Spokane Motel Blues, Part Two

Did Tom T. Hall sleep here? Maybe, Maybe not.

So whatever happened with my attempt to enlist the aid of local journalist Doug Clark to crowd-source the motel of origin for the classic Tom. T. Hall song, Spokane Motel Blues?

We failed to answer the question definitively, but came up with a strong hint that the motel in question was the downtown Holiday Inn (now the Quality Inn Downtown) at 110 East 4th Avenue. Maybe.

Clark summarizes his reader responses in this column: No clear inspiration for ‘Spokane Motel Blues.’ There were a lot of reader suggestions, including the Ridpath, the Davenport, and others. Clarked searched through the Spokesman newspaper files and came up empty handed. "A couple of depraved readers wanted to put Hall in a certain seedy motel that is known as a popular 'bed by the hour' for women of negotiable virtue," Clark wrote. Help an out-of-towner here, Doug, exactly which motel is that?

But the strongest suggestion came from reader Marion Anderson who worked at the Holiday Inn:

“I was a chef at the Holiday Inn downtown which is now a Quality Inn,” said the 81-year-old. “And I remember very distinctly that that’s where he wrote his song and that’s where he stayed because of the weather.” True, Anderson never actually laid eyes on Hall. But this was a year or two before Expo, she said, and “all the waitresses were talking about that’s where he was.”


Clark seems to doubt Anderson's story, but in the absence of any contradictory evidence I tend to believe her.

And Clark did more than just crowd-source my historical question. In our conversation he asked if I could use the Tom T. Hall song in the Spokane Historical smartphone app and I told him no, because of copyright. Clark is a musician and singer. "So on a lark, my buddy Joe Brasch and I decided to go into the studio and record our own rendition of it," Clark wrote.

So I guess that there will be a Spokane Historical stop about Tom T. Hall in Spokane, located at the Quality Inn. And the soundtrack will be this wonderful cover of the song by Doug Clark.

Deciphering a Mysterious Headstone

A couple of weekends ago I went for a walk in Greenwood Cemetery with my wife and son. Greenwood is Spokane's Victorian-era park cemetery, a gorgeous place of stately headstones, rolling manicured lawns, and soaring Ponderosa pines. After convincing my son that he could not, in fact, stay in the car, we all enjoyed a perfect spring day among the dead.

One of the spots that has always fascinated me at Greenwood is the Japanese section of the cemetery. Spokane had a prominent and successful Japanese community from the late 1800s to the present. The early Japanese headstones are shaped differently than other markers of that time period, most are small obelisks with vertical Kanji lettering: 

Japanese headstones at Greenwood Cemetery

One headstone, however, was different from the rest. Shaped more like a western headstone, it had a lot of writing. Clearly there is more than a name and some dates here, it appeared to be some kind of story. But what does it say?

Headstone of Tadajiro Muramatsu

Michael, one of my coworkers at the Washington State Archives speaks some Japanese. I showed him this picture. He could not make it out,but thought his wife Jun might be able to read it. According to her, the Kanji lettering is of a type that has not been used for a hundred years in Japan. Fortunately she had studied this style of lettering in college. She did a literal translation of the headstone, which her husband then rendered into something more like American English. Here is her translation:

His name was Tadajiro Muramatsu. He was born on September 24, 1875 in Ueno village, Nishi-Yatsusiro county, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. For generations, his family engaged in farming. He was easy-going, enjoyed drinking, and had many friends. He loved ancient poems and would recite them when he was drunk. He came to the United States in 1905, moved to S city in 1906, and started the laundry business. He was a pioneer in the business. He set an example by working hard and by serving the public through his 20 some years of career. He received a special award from the business club for his work. Unfortunately, he lost his life in fire in UNKNOWN town passing the train bridge on April 7, 1918. He was 43 years old. He married a woman from the Aoki family, and they had a boy named Tadao. This tomb was built in his memory and on it, his over all life story was told. January 7, 1919 Tadao built this


 Jun also noted: "--- S city probably refers to Spokane from the usage of the character. The third sentence from the last goes as follows, word-by-word: 'He met passing gate mansion town UNKNOWN skin railed road metal bridge pass touch fire ring not happy UNKNOWN.' Probably lose- life 'passing gate mansion town' is probably one word, referring a name of the town."

 Here is Michael's Americanization of the text:

Tadajiro Muramatsu was born on September 24, 1875 in Ueno village, Nishi-Yatsusiro county, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. For generations, his family engaged in farming. He was easy-going, enjoyed drinking, and had many friends. He loved ancient poems and would recite them when he had been drinking. He came to the United States in 1905, moved to S city (Spokane?) in 1906, and started a laundry business. He was a pioneer in the business. He set an example by working hard and by serving the public through his career of 20 some years. He received a special award from the business club for his work. Unfortunately, he lost his life in a fire in UNKNOWN town passing the train bridge on April 7, 1918. He was 43 years old. He married a woman from the Aoki family, and they had a boy named Tadao. This tomb was built in his memory and on it, his overall life story was told. January 7, 1919 Tadao built this tomb.


A 1913 Guide to the Spokane Japanese Business Men and their Enterprises Photograph Album lists  Muramatsu under the alternate spelling of Chujiro Muramatsu and tells us the name of his business: Oriental Baths and Laundry. According to the Washington State Archives, Digital Archives, Muramatsu died on April 7, 1918 in Spokane. He was 42.

Having the date give us a starting point for doing newspaper research. How exactly was Muramatsu killed? A search through the Spokesman Review for April 8 reveals the grisly truth--and explains what the Muramatsu's son was trying to describe when he carved "skin railed road metal bridge pass touch fire ring not happy" on his father's headstone:

Article on page 6, col. 5 of the The Spokesman-Review - Apr 8, 1918

Muramatsu's son Tadao would have been in his teens or twenties when his father was killed. Eight month later the bereaved young man carved his father's headstone.

I would love to follow this story further. The Japanese business directory almost certainly has a photograph of Muramatsu. City directories should pinpoint his address and the location of his Oriental Baths and Laundry, And finally a quick Google reveals a number of Muramatsus in Spokane still, I wonder if there are family stories about this ancestor of theirs, so lovingly memorialized in Greenwood Cemetery.

1962 Oldsmobile Space Needle Commercial

If you are driving to Seattle to see the Space Needle this summer, do remember to take your Olds:

In Which a Local Journalist Helps Solve a Historical Mystery

Did Tom T. Hall write a song here?

Last week my Digital Storytelling class was playing around with making short films from animated still images. I threw a bunch of historic pictures of Spokane together and looked for a song to put in the background. The choice was obvious--Tom T. Hall's classic Spokane Motel Blues.

Hall wrote the song in 1973 when a blizzard left him stuck in Spokane. It is by far the best-known song ever to have Spokane in its title. Alas, it is no paean to our city:

I don't know what I'm doing here, I could be someplace else
Like in Atlanta drinkin' wine, wine, wine
I don't know what I'm doing here, I should be someplace else
Like in Kentucky drinkin' 'shine, 'shine, 'shine
The dogs are running down in Memphis
And them nags are running in LA
I'm stuck in Spokane in a motel room
And there ain't no way to get away

It is a great song, an early example of the outlaw country movement, funny and irreverent. Most of the students had never heard it, so I found a YouTube video. As we were listening it occurred to me--what a great stop for Spokane Historical! We just needed to figure out what motel Hall was staying in when he penned the song.

A quick Google revealed--nothing. As did a more thorough search. I was going to have to turn to that dependable resource of local historians--the town know-it-all. And I knew just who to ask.

I emailed my favorite reporter at our local paper, Doug Clark of the Spokesman Review. For decades Clark has penned a regular column in which he mocks local politicians, highlights our town's eccentrics. and chronicles his own misadventures. He is a local landmark on par with Riverfront Park--before it was cleaned up. If anyone in town would know the motel in question, it would be Clark.

Or not. Clark called the next morning and we had a terrific conversation that ranged from our mutual alma mater of EWU, to the mayor, to popular music. Doug Clark is lot of fun to talk to--but he did not know the motel in question. So he decided to write a column and appeal to his readers: Professor’s ‘Motel’ mystery needs you to solve it. Thanks, Doug!

I am confident that someone in Spokane knows the answer and I will let you know. In the meantime, enjoy this cover of Spokane Motel Blues by Jeff Cooper:

Jess Walters' Statistical Abstract of Spokane

This might be my very favorite piece of writing about my hometown! Statistical Abstract for My Home of Spokane, Washington by Jess Walter. Walter is our local writing hero (along with this guy). The author of five novels including The Financial Lives of Poets. This poem is by turns funny and heartbreaking, here is a sample:

1. The population of Spokane, Washington is 195,526. It is the 105th biggest city in the United States. 
2. Even before the recession, in 2008, 34,000 people in Spokane lived below the poverty line—a little more than 17 percent of the population. That’s about the same as it was in Washington D.C. at the time. The poverty rate was 11 percent in Seattle and Portland. 
3. Spokane is sometimes called the biggest city between Seattle and Minneapolis, but this is only true if you ignore everything below Wyoming, including Salt Lake City, Denver, Phoenix, and at least four cities in Texas. 
4. This is really just another way of saying nobody much lives in Montana or the Dakotas. 
5. My grandfather arrived in Spokane in the 1930s, on a freight train he’d jumped near Fargo. Even he didn’t want to live the Dakotas. 
6. On any given day in Spokane, Washington, there are more adult men per capita riding children’s BMX bikes than in any other city in the world . . .

Here is short video interview with Walters about The Financial Lives of Poets:

Laurie Arnold: Bartering with the Bones of Their Dead

The University of Washington Press is doing something innovative that I suspect will soon become standard practice. For their new books they are creating short, simple promotional videos. They even have a YouTube channel.

The most interesting of the current offerings is this book by Laurie Arnold, Bartering with the Bones of Their Dead. Arnold explores the contentious debate among Colville tribal members about whether to accept federal termination of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Termination in this case refers to negotiated end of federal recognition in the mid-twentieth century--tribal governments would disband, Indians would lose any special status, and would presumably assimilate and vanish into the population as a whole. Usually there was a promise of individual cash payments and allotments of land as compensation, along with federal assistance to relocate in an urban area and locate a job there. Termination went wrong almost immediately, and most tribes fiercely resisted the practice. The Colvilles were almost unique among tribes in soliciting federal termination--a stance that was controversial not only within the tribes but across Indian country. Arnold is herself a member of the Colville Tribes. Here she is describing her book: