July 2006

Editor's Note: Seafair Memories

For five weeks in the summer, Seattle – the world-class, sophisticated, techno-driven, coffee-fueled city – becomes, once again, a neighborhood-based, folksy, low-tech, town.

Our summer Seafair festival started in 1951 with boat races, royalty, community festivals, parades, pirates, hydroplane races and the famous Aqua Follies at Green Lake. It continues today with most of the same traditions, minus the Follies (although this year’s Milk Carton Derby at Green Lake will feature a family show in the same venue, with diving pigs instead of diving beauties).

Those of us who grew up in Seattle have our Seafair memories. Carol Stripling, our community relations director, remembers kids riding their bikes around Ballard, dragging little wooden hydroplanes behind them. I don’t remember those in Rainier Beach, but I do recall floating in an inner tube a few feet offshore, half paying attention to the hydros, back when the summer days were hotter and the races were free. When I was 15, my first summer job was hawking Seafair buttons door-to-door in downtown and southend businesses. Everyone bought one.

Stripling remembers driving her first car, a maroon convertible, down to the races and parking it in a driveway next to her aunt’s house – accidentally leaving her purse on the front seat. Strangers needed to move the car, so they searched for the keys in her purse, scattering the contents on the front seat. She returned to find the car moved out in the street, but absolutely nothing stolen. Paula Sowers, advertising representative, has Seafair memories too, mostly involving watching hydro races from the log boom and people falling into the water.

We’re on the second generation of memories now. Seafair is still dominated by neighborhood events, like the homegrown Wallingford Kiddies Parade. The year Britain’s Prince Andrew married Fergie, my son dressed as a prince and pushed his baby sister, in princess garb, in stroller draped with tinsel. The princess chewed on her stockings and her crown; the pictures endure even if the marriage did not.

For a couple of years, my son and his friends from Children’s Hospital’s Bellevue clinic entered the Milk Carton Derby. The first summer, their boat was a simple platform with banners festooned with animals, both real and imagined. The next summer, they got more creative with a black and white “upside down cow” boat complete with a huge topside udder squirting water.

All kinds of ordinary people, including our tall, scholarly looking orthodontist, became pirates for the summer. Janice McMorris, our supplements editor and Marketplace representative, remembers the expression of terror on the face of her preschool son when the Seafair pirates’ cannon blasted in front of them during a parade. The look changed to one of fascination when the pirates came up to him and gave him a sticker. He talked about the pirate ship “going boom” for quite a while.

Seafair may be a homegrown festival, but it takes us around the world, from Mexico to Japan, to China, to Africa and to native America. One of my most vivid Seafair memories is of Bon Odori, the Japanese dance festival honoring ancestors – of dancing in long lines down the twilight street with the paper lanterns silhouetted black against a lavender and indigo sky.

For many years, Seafair has expanded beyond the confines of Seattle to festivals, parades and entertainment in Mercer Island, Kent, Renton, Covington, Redmond and beyond.

This year, Seattle’s Child is pleased to be a co-sponsor of three Seafair events. Please look for us at:

• The Baffle Gab Milk Carton Derby July 1 at Green Lake (we’ll award a prize to the best boat representing a child’s summer in Seattle);

• The Benaroya Research Institute Triathlon July 16 at Seward Park; and

• The Torchlight Parade with the “Buccaneers of Yesteryear” theme July 29 in downtown Seattle (one of the floats will be awarded the Seattle’s Child prize and we’ll be passing out magazines and fun gifts for kids along the route).

As always, many of the Seafair events are listed in our Seattle’s Child calendar. You can also check the www.seafair.com Web site.

This summer, make some Seafair memories of your own.

Wenda Reed
Editor

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