Washer in tavern tied to family history

Last Saturday morning, I woke my wife. “Get dressed. Roadtrip. We’re goin’ to Hillyard.”

“Hillyard?”

“It’s the Hillyard Festival, and I want to be with my people.”

“Shall I wear my ‘Daisy Dukes’ ?”

I thought she meant a basketball jersey.

“No, you’ll sunburn. We’ll be watching the big parade, bands and dancers in the park. And we’ll stop by to look in on the ‘Comet Lounge Toilet Paper Crisis’ to see if Bob Apple is putting out ‘free-access’ toilet paper in his bathrooms yet.”

Apple, the Spokane city councilman, owns the Comet.

“I am not going to the bathroom in a Hillyard tavern.” My wife has aristocratic lavatory sensibilities.

I added some bait to get her enthused about the Hillyard trip, “They say Hillyard has the largest concentration of antiques stores between Minneapolis and Seattle.”

She pulled out her debit card to make sure the magnetic strip had not been damaged during the night while we were sleeping.

We approached Hillyard from the south on Market Street. If we got into trouble, I planned our escape to the west, down Diamond Street into my old neighborhood where I know the alleys and hiding spots.

Nothing bad happened.

After the parade was over, we slipped into the relative coolness of the Comet Lounge and Restaurant.

Councilman Apple was in the building.

Without informing Mr. Apple of my hidden intention, I took leave to go to the bathroom, and get a look at what may or may not be a roll of toilet paper.

Inside the men’s room, I felt a powerful surge of guilt. Securely attached to the stall wall was a brand new top-of-the-line Bobrick stainless steel dispensing mechanism holding two standard rolls up to 51/4 inch diameter with a key lock. I believe this toilet paper dispenser was a spinoff from NASA-developed space technology. Toilet paper had never been so secure.

I exited the bathroom and slunk back to the bar where Mr. Apple gave me and my losing-interest-fast spouse a historical account of the “Hillyard Festival” (formerly Jim Hill Days, Hillyard Hi-Jinks, etc.) and the Comet Lounge.

I already knew some of the history of the Comet. For some 40 years, Apple’s place used to be called Usher’s Corner and catered to the thirst of the railroad workmen.

Usher’s Corner expanded in the 1950s by purchasing the adjacent tavern, specifically The Silver Dollar Tavern, which was owned by my parents, Zane Albert and Myrtie Maurine Krogh. Usher knocked out the wall and doubled his space. I wondered how my parents secured the toilet paper back then? Was it the same bathroom?

My wife and I bade adieu to our gracious innkeeper and drove up Market Street to Harmon Park where we further celebrated and discovered more about this place called Hillyard. You can do the same by going on the internet to Historic-Hillyard.com. No joke.

I called my mother from the park.

“Mom, where did you keep the toilet paper in the Silver Dollar Tavern?”

“I don’t recall that tavern you mentioned.” Long ago, my mother had become a model of tee-totling rectitude.

“You owned the Silver Dollar. A tavern in Hillyard,” I persisted.

“OK, we kept the toilet paper roll on a big nail next to the washer.”

“You had a washer and dryer in the tavern lavatory?”

“No. The handle on the toilet broke off, so your dad tied a big metal ring washer to a string and ran it inside the toilet to the flusher. Customers pulled the washer which was hooked to the string and the toilet flushed.”

“Didn’t the health department ticket you for that?”

“It was Hillyard,” she said with a tone of resignation in her voice like that detective who tries to calm an angry Jack Nicholson at the end of the movie, “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.”

Then anger rose in my mom’s voice, “The only ticket we got was from undercover cops, for gambling on the premises. And it was the cops who were doin’ the gambling.”

After a couple of months, she said dad replaced the metal washer with a new handle.

“Well, better late than never.”

“No,” she snapped.

“Why?”

“The customers boycotted our place. They wanted the new handle removed and the old ring washer put back on the string. They complained that the old ring washer flushed the toilet cleaner than the new handle.”

“And?”

“You gotta have customers. So I made your dad take off the handle and put the ring washer back on the string.”

Forget it, Jake, it’s Hillyard.

Note: Darin Z. Krogh’s grandfather owned and operated Andy’s Barbershop in south Hillyard during the 1960s where the customer could always get the crewcut of his choice.