:: rawblogXport ::

:: Monday, July 14, 2008 ::

Return of the Wobblies? - By Dan Schreiber, Centralia Chronicle, WA
"Centralia’s Checkered Past Should Be Used to Raise Its Allure, Some Say"

Perhaps the most important surviving place where anti-Wobbly action was hatched is on the fourth floor of the Ayala Brothers Furniture Co. store on South Pearl Street, where the sibling owners are doing major refurbishment work.

Peeling frescos in the Elks ballroom, makeshift landings and decades of neglect will eventually be turned into a beautiful space, said the Ayalas, who bought the building in 2001.

A stately fireplace with deep-red bricks remains in the place where the Elks Club once met to form the Centralia Citizens Protection Association against Wobbly action. Geraldo Ayala said the original blackboard might have been used to take a vote on whether to castrate Everest before he was hanged, although the emasculation theory remains under heavy scrutiny from historians.

The whole place reeks of bygone but almost tangible significance. Narrow tunnels with steps up to the sidewalks remain under the city streets, and lead to places like the Olympic Club, where moonshine might have been moved during Prohibition.

The basement is the former site of The Chronicle, where cryptic headline clippings on the concrete walls say things like “Trouble Expected Tonight,” and “We Shall Worry.”

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