EVERETT — Holly and Jeff Gibson got a surprise this morning after someone dropped off a gift in front of their waterfront bar, the Anchor Pub.
They arrived to find propped against the door a 7-foot-tall anchor that looks like it had spent a few decades at the bottom of Port Gardner.
This wasn’t just some random cast off. Someone stealthily dropped off the anchor in a wooden rustic box outfitted with skulls and crossbones after Holly Gibson shutdown for the night.
They left a note in a bottle written on rolled parchment that described, in verse, that the anchor was a debt of gratitude and a gift of good fortune.
To two business owners struggling to make it work in a tough economy, the gesture means the world.
“Oh my god, I just put on my mascara and it’s rolling off,” Holly Gibson said Friday morning, moments after discovering the giant anchor.
Then, a moment later: “What are we going to do with it?”
The Anchor Pub is one of Everett’s oldest establishments. It’s been serving up drinks to everybody from mill workers and longshoremen to local politicians for more than a century.
It’s located at the end of Hewitt Avenue right beside the railroad tracks, not far from the site of the infamous Everett Massacre.
The building was completed in 1907, said historian Dave Dilgard. It originally housed Mulligan’s saloon until Prohibition. After the repeal, the place opened up as The Anchor beer parlor.
Up until recently, an anchor used to sit right outside the entrance.
“Every high school class would steal it, paint it purple and bring it back,” Jeff Gibson said.
Except one year it didn’t get brought back. The Anchor Pub has been without an anchor — until now.
The Gibsons bought the pub one week before the economy crashed in the fall of 2008. They also own a successful boat painting business called Golden Touch Yacht Care.
They’ve yet to turn a profit at the pub but they are slowly growing their business, she said. They’ve expanded the bar and are working to bring back some of its original character, including sanding the original wood-plank flooring and displaying a very cool old weathervane on the roof.
The bar has always been a gritty, working class establishment: The type of place a man who works with his hands might come for a beer after a long day. It’s had its share of ups and downs and ownership changes.
Holly Gibson remembers a time some years back when, as she remembers it, the bar had red carpet, rats and smelled like something that can’t be mentioned in a family newspaper. In 2008 she came in for a drink. The place was in the middle of a remodel. The food was lousy and so was the service, she said. For a woman who worked close to the water — and on it in boats — for years, something called to her anyway.
“I just fell in love with an old waterfront bar,” she said.
Now she’s spending 15 hours a day bartending and making the business work. Jeff Gibson’s doing his share, too, on top of their other business.
To get this kind of a gift from a customer — that says something. They’re not sure where they’ll display it yet, but it will be a place of honor.
“Who would go to the trouble of doing this?” she said. “There couldn’t be a more genuine gift.”
Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com.
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