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3/3/2026
People on the internet are strange.
When I was starting my podcast, I sent a message to an existing history channel I enjoy, asking if they had any research advice. To this day, research is the hardest part for me. I just don't feel like I know what I am doing, half the time. That channel eventually answered me back but it was a bit of mess. They wrote me a rant about how the internet is unreliable, you always need two sources and have to document and be ready to cite sources, etc etc. Basic stuff. Fast forward a few years, they made some content to relevant to Bremerton. I reached out to see if they would share their source and... I'm pretty sure they lied to me. Ironic.
They told me they must have gotten the photo from The Sun or it's archive and they had no idea if there was a news article that went with it, despite it clearly being a staged newspaper photo. The bigger problem is, the year the photo is from isn't from any online archive that I'm aware of. The newspapers.com archive starts a couple of years late. 1936 would have to come from the microfiche or an online archive I haven't encountered yet. I am fairly certain this person doesn't live on the peninsula, so it's not like they strolled on over to KRL.
If there's an archive with photos from earlier years, I'd love to know about it. but it seems like they run their show as more of an endless content mill than a fun history project. My guess is they don't want to tell me because they don't want me to know. I googled around and found someone else who had shared the sam photo but years ago. That person cited their source as the Tacoma library archive. I've emailed the librarian but it looks like I would have to drive down there and get a paid library card to even find out.
My guess is that there is an online portal somewhere that I need a tacoma library card number to get into and that's where the content mill is pulling all of their photos from.
I hopped on over to the sylvan way library last weekend and pulled up the article on the microfiche. I was amused. Everyone on facebook was leaving comments about how stupid it is to have a law against whittling... without realizing the 1936 article is actually doing the same thing- critiquing how useless this old anti-whittling law was! There's a whole layer of absurdity to it that everyone else is missing.
I also found a post from the 50's about a sailor being arrested for whittling on a light fixture in a dance hall bathroom. Wish I had some more historical context for that one. I wonder if sailors historically use their knives to "whittle" aka graffiti out in town. 1950's would be late for that though- the navy is in the propulsion era by then. I wonder if the historical graffiti varied in quality like our modern graffiti does. Was the sailor just bored and carving his initials/tag onto something? Were there more talented whittlers floating about, making wooden fixtures more beautiful?
well, that's all I've got for now. Maybe there's the seed of an episode in that thought.
-D
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