Bits and Pieces

Mystery photo was the Larson AFB swimming pool

Grant County history E-mail from Cheryl

Swimming pool photo

Many readers were correct when they identified the photo of a Grant County swimming pool photo featured last week as the pool at Larson Air Force Base. Paul Hirai called with the correct identification, plus he donated the dirt to fill the pool when it was discontinued.

Although it would have been nice to keep it going, it was too old and needed some work to modernize it. BBCC, who had acquired the land where the pool was located, didn’t have the money at the time.

Dick Deane also identified it and said he held a series of wrestling camps back then. When the attendees were finished for the day, the wrestlers were taken to the pool for some fun.

Gordon Harris was part of the security at Larson and he correctly identified the pool, also.

Concerning the breadbasket

A wooden breadbasket was featured recently in this column. A reader called and wanted to where she could purchase one. Checking online, there are several available, with the least expensive being $9.50 and the price goes up from there.

Some of these bowls are quite unique. Makes me want to begin a collection. It was noted, they could also be used as a trivet.

Washington’s grandfather was in Civil War

The Grant County Historical Society has compiled several volumes of Grant County history. The books are available for purchase at the Historical Society Museum gift shop in Ephrata.

These are memories of Grant County, compiled from taped interviews by the Grant County Historical Society.

Today we continue Nat Washington’s story about Grand Coulee. He is presenting a great background about his family back east before they moved west. Read on.

Now that I have kind of told the story of why they could find unsurveyed public domain, the real part of the story starts in the Shenandoah Valley of West Virginia, which was part of the regular old Virginia before the Civil War. My family lived in the area and Town of Charlestown was where they lived before they came west.

My grandfather was in the Civil War. He started out as a private in Ashby’s Cavalry and my grandfather always said that it was more honor to be a private in Ashby’s Calvary than a colonel in any other group in the Civil War. He started as a private and did get a promotion to lieutenant on the field of battle.

Then after the Civil War the Shenandoah Valley was the main battle ground of the Civil War. Virtually everybody who lived in that area was impoverished by the war. Most of their houses were kept intact, but the barns, cattle, any mills they had on the river were used and destroyed. So my grandfather was really glad when the Civil War was over. He was really like almost everyone else, he was broke.

More Grant County history from Nat Washington next week.

The property that he inherited had been divided up among other children, his family home, a large home, was too big a house and not enough land and he had to sell it in order to educate his children and it’s an example of someone actually being down on their luck.

Now so many people came from the east to the west to get a new start. And here he was 67 years old and had had that vision that he would get a new start out here in the west. First Dad came out and then my uncle came out and I don’t have the exact dates it was either about 1906 or 1907.

My dad came out because he did the unpardonable thing. The family, as I pointed out, they lost their money during the Civil War, did not recover it and he did the thing that most people shouldn’t do, it was fine to remain in genteel poverty in the Shenandoah Valley with the Southern people, but it just wasn’t right to go out and do what he did.

He went to the University of West Virginia and worked in the mills and worked in the mines in order to get his education. And when he came back, strangely enough, it was one of those things that he just wasn’t quite accepted.

He started to practice law in his hometown and it just didn’t work.

Facts from the past gleaned from the Moses Lake Herald, Columbia Basin Herald and The Neppel Record by Cheryl (Driggs) Elkins:

From the Columbia Basin Herald on July 10, 1952:

From Coulee City

Chamber of Commerce hears that U.S. Senate has passed a bill changing the name of South Dam to Dry Falls Dam.

Fire destroys $25,000 in hay

Nearly 100 tons of baled hay went up in flames at the H.O. Williams farm north of Moses Lake July 1. The crop was valued at $25,000.

City, Peninsula and Cascade Valley fire crews took the 4 a.m. call and reported the fire was by spontaneous combustion.

Bid date set for Base work

Bids will be opened at Walla Walla Aug. 12 for changes and additions to the new enlisted men’s barracks at Larson Air Force Base, army engineers have announced. Included are 48 additional fire escapes and minor alterations to the heating system. Coffee urns in six locations are to be rotated 180 degrees and piping altered.