he was a half-grade ahead of me.
So, we went to high school and got active in sports and things like that. We didn’t go together all
the time. We knew each other because he was in the area. He lived down by the old fire station
that was near Spokane Street. I don’t know if it’s still there or not.

J: There is, right on the end of Delridge.

MA: And Twenty-third comes in there. My grandmother lived on Twenty-third, off Andover
Street. Just a half a block from my house. That building on the corner was a church,
Congregational Church. And the older boys were active in sports.

J: Which boys?

MA: Some of the eighth graders, my husband among them. They played other church basketball
teams.

J: Oh, the church had a basketball team?

MA: Yes, the church had a basketball team. That brought in some of the youth, even at that
time. They played up in West Seattle High School gym. Some of the boys didn’t come to
church, I don’t think. They were in the neighborhood, so, they didn’t have to be church
members. They had to learn to play basketball -- that’s why they were there. And we would
prefer them if they were tall! We did have a good team. So, that’s one of the things.

J: That’s another neighborhood piece.

MA: And I can’t remember whether that church had a different name than just Congregational
Church.

J: That’s the way I saw it listed.

MA: Twenty-third and Andover Street. That was across the street from where my
grandmother lived. Grandma lived a couple houses down off of Andover. And I’d sneak up
there when I went to see Grandma, which was often. I’d run up the street, down to Andover, up
to Twenty-fourth and cross the street.
There was a little Mom and Pop store on the corner. And there was a path, I would go
up the path to Grandmother’s house. The owner of that little store had a dog that scared the
heck out of me because he barked and he nipped me a couple of times. I have a vague memory
that it was a little Airedale but I may be wrong there. But I know I was scared of that dog.
I would run, maybe a couple or three times a day, up to Grandma’s for something.
Maybe just a piece of bread. She was baking or making cookies or something, getting ready for
the men to come home from work. Because she did board them -- board and room was what she
made. And she had three or four rooms down in the lower level of her house that were
individually kept up so that they could have privacy.
I remember the time that one of the boarders wanted horseradish. He would grind the
horseradish and the tears would stream down his cheeks because, you know, that stuff smells like
onions.

J: So, her house --

MA: Is still there. And you can see it from the road to Spokane Street.

J: It’s the second house from the corner?

MA: I think it’s the second house. Or maybe the third. It’s the third. The part you’re looking
at [in the photograph] from that street down below is windows. I would have to go up and see.
But I know it’s still there because I look at it every time I go down that street.

J: Which side of the street?

MA: She was on the west side of Twenty-third.

J: On the west side of Twenty-third.

MA: Mmm-hmm. I think that’s the 3800 block. I don’t remember the other two numbers on
her house. I have an album. I could probably find it. Or I could go drive by and find it!
There was a rooming house that’s still there, too.

J: Was it a two-story?

MA: Grandmother’s house? Yes, it was. You’d come in on the main floor but the boarders’
rooms were on the lower floor. They were in a row. And there was stairs, people could come in
on that floor and walk up the stairs to the upper level.
And she picked those berries and took them down to the vegetable man, whose name was
Tony Piccardo. They lived on Beacon Hill. He had twin boys. The first money I ever made as a
growing child was taking care of the children. He would come and get me and take me up to his
home on Beacon Hill and leave me on a Saturday so I could help his wife -- so she would have
time to do some things she wanted.
They had a girl, a little older girl. These twins were mischievous and pains in the neck.
The little girl wasn’t much better. They were kind of spoiled. But it was a good job for me.

J: How old were you when you did that?

MA: Oh, golly. I was old enough to be a babysitter. I was probably twelve or maybe more. I
might have been in high school at that time. I can remember one time when we were going
downtown, Mrs. Piccardo would have taken the children. I had a hold of the little girl’s hand --
she was a year or so older than the boys -- we were going up Second Avenue toward J.C.
Penney. MacDougal’s was on one side of the street and J.C. Penney’s on the other at Pike
Street.
She was ornery and she sat down on the sidewalk. I said, "Come on, let’s go. They’re getting
ahead of us." She wouldn’t get up. So, I said, "Then you have to stay here. I’ll catch up with
them." And I walked about three steps or four, and that little girl was on her feet right then.
Grabbed my hand.

J: She didn’t want to be left!

MA: She didn’t want to be left. And she didn’t want her mother to know either that she had
been naughty.

J: Let me ask you something else about the school. Who was your favorite teacher? Do you
remember a favorite teacher?

MA: Can I start with my kindergarten teacher?

J: Sure!

MA: She was my favorite until she put me behind the piano. And she did that because of one
of the girls in this picture, whose name was Creta Olmstead. She was a pretty girl and she had
long hair with curls down the back.

J: Tell me her name again.

MA: Creta Olmsted [Enunciating] Cre-TAH.

J: C-R-E-T-A.

MA: [Thinking] It’s in here. Wait a minute as I find it. [No luck finding her name] Anyway,
her dress had come undone at the top. It was a little button-up. I reached up -- we were
marching around in a circle to some music -- I was behind Creta. She lived down on Riverside,
which was another neighborhood down by the river. I reached up to button her little button at
the top. And Miss [Lois] Waterhouse thought I was pulling her curls, which were done
beautifully. I wasn’t touching her curls! But she snatched me out of the marching line and put
me behind the piano. Broke my heart. She didn’t ask what I was doing or anything. She just
saw me reaching up and thought I was pulling... I wouldn’t pull Creta’s hair for anything! We
were good friends.

J: That was your punishment? Sitting behind the piano?

MA: Umm-hmm. Getting behind the piano. And being snatched out of the circle that we were
making. That hurt my feelings.
One of my favorite teachers was a Miss Jessie Williams -- I think it was Miss [correct].
Maybe it was Mrs. There weren’t too many Mrs. teachers. She was third grade teacher and
everybody didn’t like her. I heard rumors that people didn’t like her because she was mean to
you. You had to learn your lessons. Well, that’s why we went to school, so, that didn’t bother
me. I often wondered why they picked on her or told those kinds of stories because she was one
of my favorite people. She taught us something; we learned something and it was great!
But she was third grade. See, that’s when I went to Tukwila and came back. When I
went to Tukwila they put me back a half a grade, and that was because the country schools were
smarter than the city schools. Then when I came back to Seattle, they put me back up a half a
grade. I caught up with my people that I had been with earlier on. That’s why I was thumbing
through these report cards -- to see if I had them in some order. I did at one time.
Miss Edna Hackett was our eighth grade teacher. She had a cute habit. She would sit up
in front of us on a chair; we were maybe reading. She would read a good book to us, you know,
for our lessons. She had a habit of putting her hand behind her hair and going up the back of her
head. [chuckling] Her hair would kind of stick up. We’d all just sit there fascinated at watching
her hair move.

J: Did you laugh?

MA: Well, we’d kind of giggle or smile or something. It was funny. We talked about it
afterwards. We wouldn’t hurt her feelings for anything, she was a great teacher. Miss Florine
Bassett was a great teacher. She was our seventh grade teacher as I remember. I’d have to go
through there and see if I’m telling you the truth! I can’t remember some of my lower grade
teachers at Youngstown because we did sort of move around.

J: Did you have a school nurse?

MA: Seems to me that we did but she came maybe once or twice a week. She wasn’t there all
the time.

J: What happened if somebody got hurt on the playground?

MA: Probably yell for a doctor or something. I don’t know what would happen. I didn’t
happen to have any emergencies at that time of my life.

J: Do you remember any classmates getting sick? Did they have to go home?

MA: No, no. I don’t remember anything like that. We were hearty, we weren’t babied. We
walked to school; we didn’t get buses and get fumes. We did have a lunch room [for] those that
didn’t bring their lunch, which a lot of the kids did. They broke the school up some way so that
some classes went at a certain time and then some of us a little bit later. I don’t remember how
that was worked but I can remember going through the line when I didn’t have my lunch.

J: Was there a library?

MA: Yes, we had a library. I can’t remember who was in charge of that either, quite frankly.

J: Do you remember one room in particular that was a favorite room of yours in the school?

MA: No, I really don’t. I loved school -- I was just lucky to be moved ahead to the next grade!
I didn’t miss much school, I was healthy.

J: I have some pictures that have been taken recently, inside.

MA: Oh, I haven’t been in that building --

J: I’m just going to show you. See if it looks familiar at all.
[Reading caption from first photo] It says this is the main office, as seen from the hallway.

MA: I was in that office if it was the principal’s office.

J: What did you go to the office for?

MA: I don’t have any idea.

J: You don’t remember what you went to the office for?

MA: No, no. I don’t remember. I don’t think I was bad but I could have been.

J: Did any of the students work in the office at all?

MA: I’m sure they did. They probably took from some of the older classes -- the eighth
graders -- to assist the principal in answering the phone or something of that nature.

J: [Showing Mary Alice a different picture] There’s the library the way it looks now.

MA: I really would have to go and look at it in person. I haven’t been in that school since it
was not Cooper.

J: This is a classroom on the first floor.

MA: Doesn’t look like when I was there.

J: Can you remember what it looked like? Any memories at all?

MA: Uh-uh. [Reading caption] Northeast classroom. Northeast classroom.
[Trying to visualize] I can’t even remember whether we had desks or tables. You see, there’s
nothing there to make it look like a classroom to me.

J: This is probably going to be very confusing. It says, "The play shed on the north side."

MA: The play shed on the north side?

J: Did you have a covered area to play in when it rained?

MA: They must have. I don’t remember that. Play shed, north side. This would probably be
on the back, away from Twenty-fourth. Because the entrance [to the school] was on Twenty-
fourth. On the north side. The picture’s on the north side of the building.

[Looking at a different picture]

J: That would be on Twenty-fourth.

MA: This is on Twenty-fourth, yes. That would be on Twenty-fourth.

J: [Next picture] These are a couple of the bathrooms.

MA: I don’t even remember them. [Pointing to the boys’ bathroom] Of course, I don’t
remember that one at all!

J: [laughing] Right!

MA: I don’t remember this but I should probably.

J: Well, it may have changed.

MA: Looks like the door is off of that first one. And it was a bigger one than the other...

J: This was the second floor hallway and they’ve got lockers in that hall. Did you have lockers
to put your coat in?

MA: I don’t remember lockers.

J: That was probably later.

MA: We put our coats probably in our home room. We didn’t move around either -- we were
in a room and pretty much stayed there.

J: All through up to the eighth grade?

MA: Well, we might have had to move when we got into the clothing and the cooking classes.
And when the boys had manual training. A locker wasn’t one of the things that people needed at
that time of their life. They might have had a place for bicycles. I don’t remember.
Going to the building and looking at it might be helpful to make me recall some of the
things. That’s why I’m so sorry Erma’s gone -- she’s only been gone a couple of years. Man,
she had a memory. She could have been so much help to you!

J: Were all the students Caucasian when you went there?

MA: Yes, pretty much. We had an Italian element, many of their people. And we had a lot of
people from down in Riverside who were fisherman. They were -- what nationality were they?
Gosh, I can’t remember. They were white. They weren’t Orientals. They were... Austrians.
From that part of Europe.

J: Did you ever go down on Riverside? Did you have some friends that lived down there?

MA: Creta Olmstead’s dad owned the hotel down there!

J: Had a hotel on Riverside?

MA: Yeah. First time I ever learned to swim, we used to go down there. They had pilings near
the edge of the river.
J: You were talking about swimming in the river.

MA: We’d go down there, and Creta’s dad’s hotel was across the street. They went swimming
down there a lot; they were good swimmers. I was just a beginner. I can remember climbing up
on one of the pilings -- the first time I jumped in the river, it was so cold it took my breath away!
I thought I was going to drown and die right there. That wasn’t one of my favorite places to go
in the water.

J: The tides would come in there, wouldn’t they?

MA: Oh, sure.

J: So, sometimes it would be very deep there.

MA: It was deep. The fishing boats would come up. Yugoslavia. There was an element that
were fishermen. And they still are fishermen. I check the obituaries a lot and sometimes I see a
name that clicks in my brain as a family name. I don’t think it’s somebody I might know but it’s
a name that sticks in my brain because I knew somebody living down there by the river

MA: I’m sure there are families of them still around. And everybody wanted to get to West
Seattle, so, they’re probably be in West Seattle! This Luchessini boy -- Gino -- had a tavern
right down on Delridge. I’m not sure what the name of it was but it was there for years. I could
take you there and point it out but I can’t tell you what the address was.

J: It’s on the end --

MA: It’s on the far end. It’s on the west side of the street. And there was a hardware store in
there, I think their name was (?) Byers. That was quite a name!
The butcher’s name -- what was his name? He was...

J: It’s a different time, isn’t it? We don’t know owners’ names much anymore.

MA: I can remember when the steel mill bought a lot of that property. They didn’t say the
steel mill was going to buy the property. Somebody was going to buy the property.
My folks; my mom and dad had a lot where the house was. There was a vacant lot right
next to it that had been a barnyard. When we moved there, there was an older couple that were
our neighbors. But their house was on Twenty-sixth -- we were on Twenty-fifth.
They were an elderly couple and they had a cow. Their name was Taif, I called him
Grandpa Taif. He would milk the cow daily. Every once in awhile he would let me come in the
barn and watch him milk the cow. He’d plant me there and tell me to open my mouth. And he’d
squirt the milk right in my mouth.
He was really clever. I don’t remember when they had to move or what preceded that,
whether it’s just that they got old. They were old then, but they got older. That chair was their
property. (indicating a chair in her home) My mother bought it from them for $5.

[Discussion of chair and its condition]

J: Did a lot of people farm around you?

MA: No. But everybody probably had their little garden. My mother had a garden -- she had
flowers. She had Dahlias. I just hate Dahlias because the earwigs would get in the flowers.
That’s why I don’t have them around my house. When you cut them, you have to shake them
real hard and the earwigs would fall out. I’m not much for bugs.
Grandma had the raspberries. She also had the horseradish. We had garden vegetables.
My folks bought that empty lot next to the house, from the people that were there that had the
cow. So, they had where their house was and the next door property was just a big, empty lot
for a garden. Used to raise veggies, stuff like that.

J: Well, you’ve given us a lot of really wonderful information about your time in school and the
neighborhood. Thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW OF MARY ALICE FORT WILLI ON MAY 23, 2003