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18.0 Fishtown Influences

5/27/2016

15 Comments

 
     The summer of 1974 was one of the most important times in my life.   I had just finished my sophomore year at Penn State and was accepted as a summer field school student at Washington State University’s Fishtown Archaeological Project.  This would be my first opportunity to see the Western U.S., and needless to say, I was excited about both the travel and the archaeological experiences that awaited.
     I flew into Seattle, took the Greyhound bus to Mt. Vernon, and then was picked up by a dig member and taken to La Conner.  The archaeology camp was located off of Dodge Valley Road at Margaret Lee’s farm up on the bluff overlooking the North Fork of the Skagit River.  I remember driving up the private road to the farm, under the thick tree cover, and thinking it reminded me a lot of the wooded hills of Western Pennsylvania.  I immediately felt at home.  The camp was spread out over the farm with the cook tent and lab building near the farmhouse while the sleeping tents were in a back pasture.  The Lees let their cattle graze under the trees.  Being so “up-close-and-personal” to livestock was a first for me, but I soon got to enjoy being around them.  After all, we were the intruders and had taken over their pasture.  All in all, it was a magical place to spend the summer, and I felt so lucky to be able to be there to experience it.

     Living on the Lee Farm allowed us to get into La Conner on a regular basis, and the town in 1974 had yet to become the tourist destination it is today.  My personal recollection of the town is pretty sketchy, and I mainly remember going to the “Tav” (still going strong as the La Conner Pub & Eatery) and the 1890’s (now the lounge connected to the La Conner Seafood & Prime Rib Restaurant) to drink pitchers of beer, dance, and shoot pool.  I was underage at the time (by a year) and had to be careful not to get caught by the local policeman when he was making his rounds.  I also recall taking showers at the marina on a less than regular basis.  We were just a bunch of archaeology students, but to the locals I’m sure we were on the same basis as those hippie Fishtown artists—tolerated but not necessarily embraced.
     This was my first archaeological field experience, and it presented a great opportunity to learn.  Skʷikʷikʷab, or Fishtown (site number 45SK99), was once a Lower Skagit seasonal fish camp where evidence of two houses was found.  The WSU field school was directed by Dr. Astrida Blukis Onat and lasted from the end of June through August.  Teams of four or five members would rotate weekly to gain a variety of experiences.  We did a week of site survey, which allowed us to look for evidence of cultural materials at Bowman Beach, Similk Beach, and the “new” construction of the marina at Shelter Bay.  We spent a week doing wet (hydraulic) archaeology using pumps and hoses, looking for organic cultural remains along the edge of what was once an old beach (where water once stood, the area had long since been diked and reclaimed for farming and was currently a pea field).  Some basketry materials were found and dated to be about 1220 years old (plus/minus 70 years).  We spent the remainder of our time doing typical “dry” archaeology using shovels, trowels and whisk brooms.  It was an exceptional introduction to field archaeology and the experience acted both to whet my appetite for archaeology and to return to the Pacific Northwest the following summer to dig again.
     Every day we would gather our equipment and walk down the hill to the boardwalk and travel the mile or so to the site on the north side of the ridge.  It was amazing walking by the shacks/cabins that were along the boardwalk next to the river.  I remember their looking really funky and cozy and great places to just watch the River roll by.  They probably were drafty and cold in the winter---I’m sure they had wood stoves to keep folks toasty and warm.  These little houses all had a vibrancy and the feel of a life independently and creatively lived.  As a 20-year-old kid, the lifestyle was very appealing to me and proved to be a strong influence on my own life.  Although I never had the opportunity to visit in them, or to meet any of their artist-residents, I took from this experience a strong desire to create and to paint. 
See the Wikipedia article on the Fishtown art colony at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishtown_(art_colony)

Picture
Boardwalk at Fishtown. Photo: David King (n.d.) copied from wikipedia
     It seemed to me that the Fishtown artists were strongly influenced by Asian art.  However, I was immediately taken by Native art and culture and desired to learn as much as possible.  I purchased my now terribly worn paperback copy of Bill Holm’s NWC Indian Art: An Analysis of Form and studied it carefully.  However, it would take years of study and experimentation for me to feel comfortable painting in the northern formline style.  The summer of 1974 was my introduction to Native Northwest Coast art, and it had a profound effect on me. 
     Now that I have returned to the Skagit Valley and La Conner, I have turned my interests to Japanese art.  Maybe those Fishtown artists had more of an impact on me than I thought.  Or maybe it’s just the Valley speaking.  Regardless, I am indebted to Fishtown.  Its spirit survives in me in a unique and special way.
15 Comments
steve robinson
11/5/2016 10:58:44 am

Hi! In the summers of '69 and '70 I worked as Astrida's assistant at Fishtown. Those years it was a Seattle Central Community College Fieldshool. I stumbled on your page while looking for Astrida's publications one the site(s). At the end of the '69 season I excavated with a small crew at the Conway Interrchange on I-5.

Reply
Astrida R Blukis Onat
12/23/2016 04:22:04 pm

Hi there!
Must be the time of life to connect with the past and the people who inhabited that time.
Steve Robinson wrote me and we have been emailing back and forth for about a week.
It is possible that Jan H told me you were in LaConner but somehow I did not remember. Did you come to the Fishtown artists show at the Museum of NW art? or was that before you arrived in LaConner?
I no longer do archaeology but still work with Swinomish, so next time I'm in LaConner, we might have to have a visit.
Best to you, Astrida

Reply
John Peter Presson
7/6/2021 12:21:47 pm

My mom and I were talking about our happy experiences at the Fishtown 68 or 69 dig -she was telling me one of the reasons she got the gig was I got along well with the director's son. I remember it well the walks along the boardwalk, the sandbars at the bottom of the stairs from the bluff the Lee farm was on, the old smoke house on the boardwalk, being given an earth sifter and playing archeologist with the best of them.

It was one of the happiest memories of my life and certainly a most excellent adventure of a life time.

Reply
STEVE robinson
7/10/2021 12:27:41 pm

John, you and your mother must have been at Fishtown for the summer dig of 1969, since you mention "Mash" (Bill? Mashmeir) who was one of a half dozen Vietnam vets on the dig that year. What was your mother's name? It will probably not ring a bell however. A few names I do recall are Yvette Jordan, Mary Wells, Jan Hollenbeck and her sister, who were sort of camp followers and not enrolled in the course... also Joan Melchoir. There was also a Marcia? Hastings who was another Seattle Community College instructor who was teaching an art course which most of the dig students were also enrolled in.

John Peter Presson
7/13/2021 12:08:06 pm

Steve -Bobbi or Barbara -her last name was the same as mine during that period -she was an Phys Anthropology masters student at the UW at the time

John Peter Presson
7/13/2021 12:18:52 pm

I remember Mash being something of a "salty" character (not a terribly bad memory mind you)--that would probably explain a lot of it. After 50 some years and the fact I was 5 1/2 or so, I have to admit the names sort run together.

John Peter Presson
7/13/2021 12:23:49 pm

Mom was (is) a professional musician -you might remember that.

Tina Granmo Wynecoop
2/2/2018 09:16:54 pm

I was on the dig at Fishtown in the summer of 1968. I remember Mrs. Lee so well. And her wonderful home filled with her treasures. I remember brushing my teeth outside my tent and watching the sun filter through the conifers. So lovely. I think that was the only time the sun shown all summer. I remember the reading list Sandra Hastings had us read in the evenings. I wish I knew what was on that list 50 years later. I remember Mark Onat was just a little kid and fit into the dig group just fine. I remember needing some calories and the best way was to head toward La Conner and there was a hamburger stand along the back road and we got chocolate/peanut butter milkshakes.
I remember excavating lots and lots of fish vertebrae. I remember taking baths in the Skagit River and getting terrible sick with diarrhea from doing so. The board walk through Fish Town was long and bumpy and memorable too. I remember the moon landing - and laying on my back and trying so hard to take it all in that summer. I remember the hand dug latrine. The cooking assignments were interesting. Somehow me and another dig member only had beef tongue to cook. Nobody ate that meal.
There is much more tucked away in the caches of a young woman's memory. Two years later I moved to a reservation on the east side of the cascades to teach school. I married a tribal member. My home library is double-shelved with books related to the indigenous people. Who knew a next-door neighbor's (Connie Wood) invitation to sign up for Astrida Onat's summer field school would change the direction of my life.

Reply
steve robinson
2/3/2018 06:03:45 am

Great post, Tina! However, you must have been there in 1969 if you watched the Moon Landing in the Lee's livingroom. Where you one of the student cooks who insisted in adding dill to everything? I have some photos from the summers of '69 and '70 how about you?

Reply
John Peter Edward Presson
7/6/2021 07:52:03 am

My mom was on the Fishtown dig site as a physical anthropology masters student in the summer of what must have been 1969 or 70. I remember as a 6 year old child of a single mother, it was the adventure of a life time. I remember a man named Mash, and a man named "Hooper" who drove a motour scooter

I would die to have photos from the 69 site adventure. I mapped it out on Google a few years ago. I could almost walk it in my sleep

John Peter Presson
7/6/2021 08:54:52 am

Maybe it was 68

John Peter Presson
4/24/2024 01:55:13 pm

I am wondering if anyone remembers the Lee's bull named Bernie? If I remember, the students referred to him as "Berniece" because his unusually high pitched moo.

Reply
steve robinson
7/6/2021 01:52:57 pm

quite a burst of Fishtown comments this morning after all these years! I seem to remember Astrida's young son as being quite a pest, but perhaps it was John Peter who was the pest. A few years ago Astrida sent me a few Fishtown photos, mostly of students I have no memories of. I'm not sure I could send or post those photos even if I could find them, as Astrida had to negotiate with the Swinomish to get permission to send them to me.

Reply
John Peter Edward Presson
7/6/2021 06:18:50 pm

LOL -I can be quite the annoyance when I need to be, and at age 6 (Bobbi's lad)in an immersive world like the Fishtown dig....I was just too busy having fun.

I was in Seattle visiting my mum, and somehow the Fishtown adventure came up in conversation as one of the happiest summers in family memory. The trip was virtually committed to memory -I5 to Conway, cross the river onto Fir Road, turn right and then left on the Best Road bridge, just a little past the Rex store, left on Dodge then right at the "T" and follow the road 2-3 cattle grates into the farm. Did it on Google maps the other day. Mom jogged my memory with names like Mash, Cooper (or Hooper) and Astrid and her kid Mark.

I was really quite surprised that there is ANY online record of this dig as the memory of the internet barely goes back to the 90's.

Not to be excessively mawkish, but it was a summer to remember

Reply
Katrina link
11/23/2023 02:47:44 pm

Hi nice reading your bllog

Reply



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    Gary Giovane

    Gary Giovane has been studying art since the ‘70s. A graduate of Penn State University (B.S.) & Memphis State (M.A.T.), Gary has been an archeologist, a cook, and a high school science & math teacher.  Gary worked on the Fishtown, Ozette, & Indian Island archeological projects before teaching for 23 years in Neah Bay and for 7 years in La Conner.  He currently lives and works in La Conner, along with his wife, Leigh.

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