Waterfront Tale

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Waterfront Tale

“Seagulls are the unpaid guardians of public health,

keeping the waterfront free of garbage.”--Ivar Haglund.

When I was a kid in the 1950’s,

           Seattle was a gem of a city, 

           and every week I looked forward

                                     to a Saturday jaunt with my mother

                                     to the Waterfront;

first to the world famous Seattle Public Market,

           because my mother would only buy our

           meats & produce there, not trusting the

                                      shoddy practices of those new-fangled

                                      so-called Super Markets,

& we would stroll along the cement fairway,

always wet from the spray on local produce.

In those halcyon days,

when cars got 10 m.p.g.

& nobody noticed because gasoline was fifty cents a gallon,

at the market you could still hear       all the vendors singing out

               their wares, with lovely accents, in booming voices,

               reminding us that some of them still remembered

                                      their days of pushing carts on the street.

Elliott Bay was crowded with exotic tankers, cruise ships, sailboats

& an ever-churning repetitive line of ferries.

               The joyful capper to the shopping day

               was a visit to Pier 54, in the middle of the waterfront,

                                 at Ivar’s Fish Bar;

                                 always a zany adventure

since customers would just crowd up to the wide bar

               & shout out their orders, which

               in turn would be shouted out to the cooks.

One had to keep track of your own order, &

of your sacred place in the hungry throng,

                        because as the food came up, sometimes

                you had to arm wrestle another patron

who was trying to claim it. 

Back in the day

         there was no inside dining,

                  so we always felt like it was a seafood picnic, 

                             sitting in a covered area along the pier, or

                                         along the street. In winter Ivar had

installed overhead heaters to break the icy chill

blowing in off Elliott Bay.

We would just sit outside in the sea salt briskness,

                 happily munching our freshly fried

                 big pieces of lingcod fish & chips, sipping

                                          clam nectar, or slurping the thick

scrumptious clam chowder, or gobbling

                 the garlic off the Boston fried clams--

inhaling the seaweed oder

of kelp, saltwater, & creosote off the pier,

                 & feeding the seagulls, who would swarm there

                 begging          for french fries or seafood tidbits;

adjacent to the brightly painted

Seattle Fire boats, & only two piers away

                                 was the bustling WA State Ferry terminus

where double-decker Super Ferries chugged

in & out like seafaring Greyhound buses, blasting their whistles,

slamming into the clusters of piling, 

                 dropping the loading tongues with a metallic clank.

I know that all port cities boast of having

the world’s finest seafood, but I’m here to tell you,

the Alaskan lingcod served up by Ivar Hagland,

opening his restaurant in 1938,

                 just tasted better than everyone else’s,

                 fried up in some kind of secret batter,

                                  and served up with a supreme cup

                                  of incredible tarter sauce, never sweet,

kissed with vinegar, strewn with garlic dill & Walla-Walla

onion tidbits.

Ivar, a tireless self-promoter, a Seattle character forever,

had been a folk singer in the 40’s, 

having the likes of Woody Gutherie & Pete Seeger

                    as house guests, & he came to be dubbed

                    as King, Mayor, & Patriarch of the Waterfront,

                                  called himself the Flounder of his business,

which mushroomed into several up-scale full-tilt restaurants,

& a Seafood Bar franchise that is still expanding;

                    his motto & logo was Keep Clam. 

                    Since his death in 1985, 

             they have erected a statue of him,

standing & smiling in front of his flagship fish bar,

& now his beloved seagulls 

keep it decorated daily. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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