Mother's Friend and Teacher Sy Garrett

Mother had a lifelong love of the natural world.  Growing up on Puget Sound where fish, clams and oysters were abundant left her with the love of fishing, digging and hunting for food.  A family friend named Sy Garrett who lived on the Olympic Peninsula also imprinted her with a knowledge of nature.  He taught her, and her siblings the names and use of the trees, flowers, mushrooms and wildlife surrounding them in the paradise they loved.  They spent hours, days and weeks with Sy tramping through the woods and along the shoreline.  Sy was a half-breed Indian as people of mixed races were labeled in those days.  A book called the "The Egg & I" by Betty MacDonald, had a character modeled after him, which upset mother as it made him look like a local yokel.  He was a game warden as well as a self-taught biologist, naturalist and teacher who would be the envy of a doctor of biology today.  Growing up in the Native American society had taught him how to live off the land and this rubbed off on mother.  She loved to fish which did not rub off on me because she always got us up at an ungodly hour to get to the trail head to hike three miles to the perfect stream.  I have come to appreciate the fact that one needs to fish at the proper time of day if we want fish for dinner, but at that time it seemed totally unnecessary.  I am sure her days spent with Sy were a wonderful escape from her mother. However, her German mother was also very frugal and I am sure loved the fact that her children would come home from Sy's with a bounty of fresh food for her to prepare. This also impacted my mother as she loved to make a meal out of freshly picked mushrooms, beef from the ranch and garden produce or any combination of locally acquired edibles.

My Mother

My plan for this blog is not a chronological account of my life but small vignettes as they come to mind.   I will however start with my parents because their stories are so influential in my emotional and mental growth and development. We are all products of those who went before us not just by genes but by the environment and their life experiences.

My mother Francis Katherine Pickett Haggerty the eldest child of Agatha Weise Pickett and Benjamin Thermin Pickett, was an adventurous child and tested her parents right up to the time she married my father.  Born in Cripple Creek, Colorado while her father was working in the gold mines they subsequently moved to Seattle where her life took shape.  Living on Magnolia Bluff above Puget sound she and her brother Alvin Thurman Pickett explored the woods and waterfront escaping a domineering mother and pesky little sister Ida A. Pickett (Shebig) while their dad was busy managing the Seattle Park system gardens.  There were two stories among the many she told that we asked her to tell us over and over.

One day while exploring the beach below their house they were assaulted with a horrific odor. Feeling the need to find the source they scrambled through the brambles, over driftwood. through the mud flats and came upon a dead man behind a huge log.  Mom and Alvin ran screaming home to grandma who called the authorities.  They had mixed feelings of being heroic and guilty at the same time as they were not supposed to be adventuring that day at the beach. I am sure punishment was part of the story but forbidding my mother to do something was futile.  As a child fear and curiosity were constant companions of mother who dared to take chances.  I was not as adventurous so listening to her story fear was my emotion.   It just seemed so impossible that my mom could have had an up close encounter with a dead man.  The other story was a bit more humorous but way too daring to believe my mother would do such a thing.

Mother was raised in a Catholic home.  Her German Catholic mother was so strict that the game was to break the rules imposed and try to get away with it.  Mom did not last long in the Catholic High School she was enrolled in because of the rules that she saw as totally unnecessary,  she transferred with the blessing of the nuns to Queen Anne High School.  During this time she and a group of friends had an evening meeting at WASHELLI CEMETERY.  It happened to have  light bulbs spelling out the name on a large sign looming over the highway. Mom and her cohorts knocked out all the bulbs but HELL CEMETERY.  The next day it was front page news and her mom and dad were loud in expressing their total disapproval and said if any of their kids did something like that they would not live to tell about it.  She was never found out nor were the other perpetrators.