Behind, so Behind…

Wait, it hasn’t really been almost two months without a post has it? Oh yes it has. Summer presents new struggles as we now have to balance full-time children and family vacations with our book project. To put it simply time is flying! It is flying so fast that we are both trying desperately to not hit Panic Mode as book deadlines quickly approach.

One thing that kept us busy was going through even MORE negatives! There were three batches when all was said and done and each box got bigger and bigger. We would love to know how many negatives we looked through in all (Jessica is estimating around ten thousand!). We neatly arranged everything back into new boxes and returned several more boxes than what had been lent. The final batch of negatives is hopefully being processed at Arcadia as I type.

There was some good news too! The best news might be that someone is actually reading our blog! Turns out it was our good friend Joan (pronounced Jo-Ann) and she identified the girls in the roller rink photo we posted. Unfortunately for us, the rink, called the “Roller Frolic” was in Burlington, not Mount Vernon. The girls are Donnajean, Marilyn and Kathleen Eddie. Their parents, Bill and Burl, were the owners of the rink. Our greatest apologies if we spelled any of the names incorrectly. So there you go future Burlington historians, valuable information.

And while we’re on a roll, let’s try it again. Does anyone recognize either of these two people?

The envelope might say “Warren”, but it is very difficult to make out. Based on the number code we can place the time frame around 1950. Don’t know why, but these portraits caught our eye, especially the prim and proper disposition, as well as the hat, of that lovely lady. And is that a crop duster behind her? Just seems like there is a story here…

Batch Number Two!

Recently we received some negatives back from Arcadia that had been sent in for scanning. Unfortunately the disc of scanned images hadn’t made it into the envelope. We were kind of bummed because we had been anxiously awaiting the disc to see what kind of images we had discovered. Well, today the disc arrived and we are so excited! We have looked though so many negatives that we forgot what we had sent for scanning. Turns out we have some real gems! Of course we need to share a couple.

Check out this farmer in his field!


And logging on the Skagit!


This picture is another mystery.

Can anyone help us? Was there a roller rink in Mount Vernon, or was this from another town? We’ve been looking, but haven’t unearthed an answer yet…

Alright, we have to stop. We can’t share all our secrets. But we can't wait to see many more of these printed in the book!

Why Can’t They All be Like That?

A couple weeks ago we were tooling around town, trying to dig up some more history and photos. We decided to pop into the old Baptist Church and see what they might have. We ended up talking to the pastor who was amazingly kind and welcoming! We followed him down a dark hallway and made a right turn as he said, “How about you start here, in our history room.” WHAT? History ROOM?!? Yes folks, it is a shine to their over one hundred year history!

We were amazed and thrilled. Talk about hitting the jackpot!

We returned the next week with computer and scanner to scan a few images. While there we learned that the first Boy Scout troop in all of Washington state had been formed at that church back in 1913. They are troop number one.

Seriously, could this get any cooler?

Of course it can! The Reverend Davis, who formed the church back in the late 1800s (incidentally the first church in the town) also happens to be the first person to bring Holstein cattle to the region. We love how history all comes together.

Please Admire from Afar

Well that sure was fast! We dropped possible cover photos to our publisher last Friday. We then sent in our back cover text on Wednesday. This morning we were shocked to see this in our inbox:

WOO HOO!!! Who loves it? We love it! Don’t look too closely though, we already see some editing we need to do on the text. Think of this as a first draft. But seriously, how PERFECT is that photo? Talk about meant to be.

We are so thrilled that this is something we will accomplish ahead of schedule! And seeing things take shape sure adds some motivation. Now we have to do that whole “book thing” and make the interior worthy of this amazing cover.

Choosing a Cover

Oh the pressure, the deliberation, the agonizing decisions!!! But at some point it must be done. We must choose from all our fabulous photos some possible cover contenders. There are some rules, restrictions and guidelines for acceptable cover images. And of course there is our opinion and our publisher’s opinion. We hope they turn out to be the same.

At first there was a great logging photo that caught our eye. Unfortunately, we discovered the picture was NOT from Mount Vernon. Turns out that was a blessing in disguise. We had to look harder and think more. After all, this is the Northwest. Logging certainly wasn’t unique to Mount Vernon. So what is unique to Mount Vernon? Today people would probably say “tulips”. Right? True, but that wasn’t the case in the early days. However the success of tulip growing can give us hints to the past—fertile farm lands, crops, seeds, cows… Did you know that Mount Vernon used to be called “Milk City”? It was a combination of all the fine dairy farms and the multiple milk condenseries. As a matter of fact, Mount Vernon was home to the third ever condensery built by Carnation in 1907! At that time evaporated milk wasn’t simply used for baking here and there, it was considered the wave of the future!

To us, Milk City seems very unique and interesting. That is why this is our top choice for cover photo (printed with permission from the John Kamb collection):

We’ll see if it makes the cut.

Why Doesn’t Anyone Write Like This Anymore?

Today we paid a visit to the Skagit County Historical Museum. We had asked about the English Logging Company (owned by one town founder, E. G. English). So the librarian brought out an old publication from September 1, 1921 that contained an extensive article on the logging company. It was a large volume entitled “Skagit County, Washington” and “Published by the Mount Vernon Herald”. It was historical GOLD! There were articles about the Milk Condenseries, the churches, the telephone company, and more. Needless to say we racked up a fair amount of photocopying fees.

But the best, and we mean the BEST part of the whole thing had to be the beginning of the Publisher’s Forward by one M. J. Beaumont. He writes:

"It is approximately forty years since there was started in Skagit county the work of changing arid tidelands and dense forest into beauteous and bountiful farmsteads where today reside the most prosperous and happy people that may be found within the confines of the nation."

Oh man have we got to work that quote into the book!

From Negative to Image!

Remember our post about looking at negatives? Since we lack the proper equipment for scanning negatives, we had to oh so carefully send them to our publisher for scanning. We used FedEx to send in a batch, then sat back and waited…

A couple of weeks ago we got scans back from our publisher. It was like magic to see all those small, reverse images turned into photographic scans. Most of them scanned beautifully, but some were duds. To be honest, we were thrilled to get so many fabulous images. These negatives have been sitting around for years in boxes—some of them were completely destroyed—we had no idea how the negatives we selected would look.

Here’s a super cute shot of a school patrol from the late forties.

Obviously we are happy to have these images for the book, but beyond that there is the thrill of preservation. Who knows what will become of these negatives. How much longer might they survive? But now there are digital copies of some of them. We have copies, and look forward to presenting Mark with copies. Those will live on and that is a good thing for history.