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Page A;16 Shelton-Mason County — Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020
msranYArA Gums
Looking back atShelton in October of 1 968
From the Shelton- Journal,
October 1968
taff at the newly completed Mason General
Hospital on Mountain View spent Oct. 3 mov-
ing patients from Shelton General Hospital
into the new facility. (Shelton General, built in 1920
on Fourth Street between Birch and Laurel, was de-
molished in 1972.) "
On Oct. 8, the. Industrial For-
estry Association presented Simp-
son Timber Co., with an award
recognizing the company’s quar-
ter century of participation in
the American Tree Farm System.
Simpson’s South Olympic Tree
Farm was begun as a cooperative
organization in 1943. By 1968,
17 million tree seedlings had
been planted. The 32,000 acres
of reforested land created during
the period were anticipated to
produce a potential annual supply
of 22 million board feet of logs for Simpson’s Shelton
manufacturing plants.
During construction of the Harstine Island bridge,
a cable snapped as a crane was lifting a heavy
concrete column in place, causing the crane to tip-
sideways on its barge, and dumping the column into
Pickering Passage. The column was recovered, un-
damaged, but ordering parts and repairing the crane
set the project back by about a week.
Shelton Patrolman Don Smith got a jolt when a
home-made bomb was thrown at his patrol car as '
he turned onto Railroad Avenue from Second Street
at about 9 pm. on Tuesday, Oct. 15. The device
landed about a foot from the car, just ahead of the
rear wheel. Patrolman Smith said the explosion “was
powerful enough to rock the patrol car and impaired
my hearing for a few minutes.” The bomb had been
contained in a small cardboard box, and officers were
By JAN
PARKER
(. .. . Hawaw..-“ -.-e_..._....__._. ..._N._..._.__ . . _. ____._. m mm.
... -_ . . ..
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2560-8984248] I .anet _,
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Harstine Island ferry, Harstine II, is shown in 1968.
Photo couresy of Mason County Historical Musuem
investigating to determine if ‘there was a connection
between it and a similar device that had been thrown
on the lawn at the home of Shelton’s juvenile proba-
tion officer tWO weeks earlier.
The Shelton Shop Rite grocery store was selling a
. 3-pound tin of Maxwell House coffee for $1.89, Swan-
son’s TV dinners for 49 cents each, and pork chops
for 69 cents a pound. Mann Real Estate listed a 4 1/2
acre parcel on Arcadia Road with a three-stall barn
and a two-story, four bedroom, 1 1/2 bath house fea-
turing a circulating fireplace and large dining room
for $18,500. ,
Residents in the vicinity of the Shelton Gymna-
sium on 10th Street awoke on Sunday, Oct. 20 to the
sight of an 8-by-19-foot “George Wallace for Presi-
dent” political billboard hanging on the front of the
gym. The sign had been stolen from a vacant lot on
Olympic Highway North earlier in the week. The Ma- ;
son County Sheriff s Office charged four high school
boys with the sign’s “change of location.” With the
cooperation of their parents, the boys purchased the
materials necessary to restore the sign, and put it
back in its original location. ,
On Sunday, Oct. 27, a new record was set for the
number of vehicles using the Harstine Island ferry.
The previous record, set on the 4th of July weekend,
was 249 vehicles. The new record was “a whopping
261 vehicles of assorted shapes that came and went,”
and was due at least in part to an unprecedented
number of hunters traveling to and from the island,
and to non-islanders wanting to ride the ferry once
more before the new bridge was completed.
. Voters were being encouraged to turn out for the
upcoming election, which included the presidential
contest between Hubert H. Humphrey and Richard
M. Nixon. The state of Washington “had 'a proudre- ,‘
cord of at least 80 percent turnout for the past three ‘
Presidential elections,” but only 45 percent of the
million-and-a-half registered voters in the state had
voted in the September 1968 primary election. Elec-
tion day, which in 1968 was Tuesday Nov.v5, was at
that time a legal holiday in Washington state.
The Shelton Jaycees warned that its haunted Hal-
loween house at Fourth and Birch Street, open the
nights of Oct. 29, 30, and 31, would include spooks,
goblins, witches, and other “horrors beyond belief,”
and that “If you have a weak heart PLEASE do not
attend!” In Union, the David Ray Orthopedic Auxil-
iary planned a Halloween carnival for Nov. 4, to be
held at the fire hall. The party would include cos-
tume judging, refreshments and games. Dayton-area
residents had a party‘ at Dayton Hall on Halloween
night.
I Jan Parker is a researcher for the Mason County
Historical Museum. She‘can be reached at parkerj@ i
‘ hctc.com. Membership in the Mason County Histori- ‘
cal Society is per year.