‘Growing Up in Rat City and Beyond’by Alexander G. Sasonoff.A Book ReviewScott Anthony10-22-08
A new book about White Center is being offered by local Architect and author Alexander Sasonoff. The 230 page paperback, ‘Growing Up in Rat City and Beyond’ is an autobiographical trip through Sasonoff’s early years in the south Seattle suburb with the sometime rodent moniker. As the son of Russian immigrants settling in a scrappy, burgeoning town in the middle of the Great Depression, one might expect some difficulty or friction. In the book Sasonoff says this is not so;
“Our spacious garden provided a place to plant a garden and raise some of our own vegetables. A chicken house was added and later, a place for ducks. We also raised turkeys….with the ducks and chickens there was always meat on the table along with eggs…we had raspberries, loganberries, boysenberries, gooseberries and strawberries.” Sasonoff’s father found work at Boeing and when the kids weren’t in school, they were never bored, “Woods and empty lots were to be found everywhere at the time and were great places for adventure and for cowboy and Indian battles.”
In order to do this book review properly, I asked the author if he would take me around White Center and show me the town. Along the way, I peppered him with questions.
Why write about White Center? “It’s where I grew up!,” he laughs, I went to school here, I hung out here.” We pulled into the parking lot of the Southgate Event Center (the former roller drome is now a Swap Meet location) where the Rat City Rollergirls founded their Derby team. As I snapped off some photos, he continued. “We had a lot of fun here as kids, and there was Coy’s Theater over on Roxbury, and we used to buy fireworks at the White Center Drug Store.”
Sasonoff’s story begins in 1936, six years after his birth in Seattle, when the Russian immigrant family moved from Green Lake to 10th Avenue and Elmgrove Street.
As a boy, Sasonoff attended Highland Park Grade School and he remembers the area there being very rural. “We used to get fresh milk from Frenchie the farmer. He lived over the hill at the end of Canyon Street. The milk had so much cream,” he says, his voice escalating in tone, “that Mom and Dad skimmed it off to make butter.” The feel of the book is matter-of-fact and sparse as far as prose. The anecdotal quality is interspersed with russian language utterances from his father. “At the dinner table, if someone accidentally dropped a morsel of food on the floor, my Dad would sharply exclaim in Russian, “ Povalyai, povalyai, boodet v kooskneiya. ” Translated, he was saying, “Roll it around, roll it around, it will taste better.”
When the author reached adulthood, he held a number of tough jobs, including that of steeplejack and fisherman on a purse seiner that trolled the Strait of Juan de Fuca and other points north. Additionally, Sasonoff writes about his stint in the Army in the 1950s, where he rose rapidly to a position as Staff Sergeant directly under General McArthur in the Communications Center for Far East Command. Sasonoff also includes stories about semi-famous residents, Al Hostak and Harry ‘Kid’ Matthews, two prizefighters who frequented the local restaurants and bars.
Though a couple of chapters in the book include some ribald paragraphs, it is fairly minor in terms of titillation and to be fair, this is an autobiography and not a children’s book. After the military, Sasonoff returned to White Center and graduated from the University of Washington’s architecture program. He got married and moved into a run down shack just off of 102nd Avenue and 19th St.
“It was basically a garage and I remodeled it and moved it with truck jacks out of an alley. It was probably the only time I actually saw rats.” he chuckled.
Asked about the title of ‘Rat City’, Sasonoff admits that, “It was just the name we used as kids,” but on further reflection he said the town, “always seemed to be in turmoil… the bottle clubs, the prostitution and gambling, I was only 11 or 12 years old, but we saw a lot of the military come up (from Seattle) to drink and carouse, fighting with the locals and amongst themselves.”
A cursory examination online reveals more pragmatic explanations of how White Center might have been labeled. Paraphrased here from Wikipedia; “Rat City is a colloquialism for the area of White Center, Washington, a small, low income suburb of West Seattle. White Center garnered a poor reputation due to its high crime rates and small homes. An alternate scenario for the moniker is that the name refers to the "rink rats" who roller skated at the Southgate Skate Center (which still stands).
Some people assume there was once a prolific rat problem in the 1940s, but RAT might have also been an acronym for Restricted Alcohol Territory, which Seattle was designated as during WWII. Unincorporated areas such as White Center were a draw for servicemen in part because of less stringent liquor regulations. Additionally, a military Relocation and Training (RAT) Center was located in the area during that period.
The author is working on material for another book, which may become a collection of children’s stories.
This is the author’s first book and along with a number of his own photographs, he created all of the illustrations, including the cover. It is available at Amazon.Com for $14.49, not including shipping.
A book launch and signing is still being planned, but details can be found on his blogsite,
http://www.alexandersbook.blogspot.com/
