Thursday, March 28, 2024

Summer excursion somewhere-but where?

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Summer excursion somewhere-but where?

By Cheryl Schweizer

Staff Writer

The caption at the bottom of the picture announces time and place-this is the old riverboat "Bridgeport" and that's the shore at Brewster, and the big crowd is on an excursion.

Excursions were big, back in the day. Church groups, employees in a workplace, a bunch of friends would get together and organize an excursion; maybe the town fathers would issue an invitation to everybody in town. All the participants would pile into-well, a vehicle; by 1928 most of them would be cars, but there might still be some horse-drawn wagons. Or the crowd might hire a boat, as they did on July 2, 1928. They'd have an outing, maybe a picnic.

But who are these people, and where are they going?

It's a casual excursion-while all the women are wearing dresses, only a few of the men are wearing ties. Only a handful of men are wearing suits. Some of the guys not only have dispensed with ties, they've gone so far as to discard their jackets and roll up their sleeves. (It's clearly a warm day, because in 1928 that's the equivalent of shorts and a tank top and flip-flops.)

One or two guys have even taken off their hats. Now, in '28 a man never, ever left his house without his hat. Only a bum didn't wear a hat-and actually most bums owned hats too. There was a certain panache to a hat; a guy who wore his hat at just the right angle (check out the guy on the second deck, about seven people in from the right) could always catch the eye of the pretty girls.

It may be a casual outing, but all the girls are in their summer best-that dropped waist was all the rage in 1928-and wearing their best summer hats. (It's interesting to see that more women than men are hatless.) It's hard to see, but it's midsummer so there's a chance that many of the women are not (gasp!) wearing stockings. Some of their dresses-not many, but some-are sleeveless. Pretty daring for 1928.

So-it's a group that got together for a casual outing, possibly celebrating the Fourth of July. Maybe it was an excursion similar to those recalled by Pateros pioneer Pete Borg, who remembered riding the "Bridgeport" as a little boy. His mom and all the other moms warned the little boys about going down to the lower deck where the crew hung out; the steamboat crews used bad words sometimes and their moms didn't want the little boys to get any ideas, Pete said.

Church group? Crew from the packing shed? (Although in 1928 the shed wasn't open in the summer.) An all-town excursion? (Unlikely. Even in 1928 Brewster was bigger than that.)

The "Bridgeport" didn't have many more excursions left in her-1928 was about the end the road, or the river, as the case may be. (Look closely; the deck is pretty worn.) When the interior Pacific Northwest was being settled, back in the 1880s and 1890s, the river was the highway and the steamboat hauled both cargo and passengers. The "Bridgeport" hauled wheat from the plateau around Mansfield and Bridgeport and apples from Bridgeport, Brewster and Pateros to the railhead down in Wenatchee. The vast series of dams that would provide hydropower and flood control was far in the future; it was a straight shot downriver to the railhead in Wenatchee. Well-except for the rapids. (There's a remnant of the rapids in Pateros Memorial Park, the big rock with the embedded metal bolt. Steamboat crews would attach a cable to the bolt and pull the boat upriver against the force of the water.) But the railroad came in 1912 and there was a road suitable for cars and trucks by the 1920s. The steamboat's great days were over. Look carefully-the "Bridgeport" is showing its age.

But it still could provide a great excursion, a beautiful day on the river. But this group and its destination is a mystery; the relevant issues of the old Brewster Herald, which might have provided some information, are unavailable. People who have information about this group and its destination are invited to contact the QCH office.
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