When Martians invaded Concrete

It's been 71 years since the famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast ... and the panic that overtook a little Skagit County town.
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Orson Welles directs The Mercury Theatre in 1938

It's been 71 years since the famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast ... and the panic that overtook a little Skagit County town.

The Oct. 30, 1938, broadcast of "War of the Worlds" by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre On The Air caused panic around the country, as more than a million people believed they were hearing real news bulletins describing a Martian invasion, rather than a cleverly disguised radio play.

While the infamy of that broadcast lives on worldwide, many people around this area don'ꀙt remember that one of the most infamous episodes of public panic happened in the town of Concrete, 90 minutes north of Seattle on SR 20 in Skagit County.

Concrete is a fascinating city for so many reasons. It'ꀙs been a hard-luck place as long as I can remember — long before the eponymous concrete plant closed, and years before it was immortalized by the Tobias Wolf book This Boy'ꀙs Life and the subsequent film, much of which was shot in Concrete, creating a short-lived renaissance for the little town in the early 1990s.

My family used to camp every year at nearby Baker Lake in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, and no camping trip was complete without a visit to Concrete, to tour its depressed streets and stop at Albert'ꀙs Serve-U to buy comic books, candy bars, and other wilderness essentials. Our devotion to Concrete was so great, I remember one August in the early 1970s when my parents even bought me new Keds for first grade from the old Concrete Department Store. Growing older meant no longer camping with my folks, of course, but I still couldn'ꀙt stay away from the place. As a college student in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I took friends to Concrete and we poked around the many abandoned buildings, including the headquarters of the concrete plant. We pored over old employee records from the 1930s, and I plucked a calendar from the wall (it read 'ꀜMorse Hardware Bellingham'ꀝ and 'ꀜApril 1969'ꀝ). It was as if a neutron bomb had vaporized all the people and left the whole place — right down to the calendar on the wall — intact.

It was like a bomb of a different sort that hit Concrete during the War of the Worlds broadcast 71 years ago today. On that dark autumn Sunday evening, an ill-timed thunderstorm, transformer explosion and power failure — taking place in the middle of the program as heard on KIRO and KVI — conspired to send Concrete residents running through the streets in panic in spite of a heavy downpour. Owing to the power failing just as listeners heard New York destroyed by aliens (via the facilities of the CBS Radio Network and its affiliated stations, as they used to say), the folks in Concrete can be forgiven for taking the panic a bit more seriously than most.

Just about every book ever written about the "War of the Worlds" broadcast mentions what happened in Concrete, so when I was producing a radio documentary for KBCS-FM back in 2003 for the 65th anniversary of the broadcast, I decided to see if I could find anyone in the little town who'ꀙd actually witnessed the tumult.

Several calls to the historical society and the senior center, among other places, led to a lot of dead ends — mainly folks too young to remember the show. I can'ꀙt remember how, exactly, but I finally was directed to Albert Frank (the Albert in Albert'ꀙs Serve-U, I was pleased to learn) who was then 89 years old. He was more than happy to talk with me.

'ꀜWe were coming home from Everett,'ꀝ driving back from an errand with a friend, Frank told me. 'ꀜWe hit into Concrete about the time of that lightning and thunderstorm, and people were kinda wandering around and yellin'ꀙ and screamin'ꀙ and we couldn'ꀙt figure out what was going on.'ꀜ

Then, Frank said, they saw a woman who was obviously in a state of panic. 'ꀜHere comes this woman out of the house there, yellin'ꀙ that the world was comin'ꀙ to an end. She was watchin'ꀙ Orson Welles' movie [sic] in the house, it was on radio and it scared her.'ꀝ

Frank and his friend tried to help the woman. 'ꀜSo, she come runnin'ꀙ out,'ꀝ he said, 'ꀜand it was rainin'ꀙ so hard she could hardly see where she was goin'ꀙ. And we tried to stop her and grab her, and finally we got her into the Eagles [Club] and [there] was quite [a lot of] yellin'ꀙ and screamin'ꀙ yet.'ꀝ

Beyond his "War of the Worlds" memories, Frank was nostalgic about what a going concern and sizable community Concrete had been in those days. He spoke proudly of the three-mile elevated tramline that brought stone from the quarry to the concrete plant; the hundreds of workers employed there; and the additional impact of the timber industry that was booming at that time. 'ꀜOh,'ꀝ Frank said, 'ꀜit was a big town.'ꀝ

In an editorial following the broadcast (and after several days in the media spotlight), the weekly Concrete Herald said, 'ꀜOur city is taking a lot of kidding this week because of the radio scare Sunday evening. Nationwide newspaper stories, radio comments, and even a dramatized playlet on the air depicted Concrete'ꀙs residents in panic when the combined horror of a realistic radio play and the coincidence of a power failure brought hysteria. If folks in other cities and towns also went wild, the local citizens who had to stand the sudden darkness, too, can'ꀙt be blamed for exhibiting alarm.'ꀝ

Meanwhile, the big city Seattle Post-Intelligencer pounced on the chance to knock its ethereal rival medium down a few pegs, with an editorial headlined 'ꀜIrresponsible Radio,'ꀝ and boldly pressed into newsprint in black and white:

'ꀜIf anything were needed to demonstrate both the irresponsibility that is so widespread in broadcasting, and the radio'ꀙs inherent shortcomings, the hysteria that followed Sunday'ꀙs dramatization of 'ꀜThe War of the Worlds'ꀝ provided abundant evidence. Centuries ago the lawmakers of every civilized country recognized the lack of dependence that could be placed upon one man'ꀙs oral statement and another man'ꀙs understanding or misunderstanding and insisted upon the written or printed word for everything of importance. And the advent of radio is today bringing a deeper recognition of how unreliable and — on occasion — how dangerous, the spoken word can be.'ꀝ

I was in Concrete earlier this year, escaping again from roughing it in the wilds of Baker Lake, this time with my nephews in tow (they wanted to see the 'ꀜdrive under'ꀝ high school). We stopped by Albert'ꀙs Serve-U, of course, where a clerk I inquired of told me that Albert Frank had passed away a year or so ago.

We paid for our comics and candy bars, and then headed down the road to see what remained of downtown Concrete. 'ꀜOh,'ꀝ I told my nephews as they stared out the car windows at the old concrete plant, 'ꀜit was a big town.'ꀝ

  

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