The Pittsburgh Press (January 31, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
SEATTLE – Now is the time to jot down, in your book of urgent addresses, that of Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, on Colman Dock in Seattle.
You will find it indispensable. For example, suppose you were to find yourself in dire need of a whale louse. Where on earth would you find a whale louse? In Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, of course. One as big as your hand for 75 cents.
Or assume that you were caught in Jackson, Miss. Without a totem pole. Just wire Ye Olde Curiosity Shop – they’ll ship you an eight-foot one for $50.
Or you could order a calf-weaner, a five-inch grasshopper from Ecuador, or a stuffed chimpanzee with teeth bared. Practically anything you want, sir.
Ye Olde Curiosity Shop is an institution. It is known to thousands of sailors, and to scores of thousands of tourists. It has been a magnet for the curious for 43 years.
This odd business was established in 1899 by J. E. Standley, who went by the nickname of Daddy, and who always wore a skull cap during business hours. He died a year and a half ago, in his late 80s, and he must have been a character.
For 30 years or more he kept a combination grocery and butcher shop in Denver. But at heart he was a collector of freakish things. Every time he’d get his hands on an odd piece of something – anything – he’d tack it up in his grocery.
After 30 years of this it got so bad that the customers couldn’t find the groceries. So Daddy Standley sold out, took down all his freakish mementoes, moved to Seattle, and set them up in business. They kept him in comfort the rest of his life.
Got old things from sailors
In those early days sailors would bring in nutsy things from the ends of the earth, and Daddy Standley would buy them. But now the sailors’ paths are picked bare, so the shop gets its oddments mainly by trading with explorers, and from the private collections of the lately deceased.
I spent hours rummaging around the Curiosity Shop. It isn’t large, yet I’ll bet you could be there a week and on the eighth day find a hundred new things you’d never noticed before. Let me tell you some of the things you’d find:
A Chinese beheading sword; a petrified bullfrog; a Swiss cowbell that weighs 14 pounds; Ripley’s name written with ink on a human hair; a trap-door spider’s nest; a horn from a rhinoceros’ nose; the smallest U.S. treasury check ever written (one cent).
In Ye Olde Curiosity Shop you can buy shark eggs. You can buy a whole bear’s foot, or individual claws, as you wish. You can get an old mustache cup and saucer for $1.95. If you’re crazy for an African jungle marimba, it’s there. Maybe you’ve hunted all your life for a whale’s ear-drum. You’ve come to the right place.
You can find spookishly human-looking fish. On the ceiling is a 10-foot rattlesnake skin. There is a Civil War Bible, or rather it looks like a Bible until you open it up; inside it’s hollow and holds a pint of whisky (our gay ancestors!)
There is a pass to the trial of Charles Guiteau in 1888. You can buy a narwhal tusk for $35. If your camel has lost its bell and doesn’t know where to find it, there are some good ones, from Palestine.
After two hours I took off my hat and topcoat and decided to stay awhile. Mr. I. R. James laid them on a stool behind his counter. Mr. James is Daddy Standley’s son-in-law. He and Ed Standley, a son, run the place now.
Sell stuff to lots of big people
Mr. James is a pleasant man who is very proud of the shop. He says they sell stuff to lots of big people. The Du Ponts of Wilmington frequently order giant clam shells. These monstrous things are five feet across, and the Du Ponts use them for bird baths. Robert Ripley ordered a 37-foot totem pole.
Ye Olde Curiosity shop has blowguns and peace pipes. It has Ezra Meeker’s old yoke for his oxen, and the hat worn by the Indian chief Seattle. It has ships in bottles, and glass fish-net buoys that have floated across from Japan. It has Chinese cloisonne vases hundreds of years old, and ebony elephants by the hundred.
While I was there a class of small schoolgirls came in on a tour. “We have them all the time,” Mr. James said. “Twenty years from now they’ll be customers.”
One little girl came over to me.
“Have you got a picture of Buddha?” she asked.
“Little girl,” I said, “I am distressed beyond measure, but we disposed of our last picture of Buddha 10 minutes ago. However, and this is a bargain, I will furnish you a snapshot of myself for a mere $5.”
The little girl romped away to her teacher, pointed at me and said, “See that silly old man over there.” I suppose she will never think of the incident again, but I shall.
You’ve heard of the shrunken human heads from the Amazon jungles. Well, they’ve got them here. You can buy one for $150 to $750, depending on the quality of the shrinking. They sell more than you’d imagine.
You can buy a tooth from practically any kind of animal ever heard of. You can buy an old ship’s lantern, an iron shoe for your ox, or the finest piece of Chinese ivory carving.
If you insist, you can get a little gray hat made from a million dollars’ worth of U.S. paper money. You can get a back-scratcher, or a kayak. You can buy a glass sponge (rarest animal known) from Pitcairn Island.
Best of all, you can browse around for hours as though you were in an old-book store. It’s more edifying than a museum, more fun than a roller coaster. I would have been there yet, but I happened to catch Mr. James trying to sell me to a tourist (he said they got me out of a whale that was a direct descendant from Jonah’s), so I beat it.