Grant County had a 52 percent voter turnout for the 1950 September primary. Ready On.

E-Mail from Cheryl

Facts from the past gleaned from the Moses Lake Herald, Columbia Basin Herald and The Neppel Record by Cheryl (Driggs) Elkins:

From the Columbia Basin Herald on Sept. 28, 1950:

Complete returns show 52 percent voted in primary

A total of 4,714 voters went to the polls in Grant County at the Sept. 12 primary, according to complete returns released this week by County Auditor C.A. Hawley. The vote was 52.67 percent of the county's registration of 8,952, slightly above the state average, Hawley said.

The count was completed Saturday when the county election board counted the 122 absentee ballots. Returns from the county's 39 precincts had been canvassed earlier. The election board is composed of Fred Ludolph, chairman of the board of county commissioners; Robert Campbell, Jr., prosecuting attorney and Auditor Hawley.

John Powers, running unopposed for the Democratic nomination as county assessor, received the highest individual total votes with 3,885, the final returns show.

Grant County History

The Grant County Historical Society has compiled several volumes of Grant County history. The books are available for purchase at the Historical Society Museum gift sh op in Ephrata.

I bought the series in 2009 and secured permission to relay some of the history through this column. Memories of Grant County, compiled from taped interviews by the Grant County Historical Society.

Today we concolude the story of Soap Lake by Mrs. Knapp recorded May 11, 1976:

Interviewer: "Didn't your folks have an apartment in Soap Lake?"

Well, it wasn't an apartment it was little houses they rented. Interviewer: "What is your niece's name now?"

Scheib.

Interviewer: "Which one of the Scheibs?"

Joe.

"Let's see and your name now is Knapp?"

"And your maiden name was Sorrel?"

That's right.

Before my father went to Arizona and after he and my mother separated, he moved. They had two rows of cabins one this way and one this way there at Soap Lake, right on the corner, just a few feet from Soap Lake Water.

Dad moved over into those cabins going this way and mother lived in the cabins going this way and their back yards were together. Well, Dad raised chickens. So one of them, one of the chickens, wandered into mother's kitchen and she caught it and had chicken dinner.

Then when Dad moved over there into those cabins by himself he started his bootlegging there and finally they made up. Regular officers never paid no attention. They let him go ahead with it.

Finally the federal officers got him and put him in jail in Ephrata. So one of his lady friends wanted to bail him out. So she went down there to see him and said she'd bail him out. It only cost $10 to bail him out.

"Why," he said. "No, I don't want to be bailed out. I'm getting free board and room."