Blooming Hell

Winding through the green sea of pea-vines, cars jam the Rentonesque curves of the two-lane road into town. Tulip fields yell "fuchsia!" in the distance. And cars are stopped dead in their treads.

Nobody's going anywhere—LaConner's having a parade.

While drivers on the LaConnerWhitney road thrum fingers on steering wheels and yell at their kids in the backseat, well-lubed Shriners from Mountlake Terrace march down Morris Street in satin turbans and polyester caftans, posing for the tourists. There's a 78-year-old, half-naked, high-stepping genie with a remarkably large jewel in his remarkably large navel; a calliope; kids dressed as tulips and insects; parents marching for higher teachers' wages. . . .

"I love this," says Katie Berg. "This parade is for us. Tourists are lined up all the way out to the freeway—let 'em wait."

LaConnerites, of course don't all agree. "This parade used to be held in September, when we get our town back from the tourists," says LaConner Town Council member Dan O'Donnell. "Blocking off streets at such a busy time is unnecessarily inconvenient to those of us who live here."

Differing points of view have characterized this town from its muddy beginnings. It used to be said that LaConner had two grocery stores, two gas stations, and two people. Today, one of the gas stations is a deli, one of the groceries is an antique store, and there are a lot more people and a lot more opinions.

This wasn't always a gift-based economy. LaConner once boomed as the only port on the Skagit River for years. It was known as an up-to-date town with good hotels and restaurants, and numerous and fine whorehouses. Money flowed from timber and fish, none from ice-cream cones. Nothing was colored "oatmeal" except the hot cereal itself.

Bypassed by the railroad in favor of Burlington in 1889, LaConner was left in the backwaters for decades—until 1937, in fact, when painter Morris Graves came to town. Bearded, wearing a rope in place of a belt, he lived in poverty by choice, and was at first not treated particularly well. "People didn't know what to make of him," says novelist Tom Robbins, who's lived in LaConner since 1970. "The words 'beatnik' and 'hippie' hadn't been coined, the word 'bohemian' wasn't known in Skagit County, so they called him a 'Nazi'—the only derogatory term they could come up with. But he won them over, because Morris is a man of tremendous charm."

Because of the ice broken by Graves, LaConner achieved a sophistication not usually found in rural communities, and the town attracted such artists as Guy Anderson, Mark Tobey, and Ken Callahan, inspiring along the way Richard Gilkey and other locals to try art. Life magazine in 1953 dubbed them the "Mystic Painters of the Northwest," their work the "Northwest School." It was the first flicker of recognition for artists from the West by the East Coast art establishment, and they soon were acclaimed internationally. A new generation of artists and bohemians—Robbins, Charlie Krafft, Paul Hansen, Clayton James, Bill Slater—came in the '60s and '70s. By then, locals had a name for them: hippies.

"You could be yourself to the fullest extent; the town had a high tolerance for people who liked an easier way of life, where their eccentricities—dress and unusual behavior—were tolerated no matter how vile," says Robbins.

THE DOG-SLEEPING-in-the-middle-of-First-Street era ended in 1974, when the town, after great debate, installed sewers. Septic tanks had always bubbled up in back yards at high tide, and the toilets of the few storefronts not boarded up flushed directly into the channel. No new building had been allowed for the previous 40 years.

"When they put the sewer in, that's when this town started going wrong," says Robbins. Renovation of old houses and crumbling storefronts began, and vacant lots began filling up. A gated community called Shelter Bay sprang up on the Swinomish Reservation just across the Rainbow Bridge, bringing with it an upper-income suburban population that now is to LaConner what Bellevue is to Seattle.

Inexorably, "cute" started replacing "quaint."

Tulips had been blaring away in spring for 50 years, but had mostly gone unheard. "When I came here 23 years ago," art dealer and gallery owner Janet Huston says, "you could go out into the fields and be alone—it was spectacular and spiritual." The blooming masses of color, vibrant and amazing, inspired less spiritual types to fling off their dirndls and cavort naked in the rows.

But alas, no more. In 1982, a Seattle travel agent "discovered" the blooms, and one fateful day the first tour bus rolled into town. "We thought they'd lost their way to Anacortes," says a native. But no—they'd just come from the tulip fields, and boy were they hungry! Like all tourists, they needed a bathroom, a postcard, and a tchotchke. LaConner leapt into the breach, and has been paying for it ever since.

These days, such tourist needs as T-shirts, ice-cream cones, and espresso are met—and then some. LaConner's gone gifty, turning itself into a Noah's ark of retail. Lions lie down with the humpbacks, orcas breach with swordfish, flamingos fly with mallards in figurines, statuary, squeak toys, and paintings, or on coasters, lamp shades, sweatshirts, and the ubiquitous key chain. There are birds with hats, bees with shoes, frogs with glasses, and rabbits every way but cooked: in velveteen, satin, gingham, denim, ceramic, burlap, and rubber, wearing cloches and bonnets, sombreros and baseball caps.