September 2017

Throwback Thursday- its here again.

We choose our throwback on Thursday morning before we publish these blogs and post to Facebook. While it may be easier to get the process going earlier in the week, choosing the day of keeps it exciting. That process is a story for another week, though.

This week, after going through a large stack of insurance polices, titles and other financial documents across the decades; we pulled out an old, slightly beaten up, hardback book. The cover, very worn, doesn’t exactly spell out what’s inside.

Opening up to the inside cover gives us all the details.

This book is titled: ‘ THE Complete Business Register, (REVISED AND IMPROVED )’ and its certainly an antique.

According to the inside cover, pictured below, this register was published in 1894. That’s two years before Fitterer’s Furniture opened for business. The price is certainly reflective – sold by subscription at $3.75. The second page, pictured below, gives detailed instructions and hints for using the register. An insert with examples follows.

Reading through all of that text truly makes you appreciate the advancement in technology over the last 100+ years. The manual bookkeeping process is far different than what businesses are used to today – that’s no surprise. However, when you start reading through all of this (very tiny!) text  and think about the time someone, somewhere spent typing it out without digital equipment, its very impressive. We even tried copying the text onto a page of this blog for easier reading, and its a TON of words. The first six bolded headings took nearly a full page on a word document at 12pt font.

There are clearly some typos and some grammatical errors – without the ease of a modern backspace button, spell check feature and all of the other things we enjoy today, how could there not be a few errors?

Thumbing through the book , there are records of cash  and credit sales from the years 1899 – 1909. Though the book has the space and ability to help chart things like profit and losses, Fitterer’s appears to have kept it fairly basic in this particular record book. The weekly totals of cash and credit sales and purchases were penciled in until the last time the book was used in 1909. Monthly totals seem to have stopped being tracked (in this book anyway) sometime around 1901.

Just having the opportunity to flip through the pages of a record book from the early 1900s is pretty amazing.

Enjoy browsing the photos of this antique record book, and if you get a chance stop by and see it sometime! History in your hands is a special thing.

If our blog is any indication, we clearly love the history that runs so deep in the Kittitas Valley. Of course we aren’t historians, or journalists for that matter; so while we enjoy showcasing the history of Ellensburg we certainly aren’t the experts.

Our neighbors across the street at the Daily Record have done an excellent job of honoring the history of Ellensburg with many special publications and sections. The Centennial edition that we featured on the blog a few weeks ago being just one example. If you love history ,The Daily Record, Central Washington Archives and the Ellensburg public library are great resources!

This week, we were lucky enough to have been lent a copy the 1989 Daily Record publication, “The Fabric of our Times”. This 128 page booklet is a beautifully bound collection of stories and photos. Its contents feature individuals and families in the Valley who have shaped history and the cultural patterns for the ‘next 100 years’.

Something that makes this particular publication so unique, is the fact that some of these stories are about smaller players who also played a role. Taken from the first page of print:

“Not all headline makers…some were more conspicuous than others – and all were contributors”

The idea of this community as a woven piece of fabric is a fantastic concept. A furniture store loves the idea of woven fabric – go figure, right? Jokes aside, we truly do love the concept that even the smallest fibers are important.

We hope you enjoy some of these photos taken from “The Fabric of our Times”. Most of these are still familiar faces in the community today!

Photo albums tell so many stories. Memories captured on film remind us of the shift in pop culture, style and trends through the decades. Who doesn’t love to look back at a photo of someone with big bangs, wearing chunky plastic jewelry? You’re generally bound to say something like  “Wow, that’s so 80’s!”.

This seems to be the case with most decades. Little clues to the time are evident in fashion and even photos themselves give an indication to the time. Polaroids rather than digital photos or color verses black and white – all of these differences add to the experience of browsing through old pictures.

We didn’t necessarily go into the history cabinet looking for photos this week, but after moving some things around, we came across some pictures in an envelope marked 1980. These round edged photos are approximately 2” x 4”, and feature sections of the store from years past. While browsing through the stills, it was kind of fun to know exactly where some these photos were taken. Even though the store has changed so much in over 35 years, a few were easy to point out.

We went through and took some 2017 photos to compare to a couple of the 1980 photos in the cabinet. While much has changed, the promise of quality furniture remains consistent throughout time.

View Facing the Main Street Window

Circa 1980

September 2017

In these photos facing our Main street window, you can see some of the evolution of the store over the last 30 + years. The dividing wall on the right hand side and the Flexsteel partition were added after the 1980 photo. Sofas are seen in both floor layouts, but there were far more curio cabinets on the floor in 1980.

Looking at the Store from Fourth St

Circa 1980

September 2017

Some photos are harder to differentiate than others. So many changes to the store have changed the exactly layout – but we knew exactly where this photo was taken. The same fourth street window displays a sofa, artwork and lamps just like the 1980 version. While this particular window is missing a table in 2017 , our adjacent window is currently home to a dining set as well.

Classic Meets Contemporary

Though these photos do not have an exact 2017 match, they give you a sense of ” before and after”.

‘ A picture is worth a thousand words, but the memories are priceless.’