Gallery repairs unearth relics from the past

Apparently the artists of Tsuga Gallery were not the first nor the only creative people to inhabit their building, situated between Wahkiakum County’s courthouse and Cathlamet Pharmacy. Someone was thinking outside the box when he used a fender from a 1926 Model T Ford truck to hold up a floor joist.

Just who and when remain a mystery.

Local car enthusiast Ray Badger came in with an old Ford catalogue to identify the fender. He took it home, cleaned it and painted it black, the only color it had ever been. The fender has been returned to the gallery, along with one of Badger’s own 1920’s era Model T wheels, and the artists’ collective is pondering how to display it.

“It was part of the building and we want it to remain part of the building,” Cathlamet artist Genie Cary said. “Because it is the metal it is, they were able to paint it the original color. If you look closely there is a cut in it, probably from the weight it has been carrying.”

Cary likes to think the rest of the vehicle is still down there, with the driver. Though there is no truth to the tall tale, a beer bottle which is a post-Prohibition relic from the Aberdeen Brewing Company only adds to the lore of the building and proof that her fictional driver died happy.

“The Aberdeen Brewing Company doesn’t exist anymore,” Cary said. “They had to stop making beer during Prohibition, so they made soda water until Prohibition ended.”

It turns out the fender and the beer bottle weren’t the only treasures beneath Tsuga Gallery. There were other kinds of bottles and an old tobacco can, brake parts and what appear to be beef bones.

“Ken Gomes’ worker bee, Louis Burgett, was wonderful, saving as much stuff as he could for us,” said Cary.

It was a soft spot in the floor that prompted a call to local contractor Ken Gomes. Just after Halloween, the gallery was closed and Gomes and his crew began to pull up the floor. That’s when the surprises started. Floor joists were resting directly on the ground and full of dry rot, not just directly under the soft spot, but even farther under the structure.

In order to replace all the rotted floor joists, Gomes and his crew had to crawl under the floor and pull out several trailers’ worth of dirt, according to Cary, five gallon buckets at a time. The joists were replaced and the subfloor was set while they waited for fir from a local mill in order to finish the floors. They shored up the side wall in the front, which had been leaning forward at least four inches.

The gallery reopened two weekends ago and gallery visitors have been coming and going.

“I think people came because they missed us and they wanted to see the floors,” Cary said. “There were rumors all around. The tall tales are fun.”