DYNAMITE, THE FARMER’S FRIEND

 

by Barry McCombs

It might surprise some readers to know that dynamite used to be about as common an article on farms and ranches in the area as bailing twine is now. I remember as a young kid in the 1950s seeing boxes of it lying around in barns and sheds on both of my grandparents’ farms. While its main purpose was for assisting in the difficult work of removing stumps to clear fields, it was also put to some pretty creative uses as people became rather casual in handling it.

My mother tells how my grandfather would wake them up on the 4th of July by throwing a quarter stick of dynamite up on the tin roof above the attic where she and her siblings slept. That was sure to get them out of bed with a bang. Quarter sticks of dynamite were also employed by her extended family while hunting to drive deer out of particularly brushy areas. Fish not biting? A little dynamite could bring them to the surface.

My father got his start as a lineman by digging holes for power poles that extended electrical service to rural areas. Part of his reputation for completing more holes than anyone else on the crew was due to the fact that he carried sticks of dynamite in his back pocket to help out in rocky places.

Dynamite was also handy for those who might have more malicious intents. Recently, Lora Rose of the local genealogical society sent me a copy of a petition signed by a number of residents including my great grand uncle that was sent to the county officials in 1891. Someone had used dynamite twice to blow up a dam that was located near Addy for the purpose of operating a grist mill for local farmers. The petition was a request to fund the rebuilding of the dam and to bring the perpetrator to justice.

An event in 1892 demonstrates just how effective dynamite could be in an emergency. Nearly the entire population of Colville had gathered to watch a play put on by the Ladies Aide Society in the Meyers Opera House. At 7:30 p.m. a fire broke out at the Dominion Hotel. A bucket brigade was quickly formed but in spite of heroic efforts the fire spread quickly and as recounted below threatened to do away with a major section of the town:

“. . .All glass on the south side of the William Block cracked and fell to the ground. It now looked as though the Rickey store building, Charette’s saloon and the Hofstetter barn and a place called the “Ark” would be destroyed. It was also plain that unless immediate and effective action could be taken, the saloon of James Durkin, Habein’s stable, the post office and possibly Perras and Lenery’s store would soon burst into flames.

At this critical juncture was heard the cry of ‘dynamite and giant powder’ rising above the tumult of the crowd and the roar of devouring flames rapidly eating up the hotel. Almost simultaneously a man was observed running toward the Rickey building with a box of giant powder on his shoulder. At once an order rang out for everyone to fall back and watch for flying timbers. The crowd required no urging to act upon such a sensible suggestion and a deafening explosion immediately followed; the Rickey building could be seen in the air flying in all directions; it was plainly evident that the courageous parties who handled the powder were experts in the business. This was heroic treatment but effective, although other buildings in the vicinity did not escape damage consequent upon the face of the explosion. All of the glass in Durkin’s saloon and Habein’s stable was broken as were several windows in the post office and a large plate glass in the Hotel Colville besides several smaller ones in various parts of the building. William Hofstetter sustained quite severe bruises caused by a portion of the roof of the Rickey building falling upon him.”

Our modern fire departments would no doubt shun this method of controlling a fire although the results might be not any more destructive than current standard protocol. If you happen to have some dynamite lying around and are thinking about using it in case you have a house fire, you should probably check with your insurance agent first.

H.W. Jackson Killed

From Northport News, September 30th, 1914

Shot Through The Groins With a Pistol in the Hands of Clayt Penrose

  Once more the deadly bullet has created a sensation in Northport. On Monday night at about 7:30 o’clock, Clayton Penrose shot H.W. Jackson (known throughout the west as Bearhunter Jackson) through the body, the bullet entering just about the hip on one side and passing out on the opposite side. The trouble occurred in the Silver Crown Saloon. After Mr. Jackson was shot he grabbed a rifle that was somewhere in the room and firing one shot hit Mr. Penrose in the right arm. Mr. Jackson then went to the front of the saloon and sat down on the doorstep Afterward he was taken to the office of the Silver Crown Hotel, where he died about an hour after being shot. His body was taken to his home and Mr. Penrose was taken to a room at the Broderius lodging house. His arm will probably have to be amputated just above the elbow. 

 The preliminaries leading up to the shooting appear to be that on Sunday night someone entered Mr. Jackson’s kennel and took his two famous bear dogs, Jack and Bill, for whom he said he had been offered $300. This caused him considerable worry, and while hunting down the thieves accused Mr. Penrose of having something to do with it. He strenuously denied knowing anything about it, but this did not satisfy Mr. Jackson, and the two had several quarrels during the day, finally terminating in this awful tragedy.  

  Deceased was 40 years of age and had resided here 8 or 10 years. He followed the avocations of hunting, land locating, timber cruising and mining. He was married about a year ago and he and his wife have been living on Columbia ave. Besides his wife, who has the respect of all who know her, he leaves a sister, Mrs. Stony Graham of Colville, who came here as soon as possible after being notified, and a brother, whose whereabouts are unknown. 

  Mr. Penrose is a teamster and has recently been living at the Herron home on Summit ave. It is said that the revolver with which he shot deceased belonged to Mr. Herron and was taken without that gentleman’s consent. 

  Early yesterday morning, before daylight, Sheriff W. L. Woodard, Prosecuting Attorney John B. Slater, Coroner Dr. W. Mighell and a Colville undertaker arrived by automobile. An inquest is being held as we speak.  

A Story worth telling…

Meet Mary Gifford

by Liv Stecker

In late August, 1924, Mary Anderson was born in Craig, Colorado. The fourth out of ten children to Carl and Ione Anderson. She was one of only two girls and a whole herd of strapping boys who helped their father work the family farm. As a small girl, Mary remembers going to school in the wintertime in Colorado in temperatures as low as forty below zero. They would ride horses to school, but when it was the coldest, she tells stories of her older brother using extreme measures to keep the kids warm: “he pulled us off the horse and used the reins to keep us moving” she laughs, to avoid freezing from lack of movement.

 After years in this extreme environment, her father Carl longed for a more temperate climate for farming, “Dad wanted a place he could grow vegetable and fruit”, Mary recollects. Carl was an ingenuitive self-starter, once building a splint for a cow with a broken leg. He built a large camper on the back of a truck, and when her youngest brother was six months old, the family piled and headed west. It took seven days in 1935 to make the trek across four states to get to Washington, where her father had been born. Along the way, Mary remembers that they had several flats. At the time, the solid rubber tires cost $7 to replace. When they camped at night, the oldest boys would sleep outside under the truck while the girls and their parents were stacked inside with all of their belongings. 

After they arrived in Washington, they camped in what is now the Chewelah city park for a month while her parents looked for property to buy. “We went floating down that little creek for our baths,” Mary reminisces. The Depression had dropped real estate values significantly, and the Andersons bought some land with an old house in the town of Gifford, where the family moved in after an infestation of bed bugs was routed. Soon Mr. Anderson had a large farm flourishing, with cows and pigs and the fruit orchard he had been longing for in cold Colorado. 

Mary and her siblings attended the Maude School, a few miles up the road from Gifford, where students from the surrounding area gathered for education. When she reached high school age, she transferred to Hunter’s High School, where she graduated on May 24th, 1943. 

Shortly after her graduation, Mary followed a friend from school to Spokane, where she got a job at Geiger Airfield, building airplanes for the war effort. Mary’s girlfriend was married to a boy in the army, and as he shipped out for service in World War II, the girls were put to work welding and riveting war planes. Mary remembers working high on top of the wings of large planes, scaling ladders with her assigned tool box that she was responsible for. “Before then, I always wore a dress, but we had to wear coveralls. That was the first time I wore slacks.” She says. Mary and her girlfriend shared an apartment on third street in Spokane, taking a segregated bus to the airfield for work. The work force on base was segregated, as well as the military personnel, “the white boys would march by, and after them, the black soldiers.” 

The wartime world was a contrast even to the struggles of the depression. Ration books were issued to citizens in the United States, granting them allotments of grocery staples like flour and sugar. Even if you had the ration stamps to allow you to purchase groceries, you still had to be able to afford the food, and for some families, even the most basic supplies weren’t in the budget. Mary’s family would glean bulk flour and sugar from the grocers when bags were damaged in transit. She tells a story of cookies that were delivered to the local grocery store, and the broken packages were shared with her and her siblings. Most of the food they ate was what they grew as a family. Carl and Ione grew delicious apples, Mary remembers her youngest brother sharing apples, a bite at a time, with a pet pig on the farm. 

During her employment at Geiger Field, Mary went back to Gifford where she married Roland Gifford on May 5th, 1944, the grandson of the town’s founder. Roland had enlisted in the army but was discharged for medical reasons before he was deployed. He drove a grocery truck from Gifford to Spokane, hauling 8 gallon milk cans and other foods from the farms in all kinds of weather. 

Mary and Roland moved to Colville where they lived when their daughter Marlene was born. Mary worked at Pinewood Terrace for a brief time. Shortly after her birth they built a house in Gifford and moved back to the their hometown, where two years later, Mary succeeded her mother-in-law as the local post mistress for the town of Gifford. The Giffords ran the post office out of their small house where Mary also raised their two children, while Roland continued the grocery and mail delivery, before he began logging. 

In addition to her own children, Mary took in her husband’s youngest brother for many years, raising him as her own. She was well equipped for her job as a mother, since most of her younger brothers considered her their “second mother.” Their home was not only the local post office, it also served as a grocery store and service station for a time, and Mary managed the whole thing, with children in tow. When her son Ron was little, he once went missing. Mary and her daughter searched for him and finally found him asleep on a pile of mail sacks under the counter of the post office. 

The Gifford’s house and post office was located on a busy intersection in Gifford, where Mary witnessed 22 accidents in the 60 years she lived there. She would frequently be the first one to the scene of the wreck, helping injured passengers. Often, drivers would cut the corner across her yard, leaving her to run a string along the far side of her lawn that her children and grandchildren were strictly forbidden to cross. One young grandson crossed the taboo line and Mary says that she “warmed his seat up” quite a bit. The trespass was never repeated. 

Mary also served as the first official bus driver for the Maude school. When her son was a youngster, she remembers slip-sliding backwards down a hill in the auto. Her son was making loud proclamations from the backseat, so Mary made him get out and wait by the side of the road for her to go up the hill and collect the students at the top. 

Mary served as postmaster in Gifford until her retirement in 1986. She was also a member of the Stranger Creek Grange and the Daisy-Gifford Homemakers Club for over 60 years. Active in the Church of God, Mary never missed a step in maximizing her role as a mother, a postmaster, a wife and a neighbor. She lost her husband Roland in 1997 after 53 years of marriage, but she remained in Gifford until 2010, when she moved to Colville to be closer to her children and grandchildren. Still a pert and sassy 91 year old, she uses her scooter to get around and walks her dog Dukey almost every day. 

A laid back and humble lady, Mary was insistent that her story wasn’t that interesting. In spite of her cross country move with a large family in the midst of the depression, her stint as a real-life Rosie The Riveter during the Great War, and six decades of community service, raising three generations of children, Mary was still unconvinced that there would be an audience for her experiences, but she dutifully saved photographs and souvenirs, documenting family history and events over the course of almost a hundred years. But Mary doesn’t know that she is a hero hailing from the Greatest Generation, characterized by service and sacrifice and the selfless mission of community building. For nearly a century, Mary has quietly been laying down the stepping stones of history, from Colorado to the little town of Gifford, and now in Colville, where she is a delight to everyone who knows her, and her life is definitely a story worth telling. 

The Impossible Dream

71 years of marriage and adventure

by Liv Stecker 

When Frank Johnson, Jr. got a flat tire in front of the little house in Renton, Washington, he had no idea about the lifelong adventure that was about to begin. He and his buddy, Jimmy Wendell, a “lady killer” by Frank’s standards, were more than a little delighted to be stranded near a house full of pretty high school girls, as he recalls, but one in particular caught his eye when he asked to use their phone. Kathleen Kells was fresh out of high school, and the way she tells the story it was love at first sight. Franks and “Teenie” (Kathleen) were an item right off. “Jimmy Wendell showed up with Frank at our house, and after that, we were dating!” She laughs, as if it were the most natural thing ever. 

Kathleen was one of six children born to the only doctor in Kirkland at the time, who was killed in a car accident before she turned 3. The large family went from the comfortable lifestyle to borderline poverty almost overnight. “When I look back over it, I wouldn’t change a thing, which is amazing to me.” Teenie muses. Though they were poor, she said her family was happy and loved each other, and they didn’t seem to notice what they had to do without. Her upbringing prepared her for the series of adventures that she would follow Frank through. 

The attack at Pearl Harbor happened that year, and  Frank enlisted in the US Navy as World War II began to escalate. Teenie joined the war effort at Boeing and went to work as a real life Rosie the Riveter, building airplanes in a largely female workforce. “I thought it was a fun thing to do, because most of the men were gone, so it was a lot of women.” She reminisces. For three and a half years, Frank was deployed as a sonar technician on the USS Halford, DD-480, a destroyer that was launched in 1942 and spent a large part of war time in the Pacific Theater. 

On Valentine’s Day, 1945, the Halford was patrolling Saipan Harbor in a smoke screen laid down for protection from a kamikaze attack,“There were airplanes coming from all directions,” Frank recalls, and in the confusion the Halford lost contact with a freighter and accidentally rammed the large ship, collapsing the bow of the destroyer like an accordion. The Halford was dry docked nearby for emergency repairs to the bow, and then sent back to the naval base at Vallejo, in California. Frank made the most of his shore leave at the end of March, 1945, by making his way up to Seattle to find Teenie and marry her. 

The couple was married at a church in the University District in Seattle where Kathleen was living at the time, and then went to Vancouver, BC for a brief honeymoon. “I had made about six thousand dollars playing poker on board the ship,” Frank tells the story of their return to California, “That was a lot of money back then.” He took Teenie, her three sisters and an aunt to the San Francisco area where they stayed for six weeks in quonset hut housing while they waited for his ship repairs to finish. Nearly every night, the group went to San Francisco where they danced and went to clubs and enjoyed the nightlife of the big city. Both Frank and Teenie smile at the memory of what they call their “real honeymoon”, with a bevy of female family members in tow. In May of that year, the Halford set out to sea again with Frank on board, and Teenie went back to Boeing, where she worked until December, when their first daughter was born. 

Frank completed his naval service at the end of 1945 and went to work in Seattle for the 13th Naval District doing clerical work. Before long, he grew restless in his job, and took a new position with the Seattle Police Department in the booking office. A curious fellow, always looking for adventure, Frank liked this job a little better than the Naval District: “I met all the interesting people who decided to make problems for society.” He chuckles. The Johnsons bought a little white house in the Fremont district, but Frank was working nights for the Police Department, and Teenie didn’t like having him gone all night. He left that job and went to work for Texaco, where he remained for 15 years, during which time they had two more children. 

Their youngest son, Justin, was born 11 years after the second - a surprise that Teenie says was the highlight of her life. “I thought we were all done! But he was a special gift that came along.” She calls the unexpected baby her favorite gift from God. When Justin was very young, Frank and Teenie realized that the potential for moving up with Texaco was limited, so they sold everything they owned in the Seattle area and bought a hunting guide company that provided horse packing for trips into the mountains west of Yakima. “We inherited a truck, put everything into it and headed to the mountains.” Frank says.They moved into a primitive house in the woods and left the city to pursue one of Frank’s passions. 

Every spare minute, Frank had spent hunting or fishing, often with the kids in tow, and taking on the outfitting company was a chance to do what he loved for a living. The hosted eight day pack trips along the Wonderland Trail at Mt. Rainier, one of which Teenie joined him for. “I had never even been on a horse!” she says, “I got to go on the trip and some of those women were so good - they helped me learn how to start a fire and cook food!” She got a taste of the rugged life that her husband and children loved. The Johnsons built a new house and shortly afterward, the makeshift cabin they had been living in burnt to the ground. 

The company offered different types of guiding and packing for outdoor sportsmen, and during one trip, Frank had to take over guiding a mountaineering group on Mt. Adams without time to take the large multi-purpose truck and horse trailer back to the ranch. Teenie was stuck driving the cumbersome outfit down the winding switchbacks of Mt. Adams with a 2 speed rear end and complicated gear shifting system in the truck that the family had inherited. “She was a good sport,” Frank laughs, “to go along with it.” Teenie says there was no choice, and even though she had no experience operating the truck or negotiating the trailer around the hairpin turns, it had to be done. 

The Johnsons operated the packing company,  Indian Creek Corral, for 8 years, while Frank worked at White Pass ski resort as a lift operator in the winter season. One night coming down the ski hill, Frank said he was in too much of a hurry and broke both of the bones in his lower leg, ending his career in the packing business after several months in a cast. When he tried to return to the trail with his horses in a walking cast, he injured his knee severely clearing brush for a pack train. He was helicoptered out of the wilderness and his teenage daughter and son had to guide the train of pack “dudes” back out. Frank says the injury ultimately made a court reporter out of him, as he and Teenie realized that it was time for a career change. 

They moved to California, and after a brief try working at a thoroughbred horse ranch, Kathleen saw an ad in the newspaper for court reporter training. Frank enrolled for a year of training in Los Angeles and went straight to work in that area as a reporter until he found an open position in John Day, Oregon, working with a Judge who served six counties. For eight years he worked in rural eastern Oregon, traveling with the judge to small towns around the country. In the meantime, Frank invested in a Mooney Mark 21 airplane and learned how to fly it. 

As their youngest son Justin became involved in high school sports, Frank realized he was gone so much that he was missing most of his kids major milestones while he traveled around the state. He took a new job in the Miami area, but they weren’t in Florida long before the whole family missed the western states, so they moved back, first to Boise, then back to John Day, the Monterey area of California, and eventually, back to Seattle. “I love Seattle the most, it was always home to me.” Says Teenie, who was happy to back in her childhood home. Frank acquired a sailboat during their time in Seattle, and learned to sail. Frank laughs about how good natured Kathleen was about his many hobbies and career changes. “She went along with everything!” and Kathleen says she wouldn’t change a thing. “I have never not wanted to do what he wanted to do - it just felt natural.” 

Frank retired in 1986 and for twenty years, the couple spent every winter together in Mexico, loading a boat on top of a truck canopy and pulling a 31 foot trailer down to the beaches of Mexico. For the first ten years they stayed near Guadalajara, and then they began spending winters on the Barra De Navidad, where Frank could deep sea fish to his heart’s content. 

In 2000, the couple moved to Kettle Falls to be near their youngest son and grandchildren. Still riding horses until last year when he suffered a fall that set him back, Frank and Teenie have remained as active as life would allow. Teenie often asks her son Justin, a talented musician, to perform her favorite song for her at his shows. “The Impossible Dream”, from the play Man of La Mancha, is a fitting theme for a couple who have spent more than 70 years chasing down their dreams together. Frank and Teenie will celebrate their 71st wedding anniversary in March - a landmark that seems as much like the impossible dream as anything these days. Through war times and peace, rich and poor, highs and lows, Frank and Teenie tell the story of more than seven decades of commitment, devotion and adventure together. 

Preserving The Story Of The Falls

Kettle Falls Historical Center Brings the Past Alive

By Liv Stecker

The Grand Coulee Dam stopped the flow of the Columbia River in March of 1940. As the waters of Lake Roosevelt began to rise, members of the Colville Indian tribe scrambled to relocate remains from their sacred burial grounds and move thousands of years of cultural history out of harm's way before it was lost forever under water. The dam was an economic boost to the struggling farmlands of central Washington that carried an undocumented cost to the Native American culture and ecology along the Upper Columbia. The job market flourished and a future for wheat farmers statewide was secured but countless tiny towns and historical sites were drowned by the flood of progress. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lake Roosevelt was drawn down to accommodate the construction of a third powerhouse on Grand Coulee Dam. In 1969, the waters were low enough to expose the once powerful Kettle Falls. Anthropologist David Chance, from the University of Idaho, seized this opportunity to conduct excavations around the old falls, on a mission to recover pieces of history lost in the lake.

 

As Chance dug up layers of the 9000-year-old story of Kettle Falls, the seed of an idea took root. A handful of local Kettle Falls residents, including the granddaughter of the last "Salmon Chief" of the Kettle Falls salmon runs, realized that they had an opportunity to document the culture and history that had been buried under 380 feet of water. In the mid 1970s, Rowena Macintosh, Darrell Shute, Bill Brauner and Eileen Weatherman formed a committee to develop a Historical Center for the culturally rich Kettle Falls area. As the idea took shape, Washington Water Power (now Avista Utilities) donated 6 acres of land above the river to the Historical Center.

The property was adjacent to the historical site of Fort Colville, operated by Hudson's Bay Company in the early 1800s and the St. Paul Mission, established near the falls in 1845. Prior to European contact, the falls served as a culturally important gathering place that was quickly capitalized on by the emerging fur trade. From pre-history until the powerful falls were inundated in the 1940 flooding of Lake Roosevelt, there was an unceasing stream of commerce and community celebration in the area of Kettle Falls.

The mission of the Kettle Falls Historical Center is "to preserve the history of 9000 years of habitation." The volunteers and board members seek to fulfill this by putting on display the people and the culture surrounding the falls, and to educate the community. Board president Steve Schott says that Kettle Falls once was "one of the richest, and most generous environments on earth." Before salmon harvesting would begin, Native Americans had thanksgiving feasts while the fish moved by, until the salmon chief gave the nod to begin. This conservation practice was maintained for generations, allowing for the healthy maintenance of salmon populations in the Upper Columbia, a vital dietary staple of numerous regional tribes.

David Chance's excavations instigated a movement by local residents that resulted in a dedicated group of people who volunteer tirelessly to preserve area history and educate visitors and upcoming generations. The Center opened in 1984, in a building constructed entirely using donated materials and volunteer labor. Open from May 15 - September 15 every year, it is still staffed entirely by volunteers and funded through donations, fundraisers and membership fees. Members of the Kettle Falls Historical Center pay $15 for individuals and $20 for a family membership, which includes unlimited entrance to the Center, 10% off of purchases at the Shop at the Falls, the Center gift shop, and a newsletter subscription.

Each spring, the Center holds an art and writing contest for local students. The theme for the writing contest this year is "Means of Transportation Before 1900", and the art contest has different divisions for the mediums of painting, photography and more. The winning students are awarded cash prizes, and the art and writing is featured on display for the first two weeks that the Center is open in the spring. The entire month of June will feature a community art show, featuring local artists of all varieties on display. In July the Center will showcase Native American Art and Culture. Membership in the Historical Center means access to all of these unique displays and a chance to learn more about our culturally rich area.

The "Shop At The Falls" gift shop inside the Historical Center

On Saturday, April 18th, the Kettle Falls Historical Center will be holding their annual fundraising auction on site at the museum starting at 10 AM. Local businesses and individuals donated over 100 auction items and gift certificates. All proceeds go to the upkeep and development of the Center. The opening day event this year for the Historical Center is Saturday, May 16^th.

A pine dugout canoe crafted on site at the museum

With the exception of last year, the Center has conducted the auction and the writing and art contest. Due to unforeseen circumstances involving the board of directors and the volunteers, a series of losses due to illness and life circumstances set the Center back on it's heels and unable to staff certain events and days at the museum. New volunteers are beginning to step up, but the need for fresh faces and new eyes on the project is vital for the long-term survival of the Historical Center. Donations and community involvement are the critical piece to ensuring the continuation of the museum and the work that goes on there. The museum opens May 15^th for the 2015 season. To become a member, swing by between the hours of 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM.

You can find more information at The Kettle Falls Historical Center website: https://sites.google.com/site/kettlefallshistoricalcenter/, or call 509-738-6964.

A Stage Full of Stories

By Liv Stecker

It's been just shy of 28 years since Kathleen Malcolm first took the stage in Kettle Falls. A friend in her water aerobics class talked her into coming to auditions for a show called "Here's Love". A self-proclaimed introvert, Kathleen took a small role, and worked to avoid speaking on stage. But silent support was not her theatrical destiny. Since 1987, Kathleen has performed in more shows than she can count, commonly in a lead role. Her most recent part was fall of 2014 when she played the nervous, uptight mother of free spirit Corrie Bender in the Neil Simon comedy, Barefoot In The Park. Malcolm stole the scene as a middle-aged conservative who, through accident and hilarity, rediscovers her youth and romance with an eccentric Don Juan.

This spring, Kathleen has taken on a role that is somewhat new for her, even after nearly thirty years in the theater business. As director of the Woodland Theater spring musical, she has tackled more than ninety minutes of beloved Dr. Seuss storybook characters set to music. Seussical the Musical starts at the theater on March 6th, and not only introduces local audiences to Kathleen as musical director and choreographer extraordinaire, but also for the first time, extra weekend matinee shows and special pricing for children’s tickets. Another unusual practice for Woodland Theater and their yearly musical production - this show will be done without the traditional support of the Woodland orchestra. The traditional live musicians will be taking a year off in the wake of personal and organizational changes, and the Seussical stage performance comes with a soundtrack that keeps the entire 36 member cast on their toes and the show humming right along.

Long before Kathleen joined the troupe in Kettle Falls, the old theater building was drawing crowds and entertaining locals. Built in 1940 by H.B. Woods from Republic, Washington, it originally served as a movie theater when the town of Meyers Falls was merged with Kettle Falls and there was a sudden population increase. Construction of the Grand Coulee Dam had forced the relocation of Kettle Falls and many other small towns along the Columbia, as the lower lying settlements were flooded with the rising waters of Lake Roosevelt. For over 20 years, The Kettle Falls Theatre entertained moviegoers from around the region. In 1962 the theater closed down. For more than ten years the building was used for a variety of purposes until the Old Mission Art Gallery, a consortium of local artists, purchased the building for $11000 in 1974. After a remodel, the theater became a showcase for local artists and occasional live performances.

In 1977 Helen Acorn, a feisty local drummer, organized a live dance band at the theater that was affectionately dubbed the “Farmer’s Philharmonic.” That began a series of musical performances and annual traditions that took root and morphed into a theater arts group called Woodland’s. In 1988, Woodland Productions purchased the theater from the Old Mission Art Gallery, and a series of remodels and upgrades followed through the years. Staging one musical production a year, plus numerous concerts and drama productions, Woodland’s Theater has continued to flourish and grow since.

The Seussical cast draws from all ages and all walks of life. The various stories of cast members and their background in the community is even more diverse than the shows that Woodland’s stages. Nancy Christopher joined the theater within two years of Kathleen, and much like the Seussical director, has acted in, directed and produced more shows than she can list. In addition to producing Seussical, Nancy plays the Sour Kangaroo, once again pulling her weight as a guiding voice of experience on stage with large cast. Both Nancy and Kathleen have decades of good memories at the little theater. Friends and family members that they have introduced to theater continue to perform and attend, while there are other family members and friends that the theater has introduced to them. There is no denying the close-knit sense of community that the cast of a show finds backstage during countless hours of rehearsal. Despite differences of lifestyle, religious preferences, age groups and motivations, the all-volunteer community at Woodland’s is a beautiful glimpse of our diverse area.

The cast of Seussical is a stirring combination of veteran actors like Adam Huff, who returns to the stage to play Horton the Elephant, and brand new additions, including exchange student Robin Apostel from Germany who plays a mischievous and charismatic Cat in The Hat. Nearly a third of the cast members are under the age of 12, as young as 7 years old, making backstage management almost as much of an adventure as the drama on stage. Nancy and Kathleen, along with a small army of stage parents, have ample experience wrangling young actors, after shows like Annie, The Wizard of Oz and Oliver, all stories calling for a large and young cast. Seussical the Musical is an endearing story of friendship, loyalty and bravery that weaves its way through the plots of most of Dr. Seuss’s stories, featuring some of the most loved characters from the children’s books.

Seussical takes the stage on Friday, March 6^th, and runs through the 22^nd. Tickets are available at Main Street Floral in Colville, kids under 12 are $7, students and seniors are $12, and adults are $15. Opening night, March 6^th only, all seats are $10 (no kids tickets are available for this show).