by Ed Scott

I will always remember the summer of 1953 at our family cabin on Lummi Island. It was the year my dad decided to sign up to have electric service run to the cabin. He had hesitated, because since his childhood here, the cabin had always been a retreat to nature, and the satisfaction of providing for a less convenient period of living, and the sharing of family chores.

The Scott family cabin on Lummi Island in 1910. Ed’s grandmother, Katherine Abigail Scott, is lying on a mattress reading a book on the front porch. An outdoor kitchen is on the left.

We had a beautiful kerosene chandelier above the dining room table with a round painted glass shade, with crystal pendants dangling from the edge. In the living room, at each end, hanging from hooks in the ceiling were two pump-up white-gas lamps with little socks inside, which gave off bright light to the whole room. There was a wood burning stove in the kitchen, which cooked our meals and supplemented the warmth we got from the living room fireplace. My dad decided, because of my grandmother’s advancing age, it was time to pursue more convenience, and thus we entered a new age for our time on the island.

A share certificate for Lummi Island Power Association, a local cooperative formed in the 1940s to provide electricity to the island.

The march towards convenience continued on from there. After my grandmother passed away, my Aunt decided to have the cabin remodeled into her permanent retirement home. The old WPA outhouse in the yard would become just a storage shed, now that there would be “indoor plumbing” inside the cabin. The cedar wood strip walls that my grandfather had installed, would all be covered with drywall and painted. New windows were put in. A propane wall furnace was installed. An electric hot water tank was installed, and we no longer had to heat our wash water from the iron kettle that hung in the fireplace. A refrigerator replaced the screened food cooler on the porch, and an electric range replaced the wood stove. The original fireplace remained, and my sister and I could still make popcorn, with the long handled popcorn popper we would hold over the flames in the fireplace. A new front room addition was added on to the front of the cabin, with a deck facing the waterfront.

Ed Scott emerges from a WPA “Sanitary Privy”.

After my Aunt passed away, we had the old original part of the cabin, which had been built on tree stumps, replaced with a modern framed structure, with a foundation. The old family cabin now became me and my wife’s permanent home, with all the conveniences we could ask for. But it is my early memories here that give warmth to my soul.

WPA Poster 1930-1940, Source: Library of Congress

The outhouse on Scott’s property is now used as a storage shed, but it has an auspicious history. It was one of 1.3 million Sanitary Privies constructed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's “New Deal”. It cost the family $5 to have it delivered and installed. Ed’s grandmother Katherine—a fierce Republican—would say that the outhouse “was the only good thing the Democrats ever did for us.”

Inside, a square pot is set at a 45-degree angle with a ventilation chimney that channeled polluted air outside and kept flies from coming inside. Except for a new roof, the Scott’s outhouse is completely original.

Soon after settling in our home here, I joined the Lummi Island Heritage Trust, the Lummi Island Grange, and the Church. I still had childhood friends here, and had always felt part of the community. I was invited to become a Board Member of the Heritage Trust, which held incredible meaning to me, with my understanding of how it was protecting the island from loss of natural habitat. The Otto Preserve had been established, and we were finishing up securing the Curry Preserve, and working on he acquisition of the Baker Mountain Preserve. At this time I was in training to become an Island Volunteer Fireman, and the training nights conflicted with Heritage Trust Board meetings, so I left the Board for support of the Fire Department.

I have learned to understand convenience, and I know what is surrendered.

I was excited to learn of the Heritage Trust working to acquire the old quarry and Smugglers Cove, to become the Aiston Preserve. During my childhood, I had watched as this beautiful shoreline had become raped and scraped, and ravaged for the industrial hauling away of natural shale and gravel. It was exciting to me to think of this area once again being returned to its natural state, and stopping the pollution and destruction of marine life, even though I knew it would take generations, and I would not live to see it fully completed. Perhaps my great granddaughter will one day walk along this shoreline and be thankful for the efforts of previous generations here.

The quarry at Smugglers Cove on Lummi Island. The photo above shows the area as Ed remembers it as a child, with remnants of small mining project in 1933. After a modest mining operation from 1969 to 1978, intensive mining from 1999 to 2013 left the shoreline in this condition. The property was acquired by the Lummi Island Heritage Trust in 2015 and is now being restored as the Aiston Preserve.

It is painful to hear of people wishing this spot could become a secondary transportation hub for the island, retaining the rusty, corroding pilings, and industrial docks, for some perceived need for another County Ferry dock. In my 76 years of traveling back and forth to the island, I have never felt a need for an additional dock, but there are some whom feel it is needed, and perhaps enhance their convenience in living here. I am ever more thankful that the Heritage Trust has insured the protection and restoration of this shoreline to a natural state, for perpetuity. It will never again pollute and kill the marine life habitat of Hale Passage.

I have learned to understand convenience, and I know what is surrendered. I don’t want my island home covered in solar panels, and windmills. Perhaps like Cervantes’ Don Quixote, I am chasing a lost dream.