The Herd

Hicks Lake is a small pond in south Seattle where we grew up.  It sits in a bowl with hills on the east and west sides and Evergreen High School taking up all the land on the south side from SW 116^th to 108^th, where the main entrance to the county park is an extension of 8^th Ave SW.

When we were kids, the swimming area and surrounding grassy hillsides was the focus of most of our summer days.  The younger kids would take swim lessons from the lifeguards, and when we were older we congregated on the dock and socialized with the other kids.  The lifeguards were the kings of the beach, as I recall, long and lean with movie star tans that developed as they sprawled out on their elevated chairs with no sunshades on the hot afternoons.  I imagine they’re all dead of skin cancer by now; this was the ‘60s, and everyone smoked tobacco, too.

Back in those days, Evergreen High School did not allow smoking on campus, so the kids would run out to the fence between the schoolyard and the park and gather under a big tree near the fence.  That became the unofficial “smoking section” during the school year, and an informal gathering spot for the local bad boys and juvenile delinquents who had nothing better to do all summer but hang out at the park and get in trouble.

This group grew cohesive enough to be considered a gang, depending on who was talking.  Someone tagged us, “The Herd”, and it stuck, because we liked it, and didn’t give much thought about what it really meant.  We used to give ourselves the one fingered salute, but reversed, so the message became, “F*** Me”.  We were cool, and we knew it.

There was a regular routine to a hot summer day.  If you had no money, which was most of the time, you’d hang around at the lake most of the day and bum cigarettes from your friends and ogle the girls while at the same time offending the straight types who herded their children like baby ducks down to the swimming area and the sandy beach in front of it.

If you had a couple of bucks in your pocket, though, the sky was wide open.  You could go downtown and race your car at the slot car track on 16^th, or shoot some pool in the pool hall next door.  The pool hall had a row of coin operated Pinball machines that we became expert at cheating.  One of them in particular, we knew, had a spot on the underside where the plywood base was worn through, exposing the sheet metal under the body, because it would rack up 10 or 12 free games if you gave it a precise kick in exactly that spot when the manager was not looking.  You could play for hours on one quarter.

The roller rink was down the street on the same side, and there was a shooting range in the basement.  We were much too cool to do the Hokey Pokey any more, but it was still fun to skate, and lots of girls went there, too.  For fine dining, we had our choice of Lou’s .29 cent Ratburgers, a Root Beer Float at Dairy Queen or Frostop, with a burger and fries for $1.25.   At night, the hot rodders came out and the parking lots were hopping.

Back in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s Hicks Lake was a busy place every day.  The water was clean and clear, and the natural drainage supplied by the Little Lake on the north side of the park kept it that way.  Little Hicks was swarming with lily pads, bullfrogs and polliwogs in those days, and we used to hunt them with BB guns and kill them by the dozens in our ignorance.  People would catch crappie and bass in the big lake, and turtles were common.  Then it all died, through overuse and a series of bad decisions by the County.

We had regular joyful duels with the County Mounties who had the unfortunate task of keeping order down there.  At night the park would close and the Herd would be outstanding in their field most of the night, drinking beer and partying.  This offended the cops, and they would drive in with lights flashing, but none of us had cars, so we would run up to the upper parking lot and gather in the light from their spotlights and give them the Bird while doing the Monahan shuffle, so named after a teacher at Evergreen.  That would make them mad, and they’d drive back out the gate, then come tearing up the driveway to the upper lot while we ran back down to the lower lot and repeated the performance.  The banks along the shore of the lake on the south side between Cascade Elementary school and were steep and brushy, giving us many hidden spots to sit and drink beer while the cops cruised around looking for anyone who would volunteer to be caught without actually having to leave their cars and run after us (though that did happen, on occasion).

So the police complained to the Park department, and they sent a crew down to denude the hillside and take away our hiding places, which also had the affect of greatly increasing the washing of the muddy banks into the lake water and fouling it.  Then some genius at the County came up with a plan to fill the Little Lake and create a parking lot there.  That killed off the rest of the frogs and completed the ruination of Hicks Lake as a place where kids could come and swim and play in the summer time.  The water quality got worse and worse, and swimmer’s itch was frequent, so they spent a bunch of our tax dollars and built a chlorine- filled pool up on the hill, which remains the only swimming spot in the area.  They don’t even have lifeguards at the lake any more, nobody goes there.  Sic transit Gloria mundi.