Scarbutt’s Coffee

Elwood K. Wayson was the elderly gentleman who lived in a small white house behind ours on Marine Drive. He had been a widower since I was a boy and had only the surrounding neighbors as friends, so we claimed him as our adopted grandfather. He was called by us and those who knew him, Swede.

There were many stories told to me by Swede as we sat together in his overcrowded house. I don’t believe that I ever asked him why he went by Swede when the Wayson name is English.

Most of his stories centered around his life growing up in the seaside town of Home, Washington, and life with his new wife Ellen.

Swede worked in the woods as a spar pole setter and later as a power pole lineman. He was also fond of stumping powder and was the go-to person when a neighbor needed a stump or boulder blown to bits. Swede was well known as the young man from Home who packed dynamite under the roots of a stump which was in the middle of the school ball field. When he lit the dynamite off, the stump took to the air like a rocket, but the concussion rolled across the small bay, hit the shore on the other side and rolled back again shattering all the windows in the schoolhouse.

One small portion of his life in his 20s was working as a log tender on a tugboat. It was the early 1930s and much of the transport around Puget Sound happened by boat traffic. The tug which employed Swede was used to pull log booms from the point they were dumped into the bay, to the sawmills in the Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma areas. The tug was named Herb.

The Captain of the Herb was a Norwegian named Magnus Amundsen. He was in his early 60s and had plowed the waters of Puget Sound most of his life. Magnus stood 5’5″, had a long gray beard and uncut hair and weighed an ounce shy of 265 pounds. He mostly sat in his Captain’s chair and barked orders.

As Edward Teach sailed the seas as Black Beard, and Killian Jones went by the moniker Captain Hook, Magnus Amundsen was known on Puget Sound as Scarbutt. The name originated from the morning he bent over in the boiler room at the precise moment a steam pipe blew. The heat seared his backside. It was said that Magnus had the nastiest butt on all of Washington’s waters.

Another Norwegian on board named Kristofer was the same age and build as Magnus. He was the boiler keeper. He kept the fire fed and adjusted the steam pressure.

The third Norwegian to round out the crew was Ole. He manned the ropes on the deck.

Swede’s job aboard the Herb was to walk the log booms to check the ropes. He was to make sure no logs were lost during the trip across the Sound.

Down in the boiler room, Captain Magnus had mounted an enormous urn for making coffee. The heat for the urn was plumbed into the steam from the boiler. On cold, rainy days on the passage, Swede and Ole, who were normally wet from watching the boom, would sit in the warmth of the boiler room to dry and drink coffee. It was well known by all the local mariners as the best coffee on Puget Sound and when the tugs and other boats were moored together, various crews from other boats would come to sit and drink the Herb coffee. It was common knowledge that many a bottle of the illegal stuff also came aboard to add to the coffee which they called the code words, The Nudge.

One morning, as they were preparing their journey from the Tacoma mill back to Home, Swede sat in the boiler room with Magnus and the rest of the crew.

“You got the coffee going yet Kristofer?” Magnus asked.

It was Kristofer’s responsibility to make sure the boiler and the coffee urn were always ready to go.

“Getting on it, Captain,” Kristofer replied, and reaching into a cupboard, he pulled out a bag marked Coffee Beans.

Sitting on a bench, he kicked off his right slipper. Grunting and exerting himself greatly, he pulled off his right sock. Swede then watched as Kristofer filled the boot sock with the coffee beans until it was nearly full. He then hopped over to his tool table, grabbed a wooden mallet, put the bean sock on the bench and began beating it with the mallet.

Swede threw up a little in his mouth.

When Kristofer had crushed the beans to his liking, he hopped over to the urn, removed the lid, and emptied the contents of the sock inside. Then, grabbing a bucket of water, he dumped it over the grounds, replaced the lid and opened the steam valve to boil the water. Lastly, he hopped over to his chair and reversed the struggle to put his sock and slipper back on.

Swede just stared.

“How do you clean out the urn at night?” Swede asked.

“Never do,” Kristofer responded.

Swede walked to the urn and peeked under the lid. The urn was nearly full of grounds, some of which were black, some green, and some areas appeared molded.

That though was the secret to Scarbutt’s coffee; it was ground in Kristofer’s sock and the old grounds were never removed.

As the years went by, Captain Amundson decided to park the Herb for good. He moored it on Seattle’s waterfront. It simply couldn’t compete with the diesel engines of the 40s.

Fortunately for Magnus a new use was found for the little tug. Quite by accident, Kristofer plumbed a copper line into the boiler which allowed him to steam milk which he could add to the coffee. He called this a Latte. By adding chocolate to the Latte, he created a tasty drink topped with whipped cream which he named, The Mocha.

It was not long before word got out and the people of Seattle, regardless of social status, traveled from great distances to have a specialty coffee drink from the little tug moored off First Avenue. It may have been the unique coffee flavors or the hilarious sight of two elderly fat men dressed as baristas, but soon, everyone in Washington knew the fame of Scarbutt’s Coffee.

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