One of the almost-fixtures most mornings outside the Upper Crust Bakery in Magnolia, rain or shine, is a kindly older gentleman in a Coast Guard ball cap. This is Wayne Gray.
Gray isn't a real talkative sort, but after you've spent some time with him over numerous cups of coffee (or, in Wayne's case, tea), more and more stories about Magnolia's history get told. He's not the oldest Magnolia resident, but he's been around long enough to remember when what are now the Magnolia playfields contained the West Point Dairy Farm. There were other farms in the neighborhood he remembers, too.
Gray was born in 1922 on the houseboat Lady of the Lake, on Lake Washington, nine blocks north of where the I-90 floating bridge is now. His father, Cecil, and his grandfather, Albert, started the Gray Lumber and Shingle Company in 1939, a wholesale lumber business that remained a going concern until 1960.
Early in the 1920s, the Gray family moved from that houseboat to Lawton Wood. Beyond the Chittenden Locks and Discovery Park, out on the very end of the peninsula, Lawton Wood remains one of Magnolia's most exclusive and obscure neighborhoods.
Like Magnolia itself, you don't cut through Lawton Wood to get anywhere else. The only reason you have for being in the vicinity is that you have sought it out, or you are so seriously lost that ... no, nobody ever gets that lost. You probably can't get any further away from the center of Magnolia Village on McGraw Street and still be in Magnolia.
Growing up in Lawton Wood during the '30s is well described in Don Clark's book "What Depression?" (Trafford Publishing, Canada). This paperback volume, available at Magnolia's Bookstore, tells of those early years when the young ones were known as the Lawton Wood Brats.
Because of Lawton Wood's remote location, Ruby Scheuerman in the fall of 1928 opened her private school for the children of the neighborhood. Wayne Gray and his younger brother Paul were her first pupils. The school was located in a one-room schoolhouse and averaged six to 10 pupils each year.
After the boys had attended the Lawton Wood school for five years, one of Gray's aunties questioned whether they were keeping up with the public schools. To quell her anxiety, the boys were sent in 1933 to Magnolia Public School for their sixth grade. There were no problems, so the Grays were back attending Ruby's school for seventh and eighth grade. Wayne then continued his education at Lakeside, a private high school in Seattle's North End, although he actually got his diploma from Queen Anne High School.
Wayne told me that it was during 1932, when he was only 10, that his father first taught him how to drive their Model A Ford. This was on the main road from the east gate of Fort Lawton, up the hill to the streetcar turnaround of the Alki No. 1 - the streetcar that ran from the fort to West Seattle.
In late 1932, Cecil Gray bought the first of a series of Chryslers the family owned. It was a yellow, 1933 convertible with side-mounted spare wheels and a rumbleseat. "A real classic" is how Wayne described it to me. Cecil then bought, over the years, a 1934 four-door sedan, a 1939 Chrysler Airflow, another convertible in 1941 and finally a 1951 convertible Chrysler Imperial that's still in the family.
When the Gray boys had a few coins between them, they might walk a mile to Valentine's Grocery, at the fort's east gate on 36th Avenue and Government Way. There they would get a few sweets, spending Indian-head pennies and Liberty nickels.
Being budding entrepreneurs, the lads - along with Tom Parry (who would later go on to be head coach at Central Washington University) - decided to open a store of their own. In about 1935 or '36, the boys started a candy, pop and gum "store" located just before the Lawton Wood arch, on the only road into the neighborhood. Actually, it was more of a stand: a few boards nailed together and covered with some oilcloth to form a counter, and a laundry tub filled with ice to keep the pop cold.
The Coca-Cola distributor was enticed to extend his route from Valentine's Grocery to the boys' stand, and even provided a few Coca-Cola tin signs for advertising. Tom's father was connected with the Society Candy Co. of Tacoma; there the new businessmen purchased candy bars, gum and the like.
Wayne Gray remembers that even in the two hot summer months when they were open, business would sometimes slow to a crawl. To increase volume, they'd occasionally help themselves to the stock. This habit got so bad they eventually entered into a contract of "abstention without payment." Although undated, this paper was considered as legal a document as their own birth certificates.
The Lawton Wood Brats didn't have to depend on Coca-Cola for their personal consumption of carbonated beverages. "Then there were the summers when we made root beer," Gray told me. "Any old beer bottles that we could collect were soaked in our bathtub to remove the labels and then washed in hot water."
Like boys everywhere, they figured if some's good and more's better, too much should be just enough. To speed the aging process, they doubled the amount of yeast required. However, after a few weeks, as Gray remembers with a smile, the caps would blow off, creating a real mess.
Albert Gray, Wayne's uncle, started a service station at the corner of 34th Avenue and McGraw, providing Wayne with his first real job. He remembers that in 1941 he had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that he used to shag parts for his uncle's garage. One day he crashed into a milk truck at 28th Avenue and Smith. The crash broke his wrist, blew the front tire on the Harley and wrinkled its fender.
He was afraid the wrist might keep him out of the service when shortly after Pearl Harbor he volunteered, at age 19, for the Coast Guard. He was thankful when it didn't.
When he came back from the war, he moved down into Oregon to work in the lumber business. There he met and married his wife, Priscilla, in 1946. They moved back to Seattle in 1950 and have been in their present home in Magnolia for 54 years.
Wayne and Priscilla raised six children: Gary, Cecil, Warren, Christopher, Kristine and Mary Ann. Unfortunately, Christopher - or "Kippy," as he was known - was killed in Vietnam, where he proudly served in the Army 1st Cavalry.
Most mornings, as I've said, you can find Wayne outside the bakery huddled over a warm cup of tea. He always has some very interesting stories about Magnolia's history that you can sometimes coax out of him.
Gary McDaniel is a freelance writer living in Magnolia.[[In-content Ad]]
