History as told by Weaver Dial

Seafair Pirate history as told by Weaver Dial
Weaver Dial 1917-1993 One of a kind. With his boundless energy, many talents and sparkling wit, he was truly the pirate's pirate. A leader and inspiration to all of us. A pirate original. He was Captain Kidd in 1962 and Davy Jones in 1989.

I was introduced in 1953 by Barney Harvey. He was a newspaper man for the Seattle Times, At that time you had to ,be a member or associate member of the Washington Press Club, They included just about everybody-writers, printers, Didn't have to be newspaper work. You could print menus and -they let you in.

Well, I was a custodial engineer for the Seattle Schools. That was my job, I was a boiler operator, A friend of mine worked in the city collector's office where they had all the documentation and stuff.

They all met in one room up at the old County City Budding, and that's where Barney Harvey and all the newspaper guys were, They had a regular room down there where they chipped in and they bought bottles. Some drank soda pop and others drank the whiskey, And they used to meet down there during their breaks, So he met a good friend of mine-Don was his name, I'd known him when we were boys together, Barney says he'd make a good Pirate. 'Oh, no,' he says 'not me, but I know a guy that would. ' And he suggested me to Barney, who was a member of the Press Club.

So then when I talked about it I said, 'Yeah. Well take a crack at it. ' l says, 'Where do you meet em? 'So he says, 'Well, you go up , . . 'and so that's how I got introduced to Barney and he took me into his Press club and introduced me, And that was in 1953, see.

The Ale and Quad Society was the rump organization of the Seattle Press Club. That was all the younger men, see. And then when Greater Seattle decided they were gonna have a summer festival, they thought they would help them in any way they could. So the Ale and Quail and the Pirates both were just a promotional thing for Seattle. It's all documented in here and they asked for the help.

See, the Ale and Quail Society was the younger men of the Press Club who were doing things. They were the ones who were 43 bringing the money in. They were the ones who had the dances and all the promotional deals so when Greater Seattle started-decided to have a summer festival here-they came to the Press Club and asked their support. Their support was to get publicity through all these newspaper people and magazine writers and radio and television people.

In the beginning they wore a lot of makeup, and guys didn't grow beards then. Most of the guys had shorter haircuts, of course, than what they got now and they didn't have a lot of whiskers on their face. A lot of these bosses around town didn't want you if you had a beard. As a matter of fact, they wouldn't a hire you. So the guys who had a job where they wanted to come in clean shaven had to put all this makeup on when they were Pirates. That's why you see in the log here that all this stuff is painted on the guys-the sideburns and the mustaches.

But this was a bugaboo. After it started they had their princesses, which was the royalty, and the Pirates were to fight the royalty to see who was gonna command the city. But in the end, the women were all dressed in these white summer flowerylooking dresses, One of the princesses eventually became Miss Washington State and went to Atlantic City for the Miss America deal. So when the Pirates would pin them or kiss them there was a chance of messing up their uniforms. And they got a couple of complaints on that and then began to put the kibosh on the wearing of this makeup because some girls had their mothers make their outfits and others had sponsors who put a few hundred dollars up and they didn't want them messed up.

But they still wanted their pictures taken with the Pirates for the publicity shots and everything, see. So that's how that thing went. We burned the ships as you noticed in the first log, Of course, they had regular professional dynamiters doing that job explosive experts. But we took the credit for it 'cause we were out there waving the flag and making all the hoopla. We were waving the swords around, and it looked like we were setting these boats on fire out in the bay.

But it was spectacular; everything was colored smoke and gunpowder and a lot of skyrockets going up in the air. You could see it from Magnolia Bluff and all over Queen Anne Hill - You could see all this hoopla going on. And then we landed there. We'd land there at the waterfront 'til they got the idea to land at Alki Beach.

We all stayed in a hotel for the 10 days during Seafair. The princesses were staying on one floor and the Pirates on another up in the Olympic. That was the deal. Others stayed at home, an then they'd come up there during the day when the activities started. But they had a dormitory style-that was, they had one big layout room like a salesmen's room or something and they all stayed in there. But all the younger guys some way or another would find their way to the girls. And the girls who were attracted, so when the Pirates would pin them or kiss them there was a chance of messing - up their uniforms. And they got a couple of complaints. . . to the younger men would find a way to get away from the chaperones. So they decided to put a stop to that, and then they decided the Pirates should be in another hotel.

So then it was at the New Washington Hotel on 2nd Avenue and Stewart. We were up there on the 14th floor, and it was a large sample room where we all stayed. We'd all lie on beds in there- they'd brought 'em out of these back rooms, and there's where the men stayed. But there was one bedroom in the back, and they never used the bathtub in that room.

The only ones who had a private room were Captain and the Davy. They were given the privilege of having their own room. The rest of the guys always stayed dormitory style. And then the brewery donated all the beer, and there was a competition those-' days which we liked very well. All we had to do was call up the brewery when we ran out of beer - 'cause we were hosting a lot of people up there - and they'd come up there and they'd bring 50 cases at a crack. Nobody ever took a bath because the tub was always filled with beer.

If you had to take a shower, you had to go down and use Davy's room or the captain's room. Of course we didn't drink all the beer. We passed a lot of this around to the bagpipers and the motorcycle police units and those guys. But the cops scared the women away. In 1954 it got so thick in there that they were chasing the women away-all the guests that the guys were trying to make a hit with. Nothing wrong with them but they had these big leather boots, and they had these guns hanging down on their big belts. Jeez, it looked like an invasion there. Looked like we were gettin' pinched but they were just up there having one on the side before they knocked off work. No matter, Tom Chase, the captain that year, had to throw them out.

The Coast Guard by this time owned that Duck. That float was theirs, and they painted it with the dragon's teeth on it and the dragon on the side and had a little poop deck made on it and they maintained and furnished the guy that drove it. He didn't drink or anything, see. Just like today we can't have the driver drinking. We got two or three guys who are qualified to drive that thing, see. The rest of us can go in and whoop it up at these joints and come back and go on board. So he drove it.

In the beginning they didn't have that Coast Guard deal. Before I came in, they had an old fire engine, an old beat up fire engine, that's what they run around town in. They blew a little siren and they'd run into the beer joints and these taverns and then go down to the waterfront and whoop it up. Originally there were no initiations. However, they decided we got so many coming in our own group that we decided to have initiation. By this time we're staying at the Frye Hotel-in Pioneer Square. Pioneer Square was all bums then. There wasn't a good restaurant down there in those days. There were no show places or anything, no expensive office buildings.

So there we were, it was an economical place to stay all right, but there were very few people who wanted to come down there and be hosted at the Frye Hotel. So we dressed the guys in gunny sack and in the fall of the year-it was raining-we'd take 'em down through Pioneer Square and march 'em single file, serpentine fashion. They went with their toothbrushes and their toothpaste and they'd brush Chief Seattle's statue. They'd brush his teeth and the whole works.

When we got done with that, they went back to the hotel, and they would drop these eggs out the second floor window-which isn't too far, but it's still the second story.

The candidate was to stand out in the street and open his yap and look upwards and catch this egg as it was dropped. Well, by this time we had been drinking. We had our own keg up there and we had our own bar and everything, you know. All the guys were getting carried away. Well, the first guys were okay - some guys were all right, they weren't that far gone. They were cracking the eggs and opening them up and, of course, the guy would miss it when it hit him, plop, I don't think anybody caught it. He couldn't open his mouth that wide, By the time that egg comes flying down through the air, it was splattered on his face, and that was the joke of the thing.

But some of the guys started to drop the whole egg. Well, we were afraid if it hit him in the teeth it'd knock all his teeth out. So we decided that was a bum thing to do.

W e had our meetings down there, too, by the way-they'd give us a room to meet 'cause we bought drinks there, and that was our headquarters. As you walked by, you could look out over the roof, and we had a guy who nonchalantly was stoking coals in a hibachi with a hot poker. You could see the guy, and you had the window open so they could smell all these hot coals coming in the 2nd floor. As the guys walked by to the meeting room where we went in for the initiation to talk to them, why they could see this guy out there stokin' up this hot iron. We were psychin' the guys out is what we were doing. And then, of course, we began to go through the initiation process. By this time they were stripped down and had their gunny sacks on their bodies and that's all they had on. And then we blindfolded them and turned them around a few times and then we'd turn around for no reason at all just to spin'em around and walked them around the room 'til they didn't know where they were.

The only guy we weren't fooling was Fred Lanouette who was a kid from the University. Fred was at no time fooled. Fred was laughin' all the time. He was enjoyin' it. Some of the guys you could tell by the look and the way they were startin' to tremble they didn't know what the hell was comin' off. The next thing you know in comes the hot poker. 'Okay, bring it in. ' And this and that. And we're talking loud enough and still trying to do those old stage whispers so they couldn't understand but we knew damn well they were listenin' and in came the poker and the guy would wave it around under their noses. They were blindfolded, and they could smell this hot poker, and by this time we really had 'em psyched out.

Then we had 'em bend over. 'Okay now, burn a good one right on the cheek of his ass. ' Then we'd say, 'Get back, get back, don't touch me with that thing. ' You know, givin' 'em all the hot stuff we could think of And the next thing you know one guy had a cube of ice in his hand as the hot poker flashed under the guy's nose and he got near the back just so he could feel the heat by his rear, then he hit him in the ass with the chunk of ice.

The guy went straight up in the air, of course, and he screamed and one guy happened to have a heart attack in there. So we took the blindfolds off and then they get to watch the other guys go through the same thing. And that was that one.

Then when we started meeting out at that floating cocktail shaker (it was an old ferry boat out on Lake Union), this was where we also disposed of the early initiation. Worked out real good 'cuz we had one guy who was a good swimmer, and he liked to dive and he could go up on the top floor and you could hear him splash, the guy goin' in. He'd walk by and we had the guys blindfolded again but at no time did we have anybody jump off that thing 'cuz a guy could drown there. It was dark, and so we had a guy who was sober and a good swimmer. There were two guys jumping in, actually. I forget who the other person was but I remember Chuck 'cuz he'd walk by the guy-they were blindfolded and he'd brush past them. 'Jeesus, there's a cold one, Oh, that's cold,' and he'd shake a little water on the guys to make sure they could tell he was in. And they actually thought they were goin' in. And they'd take off their shoes and leave their pants on. They wanted to get in the Pirates that bad. And bravely they'd walk off to the damn edge. 'Well, who's down there?'
'Never mind, there's a guy down there to get you, don't worry,' you know. And then we'd pretend we were walkin' them around. Actually, it was about a three-foot stairway on this deal. We had two big Pirates over there, two 250 pounders to catch this guy. Now, jump, then he'd jump and they'd catch the guy, Then, of course, the joke was over, But one guy, he jumped and he over jumped where the guys were catching him. He wanted to make sure he cleared the boat and he told us later that he didn't want the back of his head to hit the boat. So he jumped clean over where the guys were, He was just like a goddamned kangaroo. The guys just barely caught him, He fell on one knee and he split his knee open.

Well, jeez, he had to go to the hospital and get stitches, and so we figured there was no way of telling when the next guy was gonna do that. There was no way. So we knocked that one off.

Bob Murray was the Davy Jones in 1961, but he got all tangled up getting off the Duck in a big long red cape-at least it was long for him. He was kind of a short guy from Aberdeen, Scotland. He had Odman's old place before he opened up the Dog House. We just celebrated the beginning of its 51st year the other night. We kind of expected you down there.

Anyhow, he comes down the ladder and he got his foot tangled up in the cloak-the cloak went around his neck like the magician's cloak. And he got his foot caught on the last step and sprained his ankle, which kind of eliminated him from the rest of the deal.

See, before the World's Fair they were worried that they wouldn't have enough hotel space for all the people who were coming because it had been ballyhooed so much, so they brought this cruise ship up from Mexico. It was a floating hotel and cocktail shaker.

So we go in there and have a drink. But on the way out Murray-he spent several hundred dollars every day during Seafair, he just would-changed a hundred dollar bill and he'd walk out throwing twenties in the air yelling, 'Tip the waiter. Tip the dishwasher. 'Tip the. . . ' He was throwing his money around like confetti, and these people had never seen this type of character before in real life.

Down the gangway he'd go, still throwing dollar bills, real money, and people were following him like kids in Italy after the GIs looking for chewing gum. And he was singing all the time. Of course, he got a lot of help on that count from Chase and me. Every time he'd start to break into one of those Scottish songs, Chase would pick up his flute, and I'd wang away on the concertina and between the three of us we had something going before we even got into the place.

Another guy you should hear about is Bob Lyles. Bob worked for the Seattle Times. He had a pet monkey and he'd take it out on Pirate operations. We'd go out and sell pins, and the monkey would go with us. It was quite an attraction. He was always dressed just like Bob. But then we had to give the monkey up because the girls wouldn't leave him alone. You'd go into these taverns and these bars and these cocktail lounges and everybody was pulling at the monkey's tail. They were teasing the monkey. He was all right as long as he was on Bob's shoulder. He'd eat out of his hand and do all sorts of tricks. He was quite a showpiece.

Bob was a manly looking guy, He was one of the first guys to come out with the beard business. He had the big long sideburns and the whole works. He was a good mechanic, too. He's the one who showed the guys how to make swords. I've got a barrel of them over there. We'd take the metal and go over to the building where I worked and use their forge. Bob showed the guys how to make it, how to temper the deal, and then we welded all these bush knives together. We got them for two bucks a pop. That's how we made these original swords.

But we had to be careful of the swords. I never carry one anymore, they just get in the way, it seems. Here's a picture of a Pirate with a sword at a kid's throat. The kid could have lunged forward instead of back. Never know what will happen when they get excited.

Bratton's got a big one, though. And that is a good gimmick. He's got a great big saber like you'd use to cut a guy's head off in the old medieval times-it is six feet long or more. It is made out of metal and he's got a set of rubber ears which he is always cutting off and giving to the kids.

We made Jack Dempsey a Pirate once. He came in to referee the Golden Gloves bouts here in Seattle. Dempsey was a good friend of Royal Brougham's, the sports writer. They had met when Dempsey was fighting in Shelby, Montana. So when Dempsey came in we dressed him all up in the back room and they didn't know who he was. They thought we were leading a Pirate into the ring. So finally he got into the ring and took off his bandana and all of his costume and the fights began.

Then there was Al Rosen. He was our Davy in 1965. He had known us for many years before that. He could line up stacks of meat in a single phone call-even ham. He seemed to know everybody in town.

When we went down to Mardi Gras in 1970, he lined up the airplane deal. He knew all the big shots in the breweries. I guess he's done more for us than practically all of them until Dick Selland came along. Selland, of course, got our Duck fixed back in shape and got us rolling again. But he was in the trucking business and Al wasn't.

Al Rosen could carry on three phone conversations at one time -two on the telephone and one with you. He'd have two telephones on his desk. I drew him a picture and after he died, his daughter gave it back to me. I gave it to one of the Pirate presidents. It was a clipper ship and he had it in back of his desk. He was real proud of the ship. It was named Genuen. I think in Jewish that means 'devil'.

That Mardi Gras deal was something. Well, what happened there was that we got an invitation. One of the fellows who was a salesman was down there on business and he got talking to those people. Normally, they don't invite outsiders into their parades. It's all local people there. But we got invited, so we shipped the Duck down there at 75 cents a mile.

We went $1,600 in debt doing it. We had enough money for the down payment for the rider, then the rider drove it day and night to get there. He was one of them guys. He wasn't one of the Pirates - he was a trucker, a teamster.

He took it down and we fixed it up like a boat. We had a poop deck on it and Bob Staunton made the design. We were in four or 'five parades. Our float had the advantage over others because ours was mobile, it wasn't pulled by a tractor like so many of the others.

At night we had so many lights on it it looked like a Christmas tree, and inside the cabin was lit too. We had an amplifying system and a microphone-it was a very good deal.

We stayed down there a whole week. We learned a lot of things. In Seattle they don't let you throw anything off the Duck. There, everybody throws stuff. That's what you do in parades, so naturally, we joined in too.

I've seen a lot of guys go through the Pirates. Not all of them make it. But what is so nice is you see a guy who one day is just holding up the bar over there. Then the next day you have him singing a song with us and finally you see him leading things off one day. That's what you do this stuff for. That's the kind of thing that lets you know that when you are gone, there will be somebody else to step in and take your place.


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