OddWA #14 - The Pickled Pioneer

 

An unusual wagon train left Bethel, Missouri for the Oregon Territory in May of 1855. At it's head was a wagon first modified for the role of an ambulance, but hastily converted again to serve as a hearse. This contained the coffin of Willy Keil. Willy was the son of Wilhelm Keil, a religious leader who journeyed westward with his commune of followers in search of a "New Eden."

Dr. Keil promised Willy he could lead the expedition, but he died of malaria shortly before the group's departure. So, Wilhelm constructed a lead lined coffin and filled it with the Bethelites own Golden Rule whiskey. This preserved Willy for the long trip West. True to his father's promise, he was at the head of the procession.

The group arrived near present-day Menlo, Washington in November and finally buried Willy Keil. His grave can still be seen today, and he is sometimes called the Pickled Pioneer.

The Bethelites, on the other hand, didn't stick around very long."New Eden" proved too dank and wet for their tastes, so they moved further south into present day Oregon, establishing the town of Aurora.

CK

OddWA #13 - The Great Windshield Mystery

A strange phenomenon swept through the Puget Sound region in April of 1954. Residents in Bellingham started reporting numerous, tiny pits in their car windshields. The mystery pits began to spread. Soon pitted windshields were reported in Anacortes, Mount Vernon and on Whidbey Island. This horror continued to spread until it reached Seattle.

It was a genuine cause of concern. As the number of cars with pitted windshields grew, so did the theories to explain them. Some thought it was cosmic rays. Other cited atmospheric conditions and radioactive fallout. More creative types blamed sand fleas -- claiming their eggs had somehow survived the glass making process and later hatched. A few citizens claimed they saw their windshields bubbling as new pits appeared.

Seattle police were routinely flagged down by drivers who had noticed the strange pits. The mayor of Seattle sent urgent telegrams to the governor and President Eisenhower, asking for help.

Fortunately, top men at the University of Washington brought their huge brains to bear on the problem. They couldn't help but notice that the pits were mostly appearing in older cars. The public largely rejected this unexciting explanation outright.

Finally, a larger investigation by the Seattle Police Department agreed that the pits were just regular wear on older vehicles.

This odd little tale is still mentioned in psychology textbooks. The great windshield mystery of 1954 was a perfect example of collective delusion that feeds on itself, and grows in the telling.

Interesting, but not as cool as cosmic rays.

CK

OddWA #12 - Drake on Bellingham Bay

It's fun illustrating stories I've gathered over the years in the CryptoWA picture series, but here's one of my own. There is a bit of truth here with just enough spit and bailing wire to hold it together -- Just what a good yarn needs. This is a work of pure speculation. Still, I have to admit, I had fun concocting this one.

Sir Francis Drake, all around dashing hero and Queen Elizabeth's would-be squeeze, landed somewhere on the west coast of North America on June 17th, 1579. He stayed for over a month, repairing his ship and hobnobbing with the local populace. Drake named the land he found "New Albion," a poetic name for Olde England. Just the thing to win points with his gal Elizabeth, a.k.a. his Monarch with The Power of Life and Death.

But where was New Albion? Plenty of historians stick with the latitude given in Drake's official account, Encompassing The Globe, written in 1582. That pegs his landing at 38 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude, somewhere in northern California. Some think there is more to it than that. The true location of Drake’s landing site has been debated for centuries.

According to R. Samuel Bawlf’s book The Secret Voyage of Francis Drake, Queen Elizabeth only allowed an edited version of Drake's story to be printed. This was due to England's ongoing war with Spain, who had competing claims in that part of the world. This may also be due to Drake’s belief that he had found the Northwest Passage, which would have been a hot strategic piece of information. Drake reportedly asked to set the record straight a few years later, and was firmly denied.

Surviving hand-written records in the British Library place Drake's landing further north at 44 degrees. That puts Drake's landing site in Oregon. British historian Bob Ward enthusiastically supports Whale Cove, Oregon largely due to it's physical similarity to a map drawn by Jodocus Hondius, a contemporary of Drake's and a master cartographer who based his 1589 map on journals and eyewitness accounts.

Still, Bawlf and a number of folks in British Columbia claim the true (and concealed) latitude is closer to their neighborhood. This is supported by Richard Hakluyt's 1587 map of the New World showing Nova Albion at 50 degrees north latitude.

We may never know for sure. Drake's original logbook and artifacts from his journey were destroyed when Whitehall palace burned to the ground in 1591.

Where does this leave us?

If (and it’s admittedly a big if) the location from Drake's book is out the window, I say the whole story is up for grabs. Since Drake seems to have mapped part of the Alaskan coast with a fair degree of accuracy, New Albion could be anywhere from northern California to southern Alaska.

So, why not Washington State?

Nothing on our Pacific coast is a good match with the Hondius map, but there is a remarkably good fit near the end of the Strait of Juan De Fuca: Bellingham Bay.

It sounds odd, but it conforms with an amazing number of key elements, both on the Hondius map and in Drake's written record. High, light colored cliffs? Check. Crappy Summer weather that would depress even an Englishman? Yup. Snow-covered mountains looming in every direction, even in June? Uh huh. The Lummi tribe traditionally set up a seasonal encampment, exactly where a village is shown on a map from Drake's era.

Think about it. If Drake did find the Strait of Juan de Fuca, utterly convinced he'd discovered the much sought Northwest Passage, wouldn't he at least take a little peek? I mean, this is Mr. Adventure himself. It's hard to imagine him saying "Hey, The Northwest Passage. Make a note of it, Jimmy."

People who favor the B.C. landing site theory would agree, but I don't see geographic features that line up well with the Hondius map up that way.

And I do favor using the map by Jocodus Hondius. He was a contemporary of Drake's, had access to Admiralty records when he made the official map of Drake's voyage, and was one of the preeminent map makers of his day. Combining his map with Drake’s verbal description seems like a good way to go when unraveling this little mystery.

So, let’s start with that. Thanks to Google Earth and a rainy afternoon, I took snapshots of the five most popular spots for Drake’s landing, then tossed Bellingham Bay into the mix. Check out how they line up.

(click to enlarge)

The closest matches are B. and D. Of the rest, one is Comox in British Columbia (F) . All of the others are in the San Francisco Bay area (A, C and E).

Image D is Whale Cove in Oregon. Image B is Bellingham Bay.

Whale Cove does look pretty good, but it can be disqualified for two reasons. First, it lacks the island just outside the encircling bay shown on the Hondius map. Yes, it is claimed that a sand bar is visible at low tide, but Bellingham Bay has a real island in about the right place. The second reason is scale.

Scale is something that seldom comes up when talking about the lost bay of New Albion. Yet, Drake provided a handy measurement in his description. He mentions that his camp was “neere about 3 quarters of an English mile distant” from the indigenous settlement. According to the Hondius map, both were located along the perimeter of the bay. Whale Cove is only 1000 feet across (with very poor shelter from the ocean, I might add). That’s nowhere near big enough to fit both locations using Drake’s own words, and hardly a “goodly sized bay.”

The fact is, without frequent breaks in the cloud cover, Drake may have had little more than his best guess when it came to jotting down his latitude. So, it's anybody's guess until really compelling archeological evidence crops up. He may have spent that month in California, but I like to imagine him fetching up on the shores of this place, long before it was Washington.

And hey, at least the map is a good fit.

CK

OddWA #11 - Everybody Needs A Hobby

A team of forestry workers were treated to an unusual sight ten years ago in Southeast Washington. The crew of 14 were busy planting trees when they noticed a strange craft approaching a herd of elk on a nearby hillside. The curved disk flew in an uneven, "wobbly" manner. As the herd bolted, the craft managed to snag a single adult elk, wobbling even more and occasionally bumping into trees as the animal was lifted from the ground.

The captive elk soon disappeared and the UFO made it's halting, ungainly way up into the sky to the east, vanishing from view.

Given the awkward behavior of the craft and the strange timing of planting trees in February, I'd say more than one party in this tale may have had diminished capacity that day. Whether this we due to distilled spirits, or some sort of freaky space hooch is entirely up to you.

CK

OddWA #10 - A Mythical Tomb

The Internet. It destroys almost as many myths as it creates. It was common knowledge among the populace of Washington for many years that untold number of workers are entombed in the vast structure of Grand Coulee Dam. I remember kids telling each other with ghoulish glee that once a worker fell, his cohorts were powerless to save him, or stop the immense, relentless cascade of wet cement.

Great story. Imagine my relief and disappointment to find that this never happened.

Yes, several workers did perish during Grand Coulee's construction, but nobody was trapped in wet cement. It turns out this didn't even start with Grand Coulee -- It started with an accident during the construction of Hoover Dam some years earlier. The tale later migrated to Washington.

Even in the original story, nobody was really trapped -- It turns out the cement pours were done in many shallow layers. Plus, it doesn't really help the structural integrity of a dam to wall up a bunch of dead guys. Go figure.

Still, I had to make this picture to commemorate a simpler, creepier time.

CK

Everybody Loves DeathSpank

DeathSpank meets a wizened old adventurer. And chickens.

DeathSpank. He doesn't shoot first and ask questions later. He doesn't even realize there are questions.

To celebrate DeathSpanks impending arrival on the show floor at PAX this coming weekend, 1up is running a weeklong series of articles about the game, Ron and the fine folks at Hothead. For my part, I may descend from my secluded aerie above far flung Bothell to take in the show. As co-creator, I fully expect this to net me a stick of gum and/or t-shirt.

Read all the glorious coverage here.

CK

OddWA #9 - Accursed Diamond!

When John Considine wasn't busy shooting Seattle's police chief (and getting away with it), he built lavish theaters and music halls. Considine was stunned to find former Vaudeville superstar May Yohe scrubbing floors in a shipyard office in 1918. Yohe was once the toast of four continents, and formerly Lady Francis Hope. The Hope family owned a really big diamond.

After years of lavish globetrotting, Yohe and her third husband ran out of money, ending up in a Seattle tenement. She attributed her lowly state to the curse of the Hope Diamond.

The death of a gem merchant who briefly owned the diamond made some headlines in 1908, but it was May's tale that really caught the imagination of the world.

May went on to tell her story -- and a highly fictional history of the diamond -- in a tell-all book, followed by a series of silent films in the 1920's (all flops). She tried repeatedly to relaunch her career as a stage diva, usually wearing a replica of the famous diamond, but theater critics must have been in on the curse. Further efforts to start an inn (bankrupt) and a chicken farm north of Seattle (burned) all failed.

But her PR efforts on behalf of the Hope Diamond were arguably a huge success. May Yohe created a story that persists today.

CK

OddWA #8 - Jim Carter's Run

I'll say one thing for accounts of Washington's Bigfoot: they kick ass. This is no peaceful root munching pacifist, placidly wandering our remote forests. This Bigfoot will mess you up, and then some.

One such story is of an experienced mountaineer and skier name Jim Carter, who went up Mount St. Helens in May of 1950 and never came down.

Carter apparently told his climbing buddies he would wait for them downslope and take their picture when they went past near Dog's Head. When they came down the hill, Carter was gone. Only an empty film box and the tracks of Carter's skis were found. Carter had apparently taken off on a mad dash, jumping "2 or 3" crevasses, "taking chances no skier of his caliber would take." The tracks lead over the edge of Ape Canyon.

No trace of Carter was ever found. In an interview with the Longview Washington Times from 1963, one of the search team members concluded that "the apes got him."

I have two questions about all this. First, what ended up on the film in Carter's camera? Second, is the plural of Bigfoot "Bigfoots" or "Bigfeet?"

CK

OddWA #7 - Salt Chuck Oluk Triptych

Anywhere people live by water, they tend to see strange stuff in it. Dip below the surface and every sea or lake has monster yarn or two. Washington state, with its 3200 miles of coastal waterways, is no exception. Stories of a large, serpent-like critter have been reported by newspapers and inebriated fishermen alike since the 1800's.

The Oregonian newspaper dubbed their local serpent Colossal Claude in the early 1930's. Around the same time in British Columbia, The Victoria Daily Times had a contest to name the local sea monster, selecting Cadborosaurus or "Caddy" as the winner.

The name I like is the one used by the Lushootseed Salish: Salt Chuck Oluk. I couldn't pick a single story, so I decided to make a three-panel picture, each depicting a Salt Chuck tale from a different time.

Panel 1

Panel 1 shows a family trip to the Dungeness Spit from 1961. Two sisters and their children reportedly saw a strange, long necked serpent frolicking in the water between the Spit and Port Townsend.

Panel 2

Though Salt Chuck stories are most often associated with the Strait of Juan De Fuca and the interior waterways of Washington and B.C., quite a few are set near the mouth of the Columbia River. The crew of a fishing boat all told of a close encounter in 1939.

Panel 3

Sea monsters play a part in the lore of many local Native American tribes. An atlatl (spear thrower), adorned with a carving of a great serpent was unearthed near La Conner and was dated to 200 A.D. Similar monsters can be seen in numerous petroglyphs scattered throughout Puget Sound and British Columbia.

These are generally explained as images of spirit guides, but the Squamish tribe has a very tangible take on Salt Chuck Oluk. Tribal lore says that sightings grew more common with the arrival of white settlers. This, they say, is because Salt Chuck is a "hated totem," personifying the greed and avarice that Europeans/Americans brought with them.

As this greed infected the tribe, Salt Chuck Oluk appeared near Brockton Point blocking the entire channel. A young warrior -- Tenas Tyee -- went forth to slay the serpent, armed with only his hunting knife. He dove into the waters every day, seeking the serpent's heart. After four years, he succeeded, freeing his people from their unnatural lust for gold.

Salt Chuck Oluk may have left the Squamish alone after that, but something like him kept appearing for years to come. Interestingly, stories seem to stop after the 1960's. It could be Salt Chuck has been replaced by more glamorous creatures, like Big Foot and space aliens, or maybe we're just not looking hard enough.

CK

OddWA #6 - The Great Airship Rash of 1896-97

It all started with the sighting of a great, propeller-driven airship over Sacramento in 1896. Soon after, towns from Texas to Canada reported seeing similar craft. These sightings continued into 1897. Marble, Washington was no exception. Mill workers reportedly saw an airship flying toward the northeast on May 5th, 1897. A local paper reported that, "It was in full view, and the fans could easily be recognized."

Similar newspaper accounts were invariably upbeat and congenial. It seemed to be generally accepted that clever individuals had built such machines, even though the golden age of zeppelins was still some years away.

CK

OddWA #5 - Armillaria Ostoyae

One day you're on top of the world, and the next you're second best.

A giant fungus was discovered near Mount Adams earlier this decade. Washington's Armillaria Ostoyae (a.k.a. Honey Mushroom) covers 1500 acres, and was determined to be the largest single life form on earth.

Barely a year had passed before a bigger Armillaria was discovered in Oregon, estimated at 2000 acres.

I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage our local contender. Don't give up! You can recapture the lead! That, or civic minded Washingtonians may have to pay a little visit to visit Oregon, sauteing pans in hand.

CK

OddWA #4 - Mr. Cooper's Jump - 1971

A man calling himself "Dan Cooper" single handedly ushered in the era of modern airport security when he hijacked a plane on its way to Seattle from Portland. D.B. Cooper also spawned countless yarns, theories and debates as to whether he survived his jump from a Boeing 727 over southern Washington... in pitch darkness... in the middle of a rainstorm.

I do think that solving this mystery would be a shame. Living in concealment for 38 years, or moldering in a remote forest are both less interesting than a bona fide folk hero.

CK

OddWA #3 - The Harvard Exit

Long before the building was converted to a movie theater, the site of the Harvard Exit was home to the Woman's Century Club of Seattle (which still holds meetings there). Over the years, folks have claimed that ladies of a bygone era are still knocking about the place. Some say they've seen Bertha Landes, who was club president in 1915 and mayor of Seattle from 1926 to 1928.

CK

OddWA #2 - Lady of The Lake - 1940

Lots of cars and people have gone missing in Lake Crescent over the last century, and they tend to stay that way.

There have been exceptions. This depicts Hallie Latham Illingworth, a lady whose body was dumped in Lake Crescent and subsequently turned to soap. This was due to unique properties of the lake, including incredible depth, low nitrogen content and high calcium. Nobody was more surprised when she popped to the surface three years later than her murderer husband, who was extradited, arrested and convicted thanks to the evidence found on the perfectly preserved (if rather soapy) corpse.

I went swimming in Lake Crescent years before I ever heard of the Lady of The Lake, and there was something genuinely creepy about the place. You can see more than a hundred feet down the steep cliffs at the water's edge. It's the only time I ever experienced vertigo while swimming.

CK

OddWA #1 - Kenneth Arnold - 1947 - Mount Rainier

This is the first picture in a series portraying a oddities and strange events from my home state of Washington.

Whether or not you believe Kenneth's Arnold's account of seeing nine disc-like shapes, it's a great story and is generally regarded as the first modern UFO sighting, kicking off a period of saucer hysteria in the late 1940's.

Interesting side note: When researching his plane, a pilot friend directed me to a website that tracks planes using their call letters. Arnold's CallAir A2 is still flying! It's currently owned by somebody down in Florida.

CK

Self Portrait of The Artist as A Spastic Gamer

This is pretty much how I look on the weekend. And weekdays.

CK

It was free

I've been doing enough non-game stuff lately, I figured I'd just start another blog. I can easily ignore two blogs for the price of one, thanks to the fine folks at Google.

This is where I plan to post pictures I've been doing in a semi-diorama style, hence the name. Other pieces may show up now and then too.

CK

Resume In T-Shirts

The game industry isn't as full of excitement and romance as some may think. The hours are long. Stability isn't always that great. Royalties and riches exist only for a lucky few. One thing we do get is a crapload of t-shirts.

There are two big reasons for this. First, it helps companies to identify and collect their employees when they go astray in the wild. Second, we don't get out to the local haberdashery all that often while crunching for months at a time. I was looking at the ever-growing pile in my closet the other day, and thought it might be fun to make a visual survey of these garments in all their nerdly glory. That turned out to be a terrible idea. Besides highlighting my desperate need for an iron, it was way more work than it was worth. But here it is. I tried to stick with shirts related to companies and product I actually worked on, otherwise there would be another 20-odd shirts.

CK 

So Many Years, So Few Bits

So, you may be wondering, "How did Clayton learn to do that crude, crappy style of animation so wonderfully showcased in the last post?" This may give you some perspective on that. In my never-ending quest to reduce clutter and bring screenshots from games nobody ever cared about to light, I offer the following.

I stumbled across an old portfolio floppy containing a bunch of goofy little animations. These are some background and characters I did way back when for Pink Goes To Hollywood, one of the Pink Panthers darker, more confusing chapters. But it was the 90's -- Pretty much everybody got a sidescroller then.

Funny story... The folks at TekMagic got so used to just calling the game "Pink Goes to Hollywood" instead of the more accurate "Pink PANTHER Goes To Hollywood," it ended up on the box that way. Hilarious. I mean, who needs to know the name of your main character anyway?

Yup. They pretty much crammed the word "Pink" into every sentence they could. The results were sometimes a little unsettling.

We did all the "cut scenes" like the one above in three days. This was back when everybody was still amazed by blinking lights, telephones and whatnot.

The original format for these files was .ANM from Deluxe Paint Animation. The movement is so choppy because I did very few frames, and kept things to an 8 pixel grid. The actual game moved much more smoothly. It's funny what passed for a portfolio back then... or talent.

CK

Just Because

Being a mighty game designer for all these years can leave a man hollow. Hollow and empty. What fills this vast, desolate void? Animating dancing hippos and rhinos, of course. I did this for HBO's Flight of The Conchords Fansterpiece contest (love those guys), though it may not be quite what they're looking for.

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 Why? CK