Digging out Snohomish’s past
Published 8:02 pm Tuesday, August 3, 2010
SNOHOMISH — Leonard Bluhm couldn’t remember what was buried in the soil outside Snohomish High School. It had been 50 years since his classmates dropped mementos in the ground and marked the spot with a stone etched only with ’59.
That was back when Bluhm was captain of the football team, when guys cruised down Colby Avenue in Everett in hot rods on Friday nights. When gals wore pedal pushers to school and hoop skirts to prom. When post-game entertainment meant sock hops.
As Bluhm organized his 50th reunion, he made arrangements to dig up the time capsule.
In late July, Bluhm, now 68, watched Rob Wellman, a maintenance worker with the Snohomish School District, chisel away at the concrete block that held his class’ parting message. Wellman had started blasting into the ground with a jackhammer. But once Wellman realized the relic was buried without a box or protective case, he abandoned the power tools and chipped away by hand like an archeologist.
“I was trying to preserve history and not destroy it,” he said. “I figured they took the time to put something in the ground. I wanted to take the effort to hand something to the gentleman who’d been waiting 50 years for it.”
After an hour, Wellman thought he finally had something — a book of some sort, its pages blackened with grime and time.
But when he was about to pull it from the concrete, it split in half. Wellman worried the treasure was ruined.
Bluhm took the object back to his Snohomish home and examined it closely. He realized the book was actually two stacks of cards seniors sent out with their graduation announcements. Each card bore the name of a classmate. The Snohomish High School tradition of burying senior cards continues to this day, but Bluhm had forgotten.
There were 163 Snohomish High School graduates in 1959, and Bluhm estimates there are around that many cards.
He pried them apart slowly and carefully, but even so, half were so damaged the names on the cards were illegible. He couldn’t find his own.
Still, he’s glad to have them, and plans to display the cards at the reunion this weekend.
“All we’ve got is memories,” he said.
Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292, kmanry@heraldnet.com.
