Legends of Vashon
By Tripper Harrison
No one was safe in the summer of ’68, and few were above suspicion. Only the scorcher of 1941 was hotter, when it was said you could bake biscuits on your barn roof.
It was Vashon’s thin topsoil and intermittent humidity, however, that were particularly ideal for the fan-leafed tendrils of Cucurbita Pepo in 1968, the courgette squash we call zucchini, witness to its sprawling quest for water. There was a crop that year of such prodigious abundance that every self-respecting garden produced green torpedoes the size of river logs.
It was in this tumultuous milieu that a curious vigilante struck. At a 60-odd year remove, it seems harmless, just a series of victimless crimes. But at the time, zucchinis, now largely vestigial, were still thought of as food. Slice and fry one in a little salt, lard, flour, sprinkle it with some paprika and you were set for dinners and late night snacks for a week.
It’s easy to forget how good that zucchini was, but every Vashon-Maury parent remembered the Great Depression. Now, B-52s were bombing Vietnam and children were, in fact, starving in China by the millions.
Imparting the marrow of unbidden largess can also be a real imposition. At the very least, a trauma of obligation. Which someone, who remains unidentified to this day, exploited with sadistic embellishment.
It started on August 6th, when a beloved matriarch found a zucchini on her porch swing, fat as an artillery shell, with “Z.B.” carved into its glossy hide. That Tuesday noon, the postman was surprised by one in his mailbag. On Wednesday morning, the newly appointed Deputy Sheriff Terrence Otis Allman, an energetic 28-year-old, who would become a community stalwart and was fond of gambling, reported that one was wedged under the brake pedal of his Plymouth Satellite cruiser. Thursday afternoon, a waiting terrier was found leashed to a lunker outside the grocery store. Rose Pritchard found the saddle bag on her horse weighed down with ovoid gifts when she rode back from town.
The bachelor, Leif Anderson, woke up on Saturday morning to one nestled seductively on the pillow next to him, an arrow-shot heart carved on it. Demanding answers, he took it to a poker-faced Deputy Allman.
The Bandit’s audacity and scale grew with the thermometer’s climb into August. Zucchinis popped up in the unlikeliest of places: on Sunday morning, they were in the pews of the Lisabeula church, one perched neatly on every hymnal. They appeared like a spontaneous green combustion, balanced on the handlebars of bicycles, tucked into the bottom drawers of unwatched refrigerators, helpfully propping open business doorways for a breeze, stuck into the card catalog of the high school under ‘Z.” They made their way into every pickup truck bed and mailbox.
The Island buzzed with theories. Also, with recipes.
People realized that a secret, around-the-clock distribution effort required a rare combination of discipline, stealth, and anarchy. Who could it be?
The Harrington-Beall Greenhouse Company was the first natural suspect. It had the organizational capabilities, it had the staff and family tradition. But there was no profit motive, no anarchy. The Sportsman’s Club was a logical culprit and prone to mayhem, but an entire truckload was dropped off onto its range on August 13th. Suspicions would linger on and gradually disperse from the counter-culture types who inhabited the Jesus Barn a few years later.
The heat broke just past Labor Day. On the Saturday morning after the first week of school, at the service station that now houses Camp Colvos Brewing, a zucchini the size of a canoe was found right in front of the gasoline pumps. It was fitted with sails and had complete fore, mid, and aft decks, with portholes that sheltered miniature cannons. On its side was a big etched smiley face and letters carved a foot high, “Z.B.”
The Island isn’t all that great at keeping its secrets, and back then everybody knew everybody else’s business. Or thought they did. There were shell-shocked young vets coming back from a bad war, things on TV no one had ever seen before, plus an influx of occasionally annoying artists and lawyer-poets. My personal bet is on the strong, smart and funny deputy whose arrival coincided with the zucchinis that thrive past all reason when you least expect it.
