EVERETT – After an almost 50-year hiatus, Pegasus will take flight in today’s Salty Sea Days parade.
The Everett Public Library’s 1924 Ford Model AA bookmobile, named for Pegasus, the mythical flying horse, was a painstaking restoration job a decade in the making.
“I think when you see it, you should see why we should restore it,” said Eileen Simmons, assistant director of the library. “It’s special because it was so much one of a kind.”
For two decades, Pegasus was a branch library on wheels, hauling books and magazines to those who could not get to the library in Everett.
The tipsy wagon that librarians referred to as “Peggy” could hold 1,000 books. The bookmobile provided information, entertainment or just distraction during the uncertain years of the Great Depression and World War II.
In those days, a quart of milk cost less than a gum ball does now. It was a time of high unemployment, low wages, President Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside chats and big band music.
Pegasus most likely delivered the in-demand mystery and detective novels of the day from authors such as Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
It must have trucked F. Scott Fitzgerald to hospital patients, Ernest Hemingway to mill workers and Dr. Seuss to sick children.
Everett’s bookmobile may well have been revolutionary – the first one west of the Mississippi River.
It’s a point of good-natured contention, said Doug Oakes, the library’s computer services coordinator, who with Herb Matthews rebuilt Pegasus’ engine.
“Multnomah County, Ore., got one about the same time in 1924 – within a month,” Oakes said.
“My argument is this: We have ours. They have no idea what happened to theirs,” he said, laughing. “My approach is, we have the oldest. If we’re wrong, come tell us.”
In 1950, the bookmobile driver resigned and the bookmobile was given a routine Washington State Patrol road test.
It didn’t go well.
Shortly after, Pegasus was sold at a city auction to Bob Koger for $250.
Koger sold Pegasus several years later to Allen Hansen, who used it for odds and ends, including teaching his kids to drive.
Pegasus was then parked until 1993, when donations from the Everett Rotary Club, Dwayne Lane Motors and local history buff Larry O’Donnell allowed the library to buy it back.
Other donations for Pegasus’ rehabilitation have come from Everett Central Lions Club and the Friends of the Library.
Oakes said Pegasus has had an all-out overhaul to make the bookmobile look as it did in the 1930s and ’40s.
“This project has gone on longer than anticipated, but to look at her and hear that engine ticking over makes it all worthwhile,” wrote library director Mark Nesse in a memo to “fans of Pegasus.”
Though the project had its stalls, Pegasus should be popping up regularly around town, at least on sunny days. Old bookmobiles and rain don’t mix.
Pegasus will be a show pony, making occasional appearances only at special functions.
“Libraries have always been interested in reaching out to people who have a hard time getting out to the libraries,” Simmons said. “Bookmobiles were able to go a lot of places and to reach a lot of people.”
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
