‘Stowaway baby’ encounters memento of unusual 1931 birth

In 1931, a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer referred to the child born on the ferry "Crosline" as a stowaway. Current Puget Island resident, Norma Huxtable, was that stowaway.

Huxtable , a vibrant octogenarian, began her life in the same way she would live it--on her terms, with gusto and a great sense of fun.

One happy but stress-filled day that year, George Dow rushed his wife, Clara, very pregnant with their third child, to the hospital in Bremerton.

“They took mom up to the labor room. Dad was filling out papers and they wanted 50 dollars,” said Huxtable. “He didn’t have 50 dollars.”

The country had rushed headlong into the depression and money was scarce.

“He said he would get it and bring it to them the next day from his boss because he worked in the lumber industry," Huxtable said.

The administrators would not budge.

“They said no. They needed it today. My dad is Scotch and Irish, and heavy on the Scotch. When they didn’t trust him, well that just did it. He went upstairs and got mom out of the labor room and said, ‘C’mon we’re going to Seattle’.”

The trip to the Seattle hospital included a ride on the "Crosline". Clara and Norma couldn’t wait much longer.

“I was born 20 minutes out,” Huxtable said. “My birth certificate and everything says place of birth, Kitsap County Bay."

Years later Huxtable would make a life-long friend of one of her neighbors, a woman named Dolores.

“She was my traveling partner until she died last spring," Huxtable said. "She was such a wonderful sweet person; I just adored her. Nobody could get mad at Dolores. She was the nicest person in the world.

“One time when [Dolores] came up to Anacortes, she brought her cousin with her, who was from Coos Bay. He had never been on a ferry before. And so we decided we would take him over to the islands. We were waiting for the ferry to come and Dolores said, ‘Well, Norma, you were born on a ferry, weren’t you? What was the name of it?’ I said, ‘The Crosline’. His eyes got about this big.”

She went on, “It seems when that ferry was decommissioned it spent many years in Elliot Bay just sitting because they were going to make a restaurant or something out of it. That never happened. The city of Coos Bay bought it, hauled it to Coos Bay. They were going to do a restaurant, gift shop and this sort of stuff with it. So it sat there in their bay for I don’t know how many more years. And finally it was taken to the nearest shipyard and dismantled.”

It turned out that Dolores’s cousin worked for that very shipyard. Somebody had asked him if he would like one of the signs off the ferry, and for years, he’d had a "Crosline" sign mounted on one of his walls at home.

Huxtable asked him repeatedly if he would sell her the sign.

“He never gave me an answer. And about three or four days after that happened, this crate arrived at my door,” said Huxtable. “I was just dumbfounded."

The sign is now mounted with pride just outside her front door.

“We’re still in contact," Huxtable said. "Dolores is gone, but he and his wife and I still send cards back and forth. I think the fact that I got the sign is much more important than being born on the ferry boat. That could have happened to anybody.”