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GOODBYE DOC'S
By Gary Frankel
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October 8, 2003. This fond memory of Doc Freeman's appeared in the October 2003 issue of 48 North, the Pacific Northwest sailing magazine. Rich Hazelton, the editor of 48 North, graciously allowed us to reprint it here on the Waggoner web site, and Gary Frankel, the author, said he would be pleased to see it here. The piece I wrote (Doc's Gone (1)) made reference to the stock Doc Freeman's used to carry, and to the quality of the people behind the counter. Gary Frankel was one of those people, and this is what he recalls.
“Fifty-eight!” I’d yell over the din of customers milling around the worn Formica counter. Forty people were staring up at me, hoping to hear their number called. They stood on the same unfinished wooden floor that boat owners and repair people had walked on since the 1940s. Some of the old searchlights and steering wheels hanging from the ceiling were put there by Doc Freeman himself before he died in the early 60s.
“Over here! I’ve got fifty-eight!” a customer would answer. Typically, the customer was a man, and typically, his clothes were dirty. Sometimes he’d be holding a length of burned-up rubber exhaust hose, often he’d have a 30 year-old corroded Jabsco diaphragm pump, and once in a while he’d have an entire marine toilet cradled in both arms like a Scotsman carrying a large bolder in a competition.
Sometimes the customer was a guy in a suit, like the architect who came in to buy the fittings that secured the Astroturf to the floor of the Kingdome. Once in a while the crazy guy with the .45 caliber handgun in his belt would show up. Every fall, Homer, Alaska's Russian fishermen, who spoke almost no English, would pop in to buy $50,000 worth of gear. Sometimes the customer was even a woman! (Women almost never had to wait for their numbers to be called.)
“Fifty-eight?” I'd say, and walk over to the guy and look at his paper ticket. Without the slightest humor in my voice or smile on my face, I’d say, “Oh, I’m sorry, you have C-58, and we’re waiting on A-58 right now. You’ll have to wait for another couple hundred people.” After an inappropriately long pause I’d let him off the hook.
“Just kidding," I'd say, "What can I do for you?”
Humor was a big part of the Doc Freeman’s experience. I remember Jim Wright looking a customer squarely in the eye and saying, “No, I’m sorry, that part is totally irreplaceable. Your boat will never work again, and you might as well just sell it and figure on buying a new boat.” The poor customer almost burst into tears on the spot.
Actually, we had a whole barrel of those parts in a warehouse somewhere. We had a barrel full of darn near every part in a warehouse somewhere. If we didn’t have it, we knew where you could get it. And if you really couldn’t get it we knew the way to fix the boat without using that particular part. Not one customer in a hundred ever left Doc’s without getting his problem solved somehow.
That’s why people put up with the questionable humor and long lines. Once you made it through the gauntlet of getting waited on, the people at Doc’s always knew what they were talking about and had the parts you needed.
And at Doc’s you could get just the part you needed. We didn’t much believe in “repair kits.” If you just wanted the little spring that holds the check valve flap on the output side of a 1972 Perko pump, we’d sell you just the little spring. In a heartbeat we’d rip open a factory repair kit and sell you the parts out of it.
And how much was that little spring?
“Hmmm, the whole kit is $19.95. I figure the spring must be worth 75 cents.” Oh yeah, we’d make up prices all the time. If we liked you, things could be very inexpensive. If not, it could get ugly.
Back to Customer C-58. As likely as not, he’d be holding an oddly-shaped piece of chromed bronze. Before he could even describe the problem, I’d say, “Looks like a throttle control bracket from an old Chris-Craft. They're getting kind of scarce. We bought up the last ones in the world in an auction a couple years ago. They’re up in the Albion. Do you have time to take a little walk?”
The best part of working the front counter at Doc’s was showing people the Albion warehouse. We’d take them in tow and out the door we’d go.
The Albion warehouse was three blocks north, up on Albion Street. It was a converted power station that used to provide electricity for Seattle's streetcars. The concrete floor had more PCBs soaked into it than anywhere else on Earth. A large round steel manhole cover was in the middle of the floor. I never lifted it, but I always assumed it covered a shaft that somehow dropped straight down into Puget Sound.
The Albion was unstaffed, so I’d have to unlock the door. The customer and I would be the only ones in the dark, smelly, concrete structure. We'd stumble past the latest pile of marine-related junk that had been purchased at auction. There were always at least 10 or 15 pallets of Bayliner dashboards, or Ronstan rough-cast bronze cleats, or stainless steel Tollycraft bow pulpits.
We'd climb the old wooden ladder to a loft illuminated by a single 300 watt incandescent bulb, and shimmy past the mountain of Morse control cables. In that filthy wooden loft we had every Morse cable made between 1952 and 1960. There were hundreds of them. To my knowledge, no one had ever sold even one of those cables. Ever.
But past the cables, around the pile of exhaust elbows and beyond the sharp jutting ends of prop shafts, was an old cardboard box. In that box were the last six Chris-Craft throttle control brackets in existence.
How did I know they were there? Because a year earlier old Pete (at age 77) had climbed up the ladder and showed me where they were kept.
When I pulled the bracket out of the box, you can bet Mister C-58 was impressed. He’d be back whenever he needed something for his boat. He’d be happy to wait in line, he’d pay the unpredictable prices, and he’d even laugh at our questionable humor. Because nobody else had that cardboard box of Chris-Craft brackets.
It was a long time ago. Dick Whistler (“Whistler”), one of the best marine hardware people in the country, passed away a few years back. So did Bill Doorly (“The Quartermaster”), Pete (“Old Pete”), Gary Bates (“Frick”), Ted Cooper, and recently, Lee.
They shut the doors on Doc’s for the last time on September 5th, to get ready for the liquidation auction three weeks later, but really the old Doc Freeman’s had been gone for years. You can still buy marine hardware in town, but nobody will sell you just the spring out of a Perko check valve repair kit. Nobody can replace your amp meter with the one that matches the fuel gauge on your 1958 Lyman runabout.
And never again will you hear Old Pete yelling into the phone on an insanely busy Saturday afternoon, “Doc Freeman’s, where the action is!”v
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