Boom! I sat bolt upright in bed. My entire body tingled with excitement.  If it hadn’t been six in the morning, I would have yelled at the top of my lungs. That single firework salute by American Legion Post 199 was the official beginning of the highlight of my year, Carnation’s Fourth of July celebration. I had turned thirteen in June and this was the third “Fourth” I had celebrated in Carnation. Carnation in the 1950s may have been only thirty miles from the metropolis of Seattle, but Continue reading

I’m Emma Quaale De Jong.  I’m ninety-three years old.  I was born March 19, 1913—born down in, I don’t know if you call it the Carnation or the VincentValley.  Anyway it was where the water had just taken home anyway.  There’s where I was born.  And I went to school there in Vincent.  In fact, that’s my picture, first-grade picture up there, and our school there in Vincent; went to school there the first six years.  And then we was transferred up at Carnation the rest of the time. My dad came Continue reading

My name is Jeannette Boersma Davidson.  Boersma was my maiden name.  And I was born September 11, 1916, so I’m an old heifer. My dad was born in Chicago.  But his relatives all came from Holland, my grandpa and all of them. I was born in Manzanola,  Colorado. It’s kind of southwest of Denver.  I think it’s west—maybe it’s east. We came to Everett, Washington in 1924.  And we came to the Tolt Farm in Carnation in 1928, I think. That’s a farm on the other side of town. It still has “Tolt Farm” Continue reading

My name is Donald A. Davis. There’s more than oneDavis, so I go by the middle initial.  I’m eighty-four, will be eighty-five October tenth. I was born in 1920, a mile up theToltRiver, east ofTolt River Road.  That’s where I was born, up there on a twenty-acre stump ranch.  And I had seven brothers and sisters, four boys and three girls. There was me and my brother Harold, and Kenneth, andClyde.  Viola was my oldest sister, and Pauline was two years older than I am.  And Edith was two years Continue reading

I’m Elda Ann Orme Clinton, born July 14, 1916, in Tolt, Washington.  Then, it was Tolt, and then it was changed to Carnation.  Lived here my whole life. My mom and dad came in 1915.  My dad’s mother lived out here, and then he got married.  He married my mom, and they came on out here. South Dakota, I think it was, they came from. My dad was more of the business type.  He had taught school, and worked in a bank.  And my mom was from the big farm country—the people.  And somehow, they made a Continue reading

My name is Fred Brumbaugh, my birth date is 8-19-1929; Frederick Laverne.  I never use it. My birth certificate says Monroe, but my aunt says I was born in Carnation.  I’ve got one aunt in Oregon, she’s a hundred and two.  There were just eight in the family—my dad was the only boy.  He was born in Minnesota.  This town used to be 400 people, and you knew everybody in town. My parents fought a lot; but my Dad was never home, he was up to the garage all the time, workin’.  Kids didn’t have Continue reading

My name is Robert Andraelli, born March 7, 1923. I was born in Snohomish, Washington on a farm down there, born there.  Stayed around there about six years.  Then we went and bought another place, and then we stayed out of Carnation for about a year, and then I didn’t even know they bought the farm.  And then he told me, “We can go on the farm and stay now.”  So wound up there.  I liked the place we were at before, because we didn’t have nothin’ to do, just play.  When I got on the farm, I had Continue reading

Produced by Pacific Northwest writer, photographer and composer, Jerry Mader, Carnation Verbatim--A Celebration of Elders, is a documentary containing oral histories and photographs of elder citizens native to the Snoqualmie Valley and the community of Tolt/Carnation (est. 1912). Mader began the project in 2005. Over the next two years he photographed 28 elders, octogenarian and nonagenarian, and recorded 25 life histories. Mader also assembled excerpts from 22 of the audio recordings of life Continue reading