By Peggy Sturdivant

“I hope your birthday wish was for a rain,” a friend wrote to me. That is exactly the wish I made on what would total 55 candles, on the birthday I’ve been told to call double nickels.

As someone who has never tired of Seattle’s “wet” weather and recently watched leaves dying on trees the rain finally falling on August 14th was the perfect gift. The lightning bolts and thunderclaps were a welcome change from the anger roiling around the neighborhood related to Ballard’s extreme growing pains. Let’s hope the rains dampen the current and future wildfires…and tempers.

Remediation work halted on the former Seattle City Light substation during the rain while they investigated the cause of an accident that caused yet another power outage throughout Ballard. Throughout the streets of Ballard most residential construction halted. Instead of compressors there was the rapping of raindrops against dusty windowpanes. Finally, a day we didn’t have to feel guilty about watering, or not watering, our plants.

We had had a week of sunsets and meteor showers. The tomatoes had ripened and the beans were past. When it got darker instead of lighter after sunrise on that Friday, I declared a day off for my birthday. First pre-season Seahawks game for some, but also the first day of ‘Keep Clam and Carry On: The Ivar Haglund Story’ at the Nordic Heritage Museum.

I set out between lightning strikes, mindful of my mother’s reminder that a car is the safest place during a lightning storm. Many of the windows at the old Webster School have been covered over, but the second floor lit up during the storm in a way that Mr. Fourth of Jul-Ivar would have appreciated.

Leaving Ballard’s present outside my friend Laura and I re-traced the life and times of Ivar Haglund, while reminiscing about the first time we ever ate at the Salmon House on Northlake. Ivar’s father was Swedish and his mother was Norwegian. He was an only child whose mother died when he was three, due in part to a local doctor who believed in fasting as a cure, (and now considered by some as a serial killer in Seattle).

The museum walls are decorated with much of the décor that was Haglund’s business genius, starting with an aquarium on the waterfront and at one point including ownership of Smith Tower. On display are the menus, the clam gun, the life preservers that read “Keep Clam.” You can listen to his radio program, buy his songbook in the gift shop and watch some of the most famous commercials. To my disappointment you cannot wear the clam outfit.

Photographs move from black-and-white to color, newspaper clippings document the shenanigans that made his restaurants as popular as his persona. I stopped to read about how he flew a kite from Smith Tower in defiance of the City of Seattle’s Planning Department. The city gave in and Ivar’s fish kite kept flying. Those were the days.

As the museum prepared to close it was still raining heavily, the kind of rain that makes tomatoes burst. So we went to my house, pulled up our hoods and picked in the tomato jungle. Soaked to the skin I decided to call in another birthday wish. I’ve never been to Hot Cakes on Ballard Avenue. The woman behind the counter delivered the molten Chocolate Decadence with a lighted candle. In the spirit of my double nickels birthday I gave her a hug. I made a wish, but can’t share it if I want it to come true.

Towards sunset the skies cleared and the rain that had choked the bus lines and downspouts cleared. Will one solid rain end this drought; will anything slow Seattle’s growing pains so it doesn’t explode like a ripe tomato? We can’t keep clam anymore, but we still need Ivar Haglund’s humor. Thank goodness it’s available rain or shine through November 8, 2015 and coincides with the re-opening of Acres of Clams on the waterfront. I hope it rains clams.

www.nordicmuseum.org