By Seán Malone and John Sweetman From John: We rarely write about contemporary things, but this story is now old enough to be a least on the edge of vintage recollections. Over 20 years ago, I had helped Seán return to the Island, and he had acquired a great place. An old cabin, situated above a…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman Seán and I have had many adventures on boats over the decades. Some involved fishing and crabbing, but most involved “outboard” motors which were always cranky and infused with “trouble.” Trouble starting, running, and just plain ordinary reluctance to do what they were supposed to do. Seán and I had different…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman Seán has always fed birds, and his deck has been full of them ever since he began to live in the cabin. At first, I noticed at least one crow would be very skeptical if Seán poked his head out the patio door. Seán’s story explains why. We were…
By Seán C. Malone and John Sweetman As very young children, Christmas was always an exciting and wondrous time, but not for the same reasons that adults experienced. We were totally taken in by the family and church gatherings. Religious rituals, stories, and experiences were just taken for granted. We did have the eminently logical…
By Seán C. Malone and John Sweetman “And let’s try a wee dram of Laphroaig,” I said to Seán. A rare bottle of this peaty, rare single-malt came about as the result of a trade between us. The trade details are obscure but somehow involved a battery for his vintage Ford for a bottle of whisky…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman Seán and I had just returned from an extended trip to Hunters in Eastern Washington where his brother Mike has a large ranch that we frequently visited as “unpaid interns” to work in various neat projects, such as restoring old fish runs from Lake Roosevelt. After a long drive,…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman In our explorations of Vashon history, John and I came upon the original survey of Vashon, an 1841 map by Captain Wilkes and the “Ex. Ex.” or “Exploration Expedition,” which resulted in our Island’s exploration. His crew did not like Captain Charles Wilkes. Because of his “obstinate and overbearing nature,”…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman When Seán and I talked about this story, the original intent was to reflect our adventures in sailing various boats. Things got out of hand in that Seán had his own darn good story to tell. His boat was a wooden rig ketch of indeterminate age powered by some…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman We drank water out of hoses, ate dirt and raw oysters, and fell down steep cliffs. We had other dangerous hobbies, such as climbing the nearly vertical clay bank down at the beach or paddling logs out to the middle of Colvos Passage to wait for a freighter and…
By Seán Malone and John Sweetman “Hey! That Western gray squirrel is back!” And sure enough, that troublemaker was back pestering the Douglas squirrel, and we had a protective obligation to the native rodent versus the invasive Western gray bully type, that ate a lot of Seán’s birdseed for his wild birds, which the squirrels…