By Peggy Sturdivant

Nineteen-eighteen. Roger Miller was born at home along with his identical twin brother Rodney at 910 West 62nd; what’s now written as NW 62nd. Twelve years later their father purchased Ballard Transfer Co., still a four-generation business today.

Roger, aka “Papa No-No,” Miller doesn’t get to the office on Market Street as often as he used to. “Maybe every couple of weeks.” But he speaks of the day-to-day aspects of the hauling business as though still maintaining a spreadsheet. “Diesel at $4.00/gallon,” he said. “No way you can cover costs on some trips.”

Miller still lives in the house that his parents owned and that he inherited along with his sister over 45 years ago. It’s north of Sunset Hill Park. “When we moved in we had a 180 degree view,” he said. “From West Point to Point-No-Point.” The trees below have grown but the view of Puget Sound is still magnificent, reminding Miller of the fishing derby days. On the wall just behind his recliner hangs a black-and-white baby photo of him and his brother, probably circa 1919. “Two peas in a pod,” he said.

A helium birthday balloon is still aloft at the back of a parked wheelchair even though his 95th was in early June. Miller generally uses a walker, with a 50’ long cord on his oxygen. Some fifteen years ago a doctor diagnosed emphysema and told Miller he might not last out the year. That was the day Miller quit smoking cold turkey. A Skoal container sits by his side and he told me he takes “a snap now and then.”

When I first volunteered for the Voices of Ballard Oral History project back in 2000, there were still first generation immigrants. Those voices have indeed vanished, and now their children are the elders who are leaving us too. Roger Miller’s twin Rodney died in an automobile accident in the 60’s. Roger Miller has outlived two sons, his beloved wife Violet and many of his childhood friends.

“We were married 69 years and seven months,” Miller told me. When they met at a dance, Violet was young, just eighteen. Roger was a shocking four-and-a-half years older. They married on January 3, 1941.

At his final examination for service during World War II, Roger was sent back from Tacoma because he had a bad ear. “Guess we don’t want you,” a major told him. His twin Rodney was an infantryman whose posts almost always involved having charge of the mail. Roger suspects this allowed Rodney’s letters to him to escape the censors. “He’d write me maybe more than he should have.”

The Millers grew up in the heart of Ballard at its most industrial. The mills were still in operation; the boat-building industry was on the upswing and the parts fabricated in Ballard were needed throughout the state. Ballard Transfer Co. was making round trips to South Seattle every day and

delivered six tons of steel 90 miles north of Spokane for Boundary Dam.

At its peak Ballard Transfer had 18-20 rigs, although the business had started in 1903 using horses kept in a barn on 15th where Firestone Tire is now.

Along with his brother and lifelong friend Richard (Dick) McCracken, they fished, played and worked the waterways and streets of Ballard. One time on Ballard Avenue, Miller’s brother Rodney got sassy with a new cop who suggested he’d had too much to drink. The cop said, “I’m taking you in,” and took Rodney to the jail in the old city hall where the bell tower now stands.

“What are we going to tell our mother?” Roger recalls asking Dick. So they went up to the jail and talked the cop into releasing Rodney, promising he wouldn’t cause any trouble.

His first job at Ballard Transfer was filling and delivering carbides of coal, by carrying it on his back. Each container was 1/16 of a ton. The company got out of the fuel business but transported all types of cargo, from equipment to 30’ wide houses, mostly from South Seattle to north of the city. “We moved hundreds of houses,” Miller reminisced, “they moved real easy.”

Stimson Mill, Federal Pipe & Tank, Salmon Bay Foundry, Ballard Pattern & Glass Co., Seattle Cedar; they were all clients along with names less familiar like Junior Line Furniture. “All no more,” Miller pronounces. Although Ballard Transfer is still very much in business, their work is varied, unlike the steady accounts of the booming industrial days.

Miller is a life member of the Ballard Elks and a member of the Royal Order of Jesters, a club within the Shriners. He wears the Jester crest proudly.

For his 95th birthday, some thirty family members gathered at Anthony’s to celebrate with Papa Miller, known to his great-grandchildren as Papa No-No because he’s always telling them, “No, no!” Roger Miller was class of 1937 at Ballard High School; his great-grandson Erik Andersen will be a fourth generation graduate, class of 2015.

Miller doesn’t waste time mourning the changes in Ballard or his losses, but he admits there are certain things you never forget. For him that includes the salmon hooked back when one could still fish from the finger pier at the Ballard Locks. He felt a sharp tug on the pole he was holding for a guy rolling a cigarette. He got a good look at the big salmon, “And played him for about an hour and a half.” That was the one that got away, and the one that Papa Miller has never forgotten.

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