Norton Smallwood Oral History

Norton Smallwood’s recollections of the early days of Burien

The following is a small excerpt from an oral history of early Burien contributed to the Burien Heritage Society by Norton Smallwood, a lifelong resident of Three Tree Point. We think you will enjoy his memories and we thank him for sharing them with us.

“...There was no local newspaper in Burien. But there was the Post Intelligencer. There was a man who came around every morning about five thirty. We hardly ever got up early enough to see him but he dropped his load of papaers right up the street here. My brother and I had the paper route. My brother had the south side of the point and I had the north side. One time when I was delivering I came across a burglar. He had just opened up the door of this house and was ready to go in. He saw me and I saw him. He just motioned to me to move on and that’s just what I did. I had another experience on the paper route. Once I was taking my brother’s route, he was sick or something. As I approached a house to drop the paper off I noticed on the lower floor smoke coming out of the house. I walked along the back of the house, very excited about the whole thing. I came to a window and looked in and saw a man sleeping. So I rapped on the window until he rolled out and I told him his house was on fire. He ran out of the house and down to the front and got in his car and drove off. The fire completely consumed the house. After the embers cooled off they found a still in the basement, a liquor still, and all the pipes and one or two tanks, whatever they used for making whickey. There was another incident where they had a fire and found a still. This was not uncommon. Liquor was illegal, of course, and the use of it, so a lot of people made whiskey. A lot of people made home brew, too... Normandy Park beach was a good landing point, and there were boats coming in from Canada bringing Canadian whiskey down. It was a common thing. If they didn’t land over at Normandy Park, they sometimes landed over at Vashon Island. You could get liquor if you knew somebody...”