A SHIP, A CHURCH, AND SOME PIGEONS

Adventure. My best friend Chuck and I were always on the lookout for some new and strange adventure. Something that most kids would never have considered trying. Something that while sitting in front of our parents would cause them to scream, “Why in the world would you try a stunt like that?”

I can honestly say that even now I think with fondness of those memories, although I would shake my daughter silly if I found out she was also dabbling in the ancient art of stupidity.

Let me give you an example: Downtown Bellingham, an easy 40-minute bike ride from our house. Many of the old buildings which were built in the early 1900s were four to six stories high. Though they once held many different businesses and organizations, they now are low-income apartments. All the buildings had some sort of fire escape attached which dropped into the back alley. Chuck and I made it our goal to climb down every fire escape ladder we could find in the center of town. This would mean that we would find a way into the building, climb to the top, find the fire escape, and descend it to the alley.

I can remember descending past one window where a woman in curlers was serving her husband coffee as he sat at the kitchen table in his underwear. Dropping his cigar as he jumped up, he yelled something about the police. We became known as the Fire Escape Gang. We had a false sense of confidence merely because we had never been caught.

It was on one of our bike rides into town that we crossed the intersection of Broadway and Holly.

Looking toward Bellingham Bay we saw a large cargo ship named the Nix Beeman which was tied up parallel to the shoreline about 300 yards out. It had been there for years and was being used as a breakwater which protected log booms floating between the ship and the beach. Since the police were currently on the lookout for the Fire Escape Gang, we needed a new adventure.

“Ever wonder what’s on that old ship?” I asked Chuck.

“It would be easy enough to find out,” he said. “We just walk out on the log boom and figure out how to get on the boat.”

I am sure that men who have worked on log booms could tell you the dangers of walking on floating logs. Even tied together, they could spread apart allowing someone to fall into the water before they closed back together again. But that is what we did, we left our bikes and shoes on the shore and walked on the boom out to the ship. Once we reached the end of the boom, we encountered our first problem. Where the logs ended, there was about 30 feet of open water over to the ship.

“The way I see it, we jump in the water and swim over to the hawser lines and climb up, or we go home,” I said. The answer was obvious, we jumped in the water and swam for the hawser lines. Once at the ropes, it was an easy climb up to the deck which was about 20 feet off the water.

We explored the outer deck which had most of its original gear removed.  We then made our way into the interior rooms. It was pitch black except for occasional shafts of light. It smelled strong of petroleum products. The floor had a thick coating of squishy goo which oozed up between our toes. We walked slowly and carefully in the dark so as not to step on anything sharp or fall onto the lower decks. And then there came a noise; it was loud, panicky, and straight at us.

Flying past us and beating our heads with their wings were hundreds of pigeons making a quick escape from their roosts. The panicked birds and boys headed back out into the daylight through the same small man door. Both the birds and boys messed themselves on the way out. It did not take long to realize that the goo between our toes was pigeon poop which was now also covering our heads and shoulders.

To this day, I wonder why no one called the police about the Fire Escape Gang being on the log boom and the ship. Even after jumping off the ship into the bay and walking the log boom back to our bikes, we still had to use some old newspapers to wipe the oil and poop off our feet.

Boys grow older, go to college, and become men. Chuck went on to bigger, better, and more mature things in life. The Fire Escape gang was no more. I, on the other hand, did not understand that I should grow up.

On the corner of C street and Halleck stood the First Christian Church. It was a building from the 1800s which had a domed roof. For years it had been abandoned, its windows and doors boarded up. On the dark nights, when broken clouds drifted past the moon casting an eerie light on the building, it appeared haunted. So, why not go inside?

It was 11 pm. Some friends of mine, (both male and female by the way), parked on a side street eyeing the building. The only traffic on the streets were the city police who were stationed in their new building directly across the street and facing the church. That should have been reason enough not to enter the building, but there was, as I noted, no signage on the building saying, “No Trespassing.”

We exited the car with our flashlights and ran across the dark ground to the back of the church. There was already a board which had been pried open over one of the windows and we entered the building through that point. Once we were all inside, we were committed. We talked in hushed voices and scanned the area with the flashlights looking for homeless people. In a single file line, we slowly walked through the old church heading up to the domed roof.

There was a walkway around the base of the dome with archways which were exposed to the outside. To walk through the exposed archway, the flashlights were turned off so as not to attract attention from the outside world. A small walkway led to the top of the dome. It was between the dome roof and the dome ceiling. As we climbed the walkway, it appeared to end at a hole. A careful inspection revealed a rotted spot in the dome ceiling which had fallen away to the floor 70 feet below. We were standing in a very unstable area. And then we heard a noise which was now familiar to my ears, if not to the ears of my cohorts, as 100 startled pigeons left their roosts in the dark and flew directly at us. Once again, shear panic to evacuate the building caused the birds, and some of the not birds, to mass poop. I honestly believe that some of those birds had passed over me before.

And as we were retreating off the dome through one of the arches, someone let their flashlight shine outside as a patrol car was driving by. A “whoop, whoop” was heard from the car siren. We froze, waiting for a loudspeaker to shout that we were surrounded, or a police dog to enter the building. The police would finally apprehend the Fire Escape Gang . . . but nothing happened. The car drove on. We exited the building and made it back to our vehicle leaving the haunted old church behind, but explored.

Between roosting pigeons, and laying seagulls, I have in my career been pooped on much more than I would have liked to have been, but it was always because I was somewhere I should not have been. The Fire Escape gang disappeared into history to become a police cold case, only being revived to tell this story. The Nix Beeman was towed away to be used as a breakwater for log booms on a river in Canada. If my memory is correct, the old First Christian Church building was torched by an arsonist, and on inspection yesterday, the Fire Marshall has required added security on the escapes to prevent knothead boys from climbing on them.

So you see, this is why Bellingham has the slogan, “The City of Subdued Excitement.”

After all, what is there now for adventuresome young boys/men to do?

(Title Photo: Port archive photo of the Nix Beeman as seen off of Broadway and Holly.)

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