(Wallyhood is honored to welcome Paul Dorpat, author, observer, prankster and Wallingford’s official unofficial historian, as an occasional contributor. In addition to his regular column for the Seattle Times, he writes his own Seattle history blog at http://pauldorpat.com/.)
Here is a candid record of one of the saddest moments in Wallyhood’s Pop History. It was, as far as I know, unannounced. They just did it!
The photograph was taken by itinerant Frank Shaw from the top of the nearly new “Toxic Knoll” or “Sundial Stack” in Gasworks Park on Feb. 3, 1978. It’s sad part is the dismantling of the GRANDMA’S COOKIES sign, which was wonderfully oversized like the generous measures of sugar in the Grandma’s Cookies themselves. No less a regional sensitive than novelist Tom Robbins considered the Grandma Cookies sign as one of the half dozen most prized landmarks in Seattle, shining and reflecting like it once did the length of Lake Union.
Today, we would not be able to control ourselves and call it an “icon”, if only because that word was recently released for promiscuous uses, and we generally all want to share in any happy hysteria that might stimulate the GDP and our sweetest memories of GMC.
Discover more from Wallyhood
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Welcome Paul, I’m so glad Jordan recruited you! My husband, a Seattle native, and I always enjoy your column on Sundays and will look forward to your Wallyhood posts.
Is that Wallingford Ave. on the left?
yup
I LOVE the AMC Pacer in the parking lot!
We weren’t as organized then, but at least — these days — we were able to get QFC to convert the FOOD GIANT sign to WALLINGFORD.
Hi Paul, Thanks for that photo and memory. I lived in Wallingford in the 50’s and my mother worked at Grandma’s Cookie Company on the conveyor belt, packing cookies. I think she put in about 20 years. The workers had to wear white uniforms, white shoes, hairnets and tape over their wedding rings lest a diamond unknowingly fall into a package of cookies.
Every year Grandmas baked the cookies for the annual Girl Scouts Cookie Drive and the plant was open 24/7. My mother would sneak just a few cookies and put them into her pocket for my sister and I. She was the sweetest smelling mother around.
Paul, we miss seeing you on Bagley.
The cookies were pretty dreadful, but the sign was wonderful. We could see it from our home on the northeast corner of Queen Anne hill, and it was somehow comforting. Never mind that we could never get our mother to actually BUY any of these cookies.
JOYCE, Tonight – just now – while listening to BBC-3 live stream into my basement I heard a report of stem cell research for repairing knee cartilage. If it works and I survive I may be walking on Bagley again – in a few years.
So then Avtech is occupying that building now?
And thanks so much for this post, I love learning the history of the hood. And I agree with iyqtoo above, the Times column is one of my first reads on Sunday morning.
Grandma’s had a door on the Wallingford side at which they sold bags of broken cookies dirt cheap. We loved it when our Dad stopped by and picked up a bag or two.
Like counting a tree’s rings, you can judge someone’s length in a city by the landmarks they remember. I never even heard of the Grandma’s Cookies sign, but I do miss the Twin Tepees, the blue gas flame neon sign in Belltown, and the big red R.
I remember the building well, it was just two doors down wallingford from one of my grade school friends, and once my class took a field trip to it when it was the Buchan Bakery. We even got free doughnuts, a lot better in my opinion than any cookies that Grandma’s turned out when they took it over. Buchan’s Bread was delicious too. His legacy lived on for thirteen years as the Buchan Bakers, Seattles first national sports franchise. See http://www.buchanbakers.com/gpage.html