It makes you wonder how they entertain out-of-towners in, say, Kansas
City, or Buffalo, or Minneapolis.
Where else but Seattle can visitors examine mummies, admire shrunken
heads, see the Lord's Prayer on a grain of rice, stock up on fake dog-doo
and spend 25 cents to watch a sailor doll laugh maniacally - all under
one roof?
Credit the late J.E. "Daddy" Standley, founder of Ye Olde Curiosity
Shop, which is getting ready to mark its 100th birthday.
Now in the height of the busy tourist season, the Pier 54 shop's owners
are also cooking up plans for an open house, visits by dignitaries and
possible entertainment on the Oct. 8 centennial, a day Mayor Paul Schell
recently proclaimed "Ye Olde Curiosity Shop Day."
All this for an establishment that, records indicate, made a mere
25 cents its first three days of operation.
"My grandfather was a curio-lover first and a businessman second,"
shrugs Joe James, 75, who began sweeping floors there at the age of
12 and is now company president.
Generations of visitors and natives alike recall the shop as one of
the defining Seattle tourist experiences. When you come to Seattle,
you go up the Space Needle, you eat and chips at Ivar's, you ride a
ferry and you drop a few coins at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop.
Theodore Roosevelt visited there. So did John Wayne. Ditto for Charlie
Chaplin, Sylvester Stallone and Katharine Hepburn.
There's never been an admission charge. The theory is that the exhibits,
ranging from historic artifacts to hunting trophies to natural wonders,
would draw in customers who would then buy Seattle souvenirs, Indian
art, assorted novelties and gag gifts.
And while they're there, visitors pump coins into contraptions that
tell their fortunes, play music, stamp the store's logo onto a penny
and display still photos from old movies.
"It's Disneyland without the rides," said Karla Linder of Shelton,
in the shop this week with her wide-eyed grandson, Brent Kimzey, 14,
of Anchorage.
Linder, 55, made her first visit a half-century ago. Over the decades,
she has never shaken the image of the baseball-size shrunken heads from
South America in a display case at the back of the shop.
"Even as an adult, I'm amazed that there's a process in which they
can take your head off your shoulders and make it into something that
size," she said.
For Brenda Buckley Chavez of San Mateo, Calif., however, the draw
will always be the mummified remains of a man and woman, nicknamed Sylvester
and Sylvia.
She and her husband invariably include a stop at the shop when they
visit Seattle every few years, and this week they brought daughter Anica,
10, and son Daniel, 8, by for a first visit.
Anica agreed that Sylvester is a curiosity. "It's neat because he
looks so real," she said, although his crooked, grimy teeth are a bit
on the icky side.
Sylvester, acquired by the shop in 1955, is believed to be the body
of a shooting victim from the late 1800s, dehydrated and preserved by
the sands of an Arizona desert.
Over the years, he has become the informal symbol of the shop and
waves a hello from one of the store's newest features, a World Wide
Web page.
Visitors can draw their own conclusion about another of the shop's
oddities, a mermaid which legend says was shot by a fisherman on Hood
Canal in 1900 but which looks suspiciously like the handiwork of a clever
taxidermist.
"We've never represented it as being real, but we get a lot of comments
on it," said James.
As amazing as anything on display is the fact this strange business
has lasted as a family enterprise, now in the fourth generation and
grooming a fifth.
James, the third-generation owner, has turned over day-to-day operation
to his son and daughter-in-law, Andy and Tammy James. Now their sons,
Neal, 9, and Justin, 7, are showing an interest, though Neal isn't sure
if he'll run the store or race motorcycles.
It may be hard to believe in this jumble of stuff from floor to ceiling,
but the shop owes its beginnings to a clean desk.
When its founder was a 9-year-old schoolboy in Ohio, J.E. Standley
had the neatest desk in his classroom, an achievement the teacher rewarded
with a book called "Wonders of Nature."
Images on its pages ignited a passion. "He roamed the riverbanks after
that, finding tools, arrowheads, artifacts, fossils, whatever," said
Joe James.
After running a store in Denver, Standley moved to Seattle in 1899
because doctors said the Rocky Mountain altitude was hard on his wife's
high blood pressure.
"He fell in love with this area and was one of its biggest boosters,"
James said.
Standley built a large home in West Seattle, a one-acre estate he
called "Totem Place." Sightseeing buses were drawn to the site for its
collection of totem poles, whale bones, giant clamshells, a Japanese
teahouse and miniature log cabin.
But Standley's first concern was always the curiosity shop.
Copyright
© 1999 The Seattle Times Company