Paul Dorpat doesn't rest on his laurels.
Last spring, Dorpat, 68, and co-author Jean Sherrard saw the publication of their "Washington Then & Now," an ambitious, highly regarded photographic record of Washington's past. For the last few months the pair have stumped the state on behalf of their book.
These days, Dorpat, who writes a weekly "Now & Then" column for The Seattle Times, is taking on a Seattle icon: Ivar Haglund, who died in 1985 at age 79.
With the working title, "Keep Clam" (of course), the book is about half-written, Dorpat said, and will be published next year.
Haglund, Dorpat believes, was "the greatest self-promoter in the history of the city." Dorpat added a caveat, suggesting the complexity of the man: "He was shy until given the opportunity to perform."
Ivar's is bankrolling the project, so don't look for any unseemly revelations here, even if there were some to be unearthed. Still, the match-up between the dean of local historians and one of this city's most colorful characters sounds promising.
THE SOUL OF IVAR
Dorpat met Haglund a few years before he died.
"It has damn well got to be funny," Dorpat said of the book, "because that was the soul of Ivar."
Dorpat is a bear of a man with the benevolent presence of a warm spring rain. The hippie of the 1960s who started Seattle's first alternative paper, the Helix, is very much part of the establishment now.
In early June, Dorpat gave the introductory speech for tours of the renovated Ivar's Salmon House at north Lake Union. He spoke of the building's historical significance as a representation of a Northwest Indian longhouse - a building Dorpat calls "a synergistic potluck of Ivar's tastes."
Some might be surprised by Ivar's tastes.
Older Seattlelites remember Haglund as the corny, guitar-strumming, portly guy on local television commercials, with the seal-like face and captain's cap - a man who looked like he could be a centerfold for Reader's Digest, Emmett Watson once wrote.
But he was much more than that. According to Dorpat, "He was smart, brilliant."
DESTINED FOR STARDOM
Haglund, born in 1905, grew up at Alki and became part of the local, Depression-era bohemian set that included Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan and Helmi Juvonen.
He seemed destined to become a guitar-wielding balladeer and political radical. The likes of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Burl Ives considered Haglund one of their own. "As a youth, he had a beautiful, lyric, tenor voice," Dorpat said.
Of Haglund's early political leanings, Dorpat said Haglund finally figured out he liked Groucho Marx more than Karl.
In a 1975 column, P-I columnist Watson recalled how, when Tobey learned Haglund planned to open a restaurant in the late 1930s, the great artist declared, "No, no, not a restaurant, Ivar! You are destined to play guitar."
"Today, several restaurants later," Watson wrote, "Ivar is one of the few people in Seattle who can afford a Tobey painting."
Haglund opened his Acres of Clams on Pier 54 in 1946. Before long he was known as "king of the waterfront."
Haglund may have been shy, but when he was in the self-promotional mood, he didn't hold back.
In 1947, a railroad tank car spilled more than 1,000 gallons of corn sweetener onto the street near his Acres of Clams. Haglund donned hip boots and oversized bib, ordered up a plate of pancakes and took his position in the middle of the street just as the press arrived to cover the spill. And there was Haglund in his trademark captain's cap squatting on a box.
The cameras clicked as he ladled the spilled goo onto his pancakes. One photograph of the "event" circled the globe.
AN ISLAND OF STABILITY<
His Salmon House, at 401 N.E. Northlake Way, is a cozy, understated place waterfront tourists usually don't find. In fact, it's something of a throwback to old Seattle.
The building was designated a historical landmark by the Seattle Historical Society in 1971. True, its models were Tillicum Village on Blake Island and Kiana Lodge near Poulsbo - themselves simulacrums of Native American authenticity.
But the genuine North Coast native canoes hanging from the ceiling, the historical photographs of Native Americans and the unpretentious atmosphere have made the restaurant an island of stability in a changing city.
The renovation celebrated in early June featured a new, hand-carved, 16-foot-tall Welcome Pole inside, carved by David Boxley, son and successor to world-renowned carver David Albert Boxley.
The old, labyrinthine hallways are gone, and the kitchen is opened up. The old Salmon House, in fact, has been daylighted.
WAXING POETIC
Besides writing his Ivar's book, Dorpat is taking daily walks in his Wallingford neighborhood, stopping long enough to shoot photos of trees, houses, buildings, gardens, the Tilth P-Patch at the Good Shepherd Center and other objects.
He's focused on about 300 items and shoots them every day so that, through the changing seasons, he will have a time-lapsed record of the Wallingford microcosm. He expects the results to be out on DVD.
Asked about the increasing congestion in modern-day Seattle, Dorpat grows a little poetic: "Our felicity has been built on the backs of cars," he noted.
He sometimes wonders, he continued, about getting from point A to point B on a route where everything is green and cool and beautiful: "I dream of a secret way through the city."
[[In-content Ad]]
