LOFALL — The classified ad, tucked away in the back pages of the Peninsula Daily News, was intriguing.
“Do you have any old items like jugs or rolling pins from the Fish Harbor Grocery, Coyle General Store or the Lofall Store?”
The ad was placed by Nell Parris as a Father’s Day present for her husband, Mike Parris, a retired teacher who collects promotional stoneware from general stores throughout the United States.
His collection includes mini-jugs from the Port Townsend Mercantile Co. and G.M Lauridson’s in Port Angeles.
But the Lofall resident is especially interested in finding items from stores that used to exist in settlements along Hood Canal.
“I’d kill to find a mini-jug from here,” he said.
That’s because his great-grandfather, W. W. Whitford, once owned the general store and dock at Lofall, the old ferry landing on the Kitsap side of Hood Canal south of the floating bridge.
Before that, Whitford owned the Coyle Store across the canal.
Both stores exist only as names on rolling pins, mini-jugs and plates that are now collectible.
For Parris, it’s the connection to the storekeeper that makes them valuable.
“I’m imagine him giving them out to his first customers,” Parris said.
Memoirs
Parris, 69, was born the year after his great-grandfather died, so he has no memories of him.
He does have an early German-design flowered plate inscribed with “Compliments of W.W. Whitford, Coyle, Washington.”
That’s where Whitford, who came out west by train from Nebraska in 1905, ended up buying a store in 1908.
Parris said salesmen worked their way around Puget Sound, Hood Canal and the Strait of Juan de Fuca waters by steamboat, selling shopkeepers personalized items to give to customers, much like grocery stores offer sets of china.
“These kind of plates were a big thing,” Parris said.
But getting supplies and passengers into the Coyle Store was difficult — Fish Harbor is so small that everything had to be rowed in and out by small boat.
So in 1914, Whitford packed up the family and moved across Hood Canal to Lofall, where he bought the store — lock, dock and barrels.
After Whitford died, his daughter, Flora May Whitford Skelley, and her husband, Newton Skelley, took over the operation.
When Parris’ father went off to World War II, he and his mother moved into the store.
“I remember watching my grandfather fix up bunks for us,” he said.
“We lived in the room on the right,” he said, pointing to a photograph that shows the store on the waterfront.
On one side is a room with a sloped roof, a feed shed, and a net shed.
Parris also remembers where the woodstove was in the store, and the post office boxes the locals used until the post office was closed in 1934.
There was also a barber chair in the store at one time.
“They always had a square dance on Saturday night,” Parris said.
“W.W. was the caller.”
Parris also has a photograph of himself as a young boy, playing on the beach in front of the store, his foot tethered so he wouldn’t wander off.
His grandparents would be working in the store, so they could check on him out the window.
Volunteer spotter
Sometimes his mother would sitting in the glass-sided beach hut, looking for enemy aircraft.
“My grandmother was a volunteer spotter, and my mother filled in, watching for planes during World War II,” he said.
Parris also knew the original owner of the store and dock, Helge Lovfall, who gave the location its name —the “v” was dropped.
Before the floating bridge was built across Hood Canal, Lofall was the place where the passenger steamboats, and then the car ferries, docked.
“When I was growing up, there were a few lights over in Shine, but everything else was dark,” he said.
“That was the wilderness over there.”
Parris left Lofall in 1956 to go to Washington State University, where he became a teacher and met Nell, also a teacher.
They got jobs in school districts south of Spokane, and in 1964, Parris started digging for buried treasures in his backyard — old bottles, pieces of china, etc.
That led to collecting promotional stoneware, including mini-jugs with the names of general stores.
“You could buy four for $20 in the early ‘70s,” he said.
“Now some of the rare ones go for $800 to $1,200.”
Parris also collects ferry memorabilia.
The Parrises retired in Lofall in 1994.
The house overlooks the waterfront, where the store was before it was torn down.
But it’s long gone, as are the wooden counters, showcases and other furnishings.
“I think most of it went in the canal,” Parris said.
So unless professional divers want to search the canal floor, Parris’ only hope is that there are still some of stoneware with his great-grandfather’s name in someone’s attic or collecting dust on a basement shelf.
That’s what he and Nell hoped the classified ad might turn up, but they didn’t get any response.
“We were hoping there were more out there,” Parris said.
“We figured it was worth a try.”
MIKE PARRIS is looking for plates, bowls and other promotional items, photographs and memorabilia from the Coyle General Store, Lofall Store or Fish Harbor Grocery.
For more information, phone Parris at 360-697-2231.
________
Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter/columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
