May 11th-May 17th: Wood Week, Soviet Skaters, and the Spokane Motel Blues

Liz Wood

12 May 2024 — 9 min read

Despite rain, low temperatures, and blustery winds, this week saw excellent turnout at Expo '74. The fair was beginning to hit its stride, and the second week offered a spectacular array of events. Let's jump right in.

Washington State University's Waterworld exhibit hadn't been ready for Opening Day, but managed to open on this weekend instead.(1) WSU Insider recently did a nice article looking back at Waterworld, which turned out to be a popular stop for Expo crowds. On the other side of the coin, the Idaho Pavilion had opened on time but nobody enjoyed it. Hindered by low budget, the original version of the exhibit received "near-unanimous disappointment" from visitors.(2) Governor Cecil D. Andrus ordered some improvements, and a large statue of a miner from the Idaho capitol building was on its way.

*Based on this postcard, the original version of the Idaho Pavilion mainly featured photos of Idaho's outdoors and a couple of extremely anemic pine saplings.*

I mentioned the Folklife Festival (sometimes spelled Folk Life) briefly last week. This festival, held on the north side of the river, was the Smithsonian Institute's first participation in a world's fair. The exhibit's theme was "The Northwest: A Gift of the Earth." The Smithsonian had around three acres of the fair's grounds that it filled with kiosks and an outdoor amphitheatre. In contrast to other pavilions and exhibits, this area offered different activities and demonstrations every day, with a different weekly theme guiding the choice of artisans and performers.

*The Folk Life Festival is number 56 on this part of the* *official map**. 53 is the Republic of Korea pavilion, 54 is the Joy of Living Pavilion, 57 is the Union Pacific Steam Engine exhibit, and 66 is Native America's Earth.*

This week at the Folk Life Festival was themed around wood and paper products.(3) Visitors could help build a log cabin, watch a violin being carved, and see other thematic crafts like whittling, book-binding, and chair caning. One Oregonian wizard of wood helped people build stilts and then would compete against them in stilt races.(4) He also showed visitors how to carve "hummiediddles and liberjacks." I have no idea what a liberjack is, but I think a "hummiediddle" is what Wikipedia knows as a "gee-haw whammy diddle," "Ouija windmill," or "hoodoo stick." Hope that clears things up.

Spokane sculptor Harold Balazs was at Wood Week, helping children make kites.(5) Balazs had already contributed several large sculptures to Expo '74, including the 40-foot-tall "Lantern" that still stands outside the former Washington State Pavilion (now the First Interstate Center for the Arts) today. Did you know that the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture is currently running a Harold Balazs exhibit as well as their Expo exhibit? Check it out!

*Katie Chance of Kettle Falls, 21 months old, clings to a wooden horse at Wood Week.*

THE WEEK'S EVENTS

The Junior Lilac Parade braved rain and a high of forty-eight degrees to march through town on the morning of Saturday, May 11th.(6) Roger "Mr. Piano" Williams played the Opera House that evening, offering the audience a selection of his greatest hits and audience requests.(7)

On Sunday, May 12th, an unidentified young man dropped 26 ft from the A&W Sky Float to the ground, breaking a trash-catching net on his way down. Witnesses reported that the young man jumped up as soon as he hit the ground, climbed over a fence, and proceeded to scamper away, "shaking his wrists as though they hurt."(8) They estimated that he was around 18 years old and had short, curly brown hair. If this was you, I think the statute of limitations has expired and you can safely come forward and share your teenage thought process.

On a less alarming note, Sunday also saw the Very Reverend Cabell Tennis preaching a sermon of thanksgiving for Expo '74 at St. John the Evangelist Cathedral.(9)

The Cleveland orchestra played the Opera House on the night of Monday, May 13th. Johannes Fischer, a German concert pianist, played outdoors in the International Amphitheatre on the same day despite the chilly, blustery weather. For unspecified reasons, he also arrived to discover that he would be playing on a basic upright piano instead of an elegant grand piano such as as he was used to. Despite these surprises, his performance was described as brilliant, powerful, refreshing, and thrilling. "I can play with frozen hands," he explained later. "It's the spirit involved. A true artist's feelings can't wait for a grand piano."(10)

Tuesday, May 14th was the Expo Jazz and Swing Choir festival. The Coliseum hosted "Championship Skaters of the Soviet Union."(11) Skaters included Lyudmila Pakhomova, Alexsandr Gorschkov, Irina Rodnina, Alexander Zaitsev, Natalia Linichuk, Gennadi Karponosov, and Igor Lisovsky. As you can probably infer from the fact that they all have Wikipedia pages today, these skaters would go on to become legends of the sport. The Soviets would dominate ice dance and pair figure skating throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, thanks largely to the skaters that came to Expo '74.

*Lyudmila Pakhomova and Alexander (Aleksandr) Gorshkov would go on to win the gold for ice dancing at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck.*

Wednesday, May 15 was Oregon Day at Expo '74, and the fair was visited by Oregon Governor Tom McCall and his wife.(12) Governor McCall was a devoted environmentalist and spoke passionately about the importance of taking action to preserve our corner of the Earth. Part of his appearance also included a ceremonial raising of the Oregon flag, which was revealed to be upside-down. McCall took it in stride, quipping, "We've learned here today if you're going to hoist the Oregon flag, never get a Washingtonian to help you!"

One woman toured through the Australia Pavilion seven separate times in an attempt to be their 100,000th visitor. The honor was granted instead to a five-year-old girl named Lisa Race.(12) Although Lisa lived in Illinois with her parents, her grandparents lived in Spokane. The deputy commissioner general of the Australia Pavilion, Noel Flanagan, presented Lisa with a commemorative folder of Australian coins and gave her mother a scarf printed with Aboriginal Australian designs. The Race family then joined Flanagan and other Australian hosts for tea and hot scones with jam.

*Part of the interior of the much-visited* *Australia Pavilion.*

Wednesday evening's entertainment was provided at the Opera House by Tom T. Hall and Freddie "Easy Lovin'" Hart & The Heartbeats.(13) Hall was infamous in Spokane for his 1973 "Spokane Motel Blues," a catchy tune about wanting to be anywhere besides Spokane:

Well I know they're dancing in New Orleans
And old Chicago's bright as day
I'm stuck in Spokane in a motel room
Lord, I wish I had a Dolly Parton tape.

Despite his lament, Tom T. Hall was apparently happy to come back to Spokane for Expo, and Spokane was happy to have him.(14) The City Council declared May 15th, 1974 to be "Tom T. Hall Day" and held a ceremony at the Davenport in his honor. Later that evening, the audience at the Opera House was thrilled to hear "Spokane Motel Blues" played live, interrupting the song with applause twice and giving it a "90 second ovation" at the close. (You can listen to the song in full on Tom Hall's YouTube page here.)

Thursday, May 16 was Nishinomiya Festival Day, celebrating Spokane's sister city in Japan. Nishinomiya Mayor Tatsuo Tatsuuma led a "112-member goodwill mission" to the fair. Festivities included "kimono-clad dancing girls, a brass band, and Japanese dignitaries in lavender coats symbolic of the Lilac festival."(15)

The headliner of the week was Gordon Lightfoot, who gave two sold-out shows at the Opera House on Friday, May 17. This was also the day when Spokane's amazing Japanese garden in Manito Gardens was officially dedicated.(16) Now known as the Nishinomiya Tsutakawa Japanese Garden, this beautiful oasis of peace can be considered a legacy of Expo '74 even though it had been under development for years before. (The addition to the name occurred in 2007 in honor of Ed Tsutakawa, the icon of Spokane who facilitated the gardens and the sister city relationship. No relation to the George Tsutakawa who created the aluminum fountain for Expo '74 that stands to this day, as far as I know.)

ATTENDANCE

As of close-of-business on Friday, May 17, Expo attendance to date was reported as 386,646.

SOUVENIR OF THE WEEK

This Jim Beam decanter is a strong competitor for the title of "most oddly-proportioned Expo '74 souvenir." I don't know whether the designer at Regal China tried to make a decanter in the shape of the clock tower and gave up, or simply mashed concepts together into this strange chimera. It sort of evokes the end of the Planet of the Apes, where the Statue of Liberty is emerging from the beach, but instead it's the clock tower emerging from rocks and bracken. Originally, these came with *"4/5 quart, 100 months old, 86 proof, Beam Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey."*

*The back panels feature an Expo logo and a re-creation of a bit of the* *classic Irwin Caplan advertising art for Expo.* *I got this photo from* *an eBay listing that is still available as of this writing,* *if you have $23 plus shipping burning a hole in your pocket.*

NEXT WEEK

The Dilemma Facing Humanity; astronauts; Bob Hope; Bob Bellows; maybe things slow down enough that I can go into detail on one of the pavilions, but no promises.