Research on this month’s column presented me with the perfect excuse for making a Sunday afternoon call on Rosemary and Cliff Bailey. I needed to learn more about the fact that Cliff’s grandparents once owned the store at 901 First Street, and that he had a photograph of his mother and grandmother behind the candy counter.
John and Margaret Kleisath were Pennsylvania Dutch people, who found their way west and landed in early Snohomish, date unknown. John worked as a barber before opening the candy store on the southwest corner of First Street where Union Avenue ends at the famous Snohomish gulch. Let’s imagine they were the first tenants of the building, built around 1900, with their storefront business on the street level and their new home above.
Perhaps it was the birth of their daughter Florence that marked the beginning of Kleisath’s passion for making ice cream. But by the 1930s, the family operation was too large for its Snohomish home and the K & K Ice Cream Company opened a manufacturing operation in Everett. In the meantime, Florence had left the family business when she married Earl Bailey in 1918, and seven years later, Clifford was born, the middle child between two sisters.
Clifford and Rosemary, who are Snohomish High School sweethearts, don’t know how the store passed on to someone named “Edwards” – but they do have teenage memories of Mona’s Café that occupied the storefront space during the thirties since it was an after school hangout. The popular café also served as the Stage Depot for local bus service, so there must have been an air of anticipation amongst the young people of escaping to the big city of Everett at any minute.
Since those happy days, the wooden building built on tall posts on the steep slope facing the now-dry gulch began looking worse for wear as it continued to serve a number of storefront businesses and residencies on the second floor.
Three years ago, Zouhair Mardini and Joshua Scott of Mosaic Architecture began the journey of saving the building that has ended with its current full occupancy, featuring Mardini’s antique storefront, law offices on the second floor, plus a condo in the back, and more office space below grade that opens up in back to a private view of the gulch. (It’s worth the short trip around back, where you can compare the building’s new foundation of concrete with the existing wooden posts of the Oxford Saloon.)
It should come as no surprise to the long-time Snohomish reader that I left the Bailey’s with a generous bag of corn and homegrown tomatoes. More importantly, I left with stories, a folder of old photographs, and a promise to return.
About the THEN photographs: A Memorial Day Parade is underway with cars parked and few spectators watching. Also captured, was the 901 First Street building when it was home to Edward’s Confectionary. As the signage indicates, the store featured K & K Ice Cream, which was produced by the John Kleisath family of early Snohomish, who at one time, owned the store and lived upstairs.
The interior of the Kleisath Candy Store at 901 First Street sometime before 1918. That’s when the young clerk on left, Florence Kleisath, married Earl Bailey and moved to Bailey Farm which still exists south of town. Earl land Florence gave birth to Cliff and two siblings, all still alive and in their 890s. Florence’s stern supervisor to her left is he mother, Margaret, who together with her husband John started the K & K Ice Cream Company of Snohomish. The family lived above the store, now the new home of law offices.
About the NOW photograph: The 901 First Street building as it appears today in the morning light. The renovated building is sitting on a new foundation of concrete, boasting restored storefront windows for the Mardini & Company antique store, and featuring the addition of an enclosed stairway to the second-floor business and residence. All three floors of the renovated building, including one below grade, will be open for the Society’s 38th Annual Home Tour on September 20 from noon to 5 p..
EMAIL FROM DAVID:
We entered our 1957 Chevrolet 1/2 ton panel truck in the Snohomish Classic Car Show on Sunday, 9-27-2009. The truck took third place in our class which was Modified Custom Trucks 1959 and Older. I think that is pretty good for its first time in a car show. There were probably three dozen trucks entered in this class.
In its former life our 1957 Chevrolet 1/2 ton panel truck operated as the delivery and service truck for the original Snohomish Hardware. The hardware store was located on first street between Avenue B and Avenue C in Snohomish, WA. Colonel Neil Cochran (he was a Colonel in the Snohomish Fire Department) owned both the hardware store and the truck. He lived on the east side of the 400 block of Avenue B.
My family moved to Snohomish from the Philippines and into 306 Avenue B. in 1961. We ran the Bus Depot and had a restaurant, “Adel’s Cafeteria”, at 901 First Street from 1962 to at least 1971. Later, in 1978, when I came home from hobo-ing around the planet I bought the house at 322 Avenue B. I used to see this truck at least a dozen times a day going up and down our street to a delivery, a service call or a fire. There used to be a Snohomish Fire Department sticker on the front bumper. When we first bought it our two boys, Grifynn and Garrett, were little and they thought it was a Snohomish fire truck. As a kid I used to think of it as a big “real” toy Tonka Truck.
My wife, Carey Lee, was selling real estate at Gilpin Realty in the late 1990’s and one day she came home and told me about this truck she saw in a garage at a home she was showing on Avenue. B. I knew it was “the truck”. Carey Lee and I went down there and talked to the owners and we purchased the truck from Colonel Cochran’s daughter and son-in-law in 1999. We finally finiahed its restoration over the past 6 months. The truck has all new; interior, paint, wiring, suspension, with a Mustang II front end clip and the biggest front disc brakes we could install because the original straight 6 engine has been replaced with a big block Chevy 454. Needless to say the truck goes. With all that horsepower stopping is important. It has only 80,000 original miles on it. It is a moving piece of Snohomish history.
Every step of the way the restoration has all been done by “committee”. Carey Lee, Grifynn (15) and Garrett Clay (13) all had serious input in the design, paint, sound system and interior. Special recognition goes to Garrett Clay for the fine details and the interior design. The color scheme inside and out was no small feat of consensus. Our friends, Steve Allen and “Jim the Mechanic” of Snohomish did the lion’s share of the body and paint as well as the mechanical stuff. He was wonderful to work with. Sandblasters, INC. in Marysville brought it back to bare metal. Dreamers in Everett finished off the new suspension. Trimcraft in Snohomish did the Interior. Gary and Tim you are artists! The wheels and tires are from Les Schwab in Snohomish. Car Toys in Everett is responsible for the fine sound system. Gary at K&H exhaust specialties in Snohomish made the 454 Big Block Chevy engine purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Geoff Smith and Larry McNabb helped us move the truck around as it went
through the restoration process. Thank you all!
We own a “real” toy Tonka Truck.
We are looking for some old photos of the truck when it was the delivery truck for Snohomish Hardware on First Street.
Any ideas where to look? We are planning on making up a before and after montage for car show displays in the future.
Happy Trails,
David Clay