Postcard - Olympia, Washington

"Washington State Capitol, Olympia, Washington. Aerial view of State Buildings showing Mount Rainier in the background."

The old Oly High School is gone, but Capitol Park Apartments remain. Meanwhile two big state buildings, the Dept. of Highways and the Employment Security Dept., have jumped across Capitol Way. Blocks and blocks of fine old homes have yet to be demolished as the Cap Campus expands. I place this around 1966-1969. The Fetid Lake of Doom, as usual, provides a hint of menace in the corner.

Postcard - Olympia, Washington

Olympia and Rainier [click on image to enlarge]

The reverse side of this postcard is blank. I date this in the late Ike era or in JFK period. The Pritchard Building is visible near the right corner making this no earlier than 1959. The residential area across Capitol Way is bereft of any State buildings. I'll guess this is in the timeframe of 1959-1961.

The old Olympia High School and Capitol Park Apartments can be seen. Also those grand original maples on Maple Park, which were ripped out about ten years later.

For us local boomers, if you said "Olympia and Rainier" when we were young we would assume you meant the two regional beers.

Phone photo 1804

The new Tumwater Eagan's has a mural of the old Tumwater Eagan's, the one that was just down the street from Olympia High School when I was a student there. Notice the vintage Olympia Beer neon sign above the scene. The Eagan's pictured here was only a block away from the brewery.

Pee-Chee Memories

The Pee-Chee was standard equipment all through my schooling in the 1960s and early 1970s. The manila card stock folder never varied in design from year to year.

In a drawing I made while bored in the back row in Mr. Heay's 7th grade home room at Washington Jr. High in Olympia, Washington, you can see I visually documented the ever-present Pee-Chee in the classroom landscape.



I'm not sure how many years I used the same Pee-Chee, but it was at least three since I recall I had the thing all the way through the years at Olympia High School (grades 10-12 in those days). It might even date back to junior high, but I can't recall.


As you can see, Pee-Chees were designed to be disposable. The original design had been completely obliterated within a very short time. I retired the thing when I began college.

Courtney Love and Morty the Dog

Courtney Love and Morty the Dog. Yes, they do have a connection. Thanks mostly to Ted Bolman. The depiction of Morty the Dog by other artists is a whole sub-category I have not really bothered to cover much in this blog, but this case is exceptional.

There were two famous female pop singers of the 1980s who allegedly attended my high school early in their lives. They were said to either be invited to leave or decided to drop out. (Gretchen Christopher of the 1950s group the Fleetwoods also attended OHS when I was a little kid).

One of them was Rickie Lee Jones, who would've walked the halls of Olympia High School at the same time I was there. Since there were over 2000 of us Boomers enrolled (more people than currently live here in McCleary), I cannot seem to place her in my memory. Yet she is by far the most famous person associated with OHS during the era when I was a student there. I find this factoid fitting and pleasing. Way to go Rickie!

The other was Courtney Love, a good decade after my time. But how is Morty connected? you might ask.

It is complicated.

Ted Bolman and Catherine Noel had a very Obscuro publication called Gorilla Cookies. Blank space was left on the cover to write letters to those who were lucky enough to get a copy. On the cover of the first issue (July 1994) Ted wrote to me about a mural he had earlier made at Jabberjaw Coffeehouse in Los Angeles.

The interior of the issue displayed three photos of Catherine and Ted at the mural. You can see Ted's rendition of Morty on the left side of the middle photo, behind the chair.

But the real shocker was the reproduction of the cover of Flip Side no. 68 (Sept./Oct. 1990). There above the cranium of Courtney Love is Ted's drawing of Morty the Dog! Talk about a brush with fame!

And Courtney, I thought you were terrific in Man on the Moon.

Bezango: Oly High, 1970s

Olympia High School humanities faculty, ca. 1971-1972:

Hugh Moody, Jim Coomes, Gary Gerst, Art Lowman, Don Webster, Irene Kaufman, Dave Mesojednik, Don Martin, Tilford Gribble, and Ray Arnold as the dragon.

Olympia Power & Light, April 20-May 3, 2011.