The front of town used to look a lot different than it does today. The intersection wasn’t there (it used to be a stop sign) which curved around to the DuPont Steilacoom Road, the 76 station wasn’t a gas station (it was just a store), and where the Better Business Bureau is now located once sat the City Hall and Laughbon High School. There once was a gas station at the front of town but it closed when I was 3 or 4. It was kitty corner from where the 76 station is today.
The front of town was always more exciting than our end of town. We liked going up to the store because if we were lucky we might be able to get some kind of snack or drink which might break up the day. We always used to save up our change too because they had a gumball machine and we’d go in and buy as many gumballs as we could and see who could blow the biggest bubble.
As kids, my brother and I used to pick up our mail at the post office on our bikes and then on some occasions we would have to go up to the city hall. To do this, we used the tunnel several times that passed under the road starting closest to the Iafrati’s property by the blackberry bushes. One of the things we always looked forward to was picking blackberries at the front of town next to where this tunnel was. We could get buckets of fresh blackberries just in an hour – there were so many on the bushes up at the front of town.
School buses and children in front of DuPont School. Click Photo for details.
I remember in the very late 80’s or early 90’s when the school was being torn down, my mother asked us one summer day to go to the demolition crew and ask them for a few of the bricks as memento’s. We did and I remember them thinking what do these kids want with these bricks, like we were up to no good. We explained what they were for they looked like they could care even less about the bricks at this point because they almost tossed the bricks to us and there we were left trying to figure out how ride our bikes and carry the historic bricks home.
It took us several hours that day to get bricks in 80 degree weather plus our ride home. I just remember how appreciative my mother and grandmother were – the bricks meant something to them – even though to us they were just bricks. I am retelling the story now and I remember her stories of Laughbon, even though I didn’t attend. I carried a brick and through my mom had an emotional connection just like we all can have through saving the history of this great city.