When Memory, History & Fantasy Converge

Michael with His First Book

This morning’s blog had to take a back seat for a few hours.  Michael Lemeshko arrived early bearing a cardboard tray of to-go cups — a caffè mocha for me, an Earl Gray tea for Nyel, and something else for himself.  It was a coffee date arranged some time back – a chance to catch up and, maybe – just maybe – a chance to exchange some useful information.

Currently Michael is gathering material for a new book.  This one is about B.A. Seaborg who was one of the movers and shakers here on the Peninsula in the mid-to-late nineteenth century.  From the Aberdeen Packing Company in Ilwaco to the town of Sealand contiguous to Nahcotta, it was Seaborg who was responsible.  And oh! so much more.

With his usual dogged determination and single-mindedness, Michael is pursuing every possible scrap of information about Seaborg – even to the point of trying to ‘reconstruct’ the Ilwaco streetscape of the 1870s, building by building.  One of the reasons for our coffee date was the hope (slim, I thought) that I might have some old photographs that would help.

Judge John Briscoe

“Come on over and have a look at my files,” I offered.  “I think I have about 30 photos of early Ilwaco –but you probably already have found them elsewhere.”  I knew he’d combed the various local museum archives and maybe even the Oregon Historical Society plus who knows what other nooks and crannies that might be hiding local history.  Michael is nothing if not thorough.

But before we got down to it, we talked about some of the aftermath from his first book about Judge John Briscoe, The Cantankerous Farmer vs. The Ilwaco Railway & Navigation Company and the Rest of his Neighbors on the Long Beach Peninsula.  Last summer we both entertained the judge’s descendants – a group of great-greats from Pennsylvania and a great-great-great-granddaughter from Australia.  Already, Michael told me, he has met with several of the Hawkins family — descendants of Mr. Seaborg.

B.A. Seaborg

And, I picked his brain a little about some things I’ve been working on.  Especially about online research sites.  Too, we talked about early magazine publications – especially Harper’s Magazine and their terrific illustrations.  Harper’s is the oldest general interest monthly in America.  Its debut was made in June 1850 and it soon began featuring works by American artists and writers such as Horatio Alger, Stephen A. Douglas, Theodore Dreiser, Horace Greeley, Winslow Homer, Jack London, John Muir, Frederick Remington, and Mark Twain.  But I digress…

When we finally got to the photographs, I was absolutely gobsmacked that Michael found five in my files that he hadn’t seen before.  One of them was actually a photograph that he was hoping against hope existed — and not just in his mind’s eye.  And voilà!  There it was!  I think he was beyond Gobsmacked.  All-in-all – a most satisfactory coffee date!

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