By Anthony Airhart
The last few months I have been sharing some stories about the “good old days” on Grays Harbor. Mostly these stories came to me from my Great uncle, Joe Malinowski. Joe was a remarkable man with a significant mechanical aptitude and an equally significant sense of community. I grew up next door and benefitted from a bunch of time hanging out with Uncle Joe.
Born in Thorp, Wisconsin, Joe’s family moved west when he was 12, living near McCormick in Pacific County. They then moved to the Wishkah valley around 1904, when he was entering his teen years. The Malinowski ranch was located about three miles north of the current Wishkah School. Joe roamed the hills and backwoods of the Wishkah and Wynoochee river valleys. Life for these pioneer families could be tough and to survive sometimes they bent the rules just a little. Joe gave me a picture of him posing with an elk he had killed. Holding up his rifle in the photo, he said he was “showing how I did it.”
The tricky part is the elk is still in velvet as it was nowhere near hunting season! As an added touch, peering over the belly of the dead bull is a dog. Joe explained it was the best elk dog ever. You just found fresh tracks and turned the dog loose. He’d chase down the herd and run them back towards you and you’d shoot your bull as they came by. Apparently hunting laws were seen to be more like general guidelines when you needed the meat to survive.
One of my favorite Malinowski family stories revolves around these general guidelines. There were only a handful of families on the upper Wishkah and it was a long way to town. There were no hotels. Travelers were absolutely offered a meal at your farm and even a place to sleep, if necessary. It was summertime and the Malinowski family was canning meat for the winter. As they cut the meat to go in the jars, the smaller, bite-sized, end pieces were put aside and would be cooked for dinner that night. Along came a visitor: a Mr. Haggerty, who happened to be a game warden. As expected, he was invited to eat with the family and they all dined that evening on illegally killed elk meat! Whether he didn’t know or if he knew they needed the meat to survive, he ate the meal, thanked them for their hospitality and went on his way. In the Malinowski clan, from that day forward, those small pieces of elk or deer meat became known as Haggerty Steak. We always butchered our own meat and it was a treat when we’d reach the point where we were cutting it into steaks and packaging it. My Mom would disappear into the kitchen and then bring us out a plate of steak bites. They’d have toothpicks in them so we could dine on Haggerty Steak with bloody hands from butchering as we cut and wrapped meat.
The way Joe’s mind operated meant that he saw the world with a slightly different slant than most. For example, on one trip with friends into the backcountry of the Wynoochee valley, near Wynoochee Falls, they found an odd colored rock outcropping. Hoping it was gold ore, they chipped off a piece and took it back to the blacksmith shop on the Malinowski ranch. Melting it down in the forge they ended up with a piece of metal. They tested it with some acid and decided it indeed contained gold! One of the three headed to town to get the metal officially tested and the other two headed back out the Wynoochee valley to stake out mining claims. Well, two mining claims.
In those days you could actually walk in behind the falls. That is where Joe staked his claim. Digging for gold could be hard work. Joe’s vision was to build a water wheel at the falls and get rich supplying power to all the other miners he was sure would follow! As luck would have it, their “gold” nugget did not contain enough gold to warrant mining and their dream of riches came to an end. But just maybe that was the impetus for Joe to seek the water rights to the river. In the long run, his vision of power from the river came to fruition decades later when the generators were added to the Wynoochee Dam.
Another story of Joe’s view of the world came during WWII. By now Joe was a master mechanic with the City of Aberdeen. Worries about a Japanese air attack prompted local officials to install steam powered sirens at the local mills. When samples were provided, they were sent to Joe to look at and check the quality and workmanship. Joe figured out how they worked and decided he could build better sirens himself far cheaper than they could be purchased. (Patent law perhaps being viewed by Joe as more of a guideline?) So, it came to be that the Aberdeen air raid siren system had the Joe Malinowski touch!
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