By Jack Brummet, Green River Valley Editor
This photo of Kent's Meeker Street, about three blocks west of the Bus Depot,
was taken in 1945, about 18 years before the events described here. Meeker
Street didn't look much different at all, except the cars were newer.
Before rural and suburban areas around Seattle had a metropolitan bus and train system; before they created the Howard Hansen Dam that would prevent the Green, Black, and White Rivers from flooding the valley in which I grew up, we had The Greyhound and Red's Bus Depot. After my father died in 1964, the Greyhound was how we got around. . .if we got around. Getting around was going to Seattle on the bus at Christmas to window-shop and have a sandwich or sundae at The Copper Kettle, or the Paul Bunyan Room at one of the now defunct Seattle department stores.
Red's Kent Bus Depot, located on Meeker Street, two doors in from Central Avenue, was a magical, male, perfect small town place. Being the bus depot in a 3,000 person
[ed's note: in later decades, it would become a nearly 100,000 person city] town meant that you were a hub of activity.
Red (a/k/a Gordon Mageness) ran the cafe and Bubbins sold tickets and managed the Greyhound side of the operation. Bubbins even wore a green eyeshade, a vest, and a garter on his crisp, white long-sleeved shirt with a perfectly double-knotted Windsor tie. I don't have a picture of Bubbins, but he looked like an older, shorter (!) Harry Truman, well-haberdashed, a little cranky, and very business-like.
A chocolate malt served in a glass identical to those
used at Red's Bus Depot Cafe
Red was unusual in Kent for being a life-long bachelor. He had been married early (to whom????), and I remember often visiting our relatives in the Hillcrest Cemetery and we would stop at the joint grave of his children, who either died at birth, or early in life. I remember the elaborate gravestone, in bronze, with lambs on it. [
Were they twins? How did they die? Who was his wife??]. No one ever talked about his wife. I don't know what happened with their marriage. Red was the only man we knew who was a bachelor. All I could figure out about being a bachelor was it meant you could own a speedboat, belong to the Elks' club, and go to the barbershop every day for a trim and a shave. He was surrounded by friends at work, ate dinner at the Elks, and even owned a chunk of a racing filly. . .bachelorhood looked OK.
From the time I was about eight years old, Red would frequently have me run over two blocks to Dunham's Grocery for iceberg lettuce, tomatoes or onions, or to have Ray Dunham grind 12 more pounds of sirloin. These missions were always good for a quarter and a vanilla malt.
Red's cafe menu listed hamburgers, cheeseburgers, tuna-fish and toasted cheese sandwiches, soup, chips (regular and barbecue), cottage cheese and canned pineapple wheels nestled in fronds of iceberg lettuce, floats and sodas, ice cream cones, sundaes, hot fudge sundaes, banana splits, milkshakes (served in a tall glass along with the "extra" in the metal container), Boyd's coffee, tea, grapefruit, orange, and tomato juice, milk, bottled soda pop (only beer came in cans), and Green River on tap
[ed's note: Green River was developed in 1919 by the Schoenhofen Brewery of Chicago as a non-alcoholic product for the Prohibition era. It was popular for many decades as a soda fountain syrup, and for many years, trailed only Coca Cola in popularity].
Watching Red make milkshakes was a sensuous experience. He slapped a spotless and gleaming stainless steel container on the counter and used a polished scoop (that sat in a container under a trickle of warm water) to dig three generous scoops of vanilla ice cream from a three gallon tub, pumped in a stream of chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry syrup, followed by a righteous pour of whole Smith Brothers milk (the dairy my friends Jim, Kathleen and Frances's extended family owned) and a scoop of malt, if you sprang for an extra nickel. He walked over and snapped the metal container into the pale green shake machine with a decisive click, flipped the switch and the medium-pitched whirring began. After an indeterminate, but always perfect period of mixing, he poured it into a tall glass, and left the rest on the counter.
If you fancied soup, he opened a single-serving size of Campbell's and dumped it into a proprietary Campbell's soup heater. There were usually a few cheeseburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches cooking on the flat steel grill, along with a pile of onions sizzling in a pool of golden fat. Next to the ancient (even then) manual cash register, were candy bars, cigars, snoose, combs, rain bonnets, nail clippers, aspirin, cigarettes, mints, Callard and Bowser's butterscotch, Cadbury's chocolate, Big Hunks, Dots, Junior Mints, Three Musketeers, Baby Ruths, Butterfingers, Almond Joys, Mountain Bars (made in Tacoma), and gum. Across the floor was a rack of newspapers and magazines: Time, Life, Post, Detective Magazines, the women's magazines (Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, and the like), tabloids, Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. I don't think he carried any skin magazines. Playboy had recently debuted in the 60's, but this was more or less a family cafe. He probably kept the Playboys in the mysterious back room).
The bus depot's decor was minimal: a few tattered travel and bus posters, a black and white television, and a large portrait of F.D.R. My father-in-law Pete acquired the FDR poster when the depot closed down. It now resides in his den. There was a black and white TV on the wall (I never saw a color TV until I was in 11th grade at a friend's house).
The place was a fascinating mix of blue collar and white collar. Lawyers, merchants, dentists, and judges sat side by side with furnace repairmen, framers, sheetrockers, roofers, and like my Dad and Norm Peterson, Bill Cavanaugh, Al Corkins, Al Simms, and Al Conwell. I remember seeing my future father-in-law--Pete Curran-- there, along with his brother and some of their law partners. They were the guys wearing suits. My dad and his brethren wore overalls, or blue work shirts and jeans. . .usually spattered with paint, mud, or engine grease.
The mayor of the town, Alex Thorton, who owned a car repair shop a few blocks down Central Avenue,
showed up on occasion--. I remember seeing Lou Kerhiaty, who owned the town's Ben Franklin (a/k/a Dime Store), and the Yahns, who owned Edline-Yahn funeral parlor. Kenny Iverson. a friend of my dad's, was the shortest man I knew. He was the only one of our friends who wore a suit. He was a salesman. Of course, the lawyers and funeral directors also wore suits, and some of the businessmen and druggists, and bankers. But most our our family's friends were strictly blue collar. Red presided over a fascinating amalgam of blue and white collar folks.
Although United Parcel Service was founded in Seattle in 1907, I never remember seeing a UPS truck. In those days, Greyhound was what UPS later became. Every bus coming from Seattle and elsewhere carried packages destined for Kent. Auto parts, chemicals, mail order clothes, gifts, and tools all arrived in the Greyhound cargo holds. If you needed a package sent or delivered, you either used the Post Office (as it was then called) or you used Greyhound. They didn't deliver, however. You went to the Bus Depot to pick up your packages: carburetors, bolts of muslin, cartons of books, seeds, and farm implements.
I remember being in the Bus Depot on November 22, 1963. . .and the fellas asking me who would be President now. There were no tears at the bus depot that day, but there was a stunned sort of hush as people watched events unfold on the black and white TV hung on the wall. I knew the name Lyndon Johnson somehow. The bus house gang were Democrats, but Scoop Jackson/JFK defense/blue-dog Democrats. I was awarded a soda for knowing LBJ's name.
The dark oak back-bar was even by the early 1960's looking ancient, with dark heavily-veined, and probably smoke-encrusted wood. The glass-fronted cabinets lining the back bar were filled with soda bottles that looked like they hailed from the 19th century. There was Nehi Soda, NuGrape, Honey Dew (made in the Seattle area), a brand of Sarsaparilla, Orange Crush, RC, Dr. Pepper, Shasta soda (another northwest brand), Bubble-Up, Kickapoo Joy Juice, YooHoo chocolate, Seven-up, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Schweppes Ginger Ale and Bitter Lemon, and a glass globe of green lime syrup, which Red mixed with seltzer to make the beloved Green River soft drink.
Three beautiful leather dice cups with yellowed ivory dice sat on the bar for low-key gambling. If you wanted to roll the dice for lunch, Red was always game. You got a free lunch, or paid double if you lost. I think the odds were pretty even if you were a regular; it was something to do.
If you were friends with Red (and who wasn't?), in the back room there was a "jug." He just might invite you in the back for a "snort." The jug was a half gallon of Seagram's 7 Crown or Jim Beam. I can't remember how it was dispensed--did they mix it into the standard drink I remember all adults I knew drank (the 7 & 7)? Among my people, hillbillies one generation removed from the hills, a drink meant a Seven & Seven, a/k/a, a Seagram's with Seven-up. Or beer, which was not really considered an alcoholic beverage. Some of my friends' fathers left for work with a six pack in their pickup and returned home with a fresh "sixer." And they had probably also stopped into the Pastime, The Blinker, The Club, The Moonlite Inn, or The Virginia, for a snort on their way home.
The closing of the bus depot - In the late 1960's, The Bus Depot closed. Seattle and King County had passed "Metro," a sort of latter day WPA project that finally cleaned up Lake Washington (and did it very well), helped build the dam, and fund a comprehensive King County bus system (and tried to get a subway system passed...the failure of which is one of Seattle/King County's great mistakes). With the coming of Metro buses to Kent, there was no longer a need for a Greyhound bus stop there. If you were taking a bus to a distant place (I took the bus to NYC three times), you took Metro to Seattle and connected at the Greyhound Bus Terminal on Stewart Street. Metro offered Red a job at the Metro offices in downtown Seattle, and he took the job. In later years, I often stopped into their office (I think it was at 3rd and Marion) to say hi to Red, who sold monthly bus passes from a window in the lobby.
Other stories about Kent, Washington that have appeared here:
Square Dance At Valley Elementary
Foot Washing Baptists & The Catholic Devils
Cruising the Renton loop with a keg of nails
My Pathetic Political Career
Growing Up In Kent, Washington: Tarheels, Hayseeds, Hillbillies, and Crackers
Uncle Guy, more hillbilly cred, and living a good life
Fishing With The Old Man
Uncle Romey
It Can Happen Here: Japanese Relocation Camps, 1942-1946
More on the El Rancho Drive-in in Kent, Washington
Snack bar ads, intermission countdowns, and the El Rancho drive-in
Four more images of Kent, Washington in the 40's and 50's
Kent, Washington's Meeker Street 1946
Too good to leave in the comments: Scooter and the Hell's Angel Heavy chug-a-lugScooter and $2 all you can drink beer day at the Sundowner circa 1973
My Grandma's tavern in Carnation, Wash.
My Dog Slugger
Hucking Eggs in Kent, Washington
Home-made Hillbilly Toys
Square Dance At Valley ElementaryFoot Washing Baptists & The Catholic Devils
Hillbilly Cred
"Chicken Thieves Busy in Kent And Vicinity"
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