Red Shed Tapes Podcast, Episode 3 Transcript
One Man Gathers What Another Man Spills: McMenamins History Department

Title lyric from the Grateful Dead’s “St. Stephen”

SPEAKERS: Shannon McMenamin, Tim Hills, Mike McMenamin, Jon Smart, Brian McMenamin, Poison Waters, Elysia Scholl, and Caitlin Popp

With archival audio including James Brown, Lyle Hehn, Kolieha Bush, Poison Waters and Bruce Maccabee

I.

Historical Pit Stop: A James Brown Story Kind of Explains It All

0:00

Shannon McMenamin: You’re listening to the Red Shed Tapes, and I’m your host Shannon McMenamin.

My family operates many historical properties in Oregon and Washington. Our business may be pubs and beer, but our goal is to celebrate and connect with the people that have helped to define each McMenamins property – to bring the past into the present.

Today, the walls inside your neighborhood McMenamins are infused with local history: archival photos, curious artifacts, and artistic portraits. The faces in the pictures are both novel and familiar.

Have you ever wondered who are these people, why is this here, and how is this all possible?

Okay, let me explain what I mean – with a story about the “Godfather of Soul.”

Tim Hills: There wasn’t a minute over the weekend that I wasn’t just poring over anything I could read about James Brown.

Shannon McMenamin: This is Tim Hills, our company historian. He interviewed James Brown, on his [James Brown’s] return visit to the Crystal Ballroom in the early aughts.

Tim Hills: I dug up as much information as I could from old newspapers, from magazines, whatever… biographies… and talked to people around Portland because James Brown had come to the Crystal as far back as the fifties.

Shannon McMenamin: Tim wasn’t able to find much in the public records because in this era, Black artists were not supported by mainstream media.

Tim Hills: You know, a lot of Portland had no idea these Black performers ever came through. It wasn’t publicized except for posters on the telephone poles. You had to go into the neighborhoods and go to the record store like Bop City Records where they sold all the Black artists’ records.

I just idolized the old soul music.

The night came and his manager was saying, you know he’s old now and he may not wanna see anybody. I’m at the door of his dressing room, and he’s got this huge guy standing outside the door, who is making sure no one’s going in or out unless he wants you to do that. And, you know, he was about 10 feet tall. He knocks on the door, and then he turns to me and says, “Okay, you can go in.”

So I go in and there’s James Brown sittin’ in a chair. I started talking to him and talking about people that had really helped him in his early career, and details about this stuff.

Archival interview, Tim to James Brown: Do you remember when was the first time you came through?…

Tim Hills: I figured he wouldn’t remember the booker who would book bands all the way up the coast from San Francisco to Seattle. And his name was Charles Sullivan, and, the Crystal was one of his stops here in Portland.

Shannon McMenamin: Charles was the legendary San Francisco promoter who not only created the tour map for Black musicians, he put Crystal Ballroom on the map. He’s the reason so many R&B and soul artists played the ballroom in the fifties and sixties.

Tim Hills: He drove a Cadillac and cruises into town and, you know, gets the posters out where they need to go, and the free tickets that people could win, and records that could be sold. And all of that, you know, were in boxes in the back seat and in the trunk of the Cadillac.

Archival interview, Tim to James Brown: Another big guy, I’m hoping you remember was Charles Sullivan?

Tim Hills: James, when I brought up his name, immediately lit up and said, “Oh, Charles, yes!  He was fantastic. He was such a help for my career.”  You know, and it just turned out to be a bigger story.

Archival interview, James Brown: That man was like a dad to me.

Tim Hills: We just had this amazing discussion, and that’s the other thing: James Brown got up out of his seat, three, four times to come over and shake my hand because I brought up this stuff that really meant something to him that nobody would ever ask him about. These folks who did the promotion for these shows in Portland, you know, they were the local guys.

And that just felt so good. It was something I’ll never forget.

Shannon McMenamin: In this episode of the Red Shed Tapes, we’re talking about history, and how history is an integral part of the McMenamins experience – at every level. And how it continues to shape what we build in unexpected ways.

We’ll get into how we hooked up with Tim, who you just heard from, the events his research inspired, the department he created, his collaboration with a motley crew of company artists, and his process for historical preservation.

Later, self-proclaimed McMenamins drag queen, Poison Waters, herself, will connect us with a part of Portland’s queer history that we celebrate today. And then a brief stop in McMinnville, Oregon for close encounters of the third kind.

Grab a pint, and settle in.

II.

Playing in the Band: Welcome to the History Department

5:45

Shannon McMenamin: When people hear we have a history department, they’re always surprised.  And maybe it’s one of the first clues that what my dad Mike and Uncle Brian have created at McMenamins goes way beyond burgers and beer.

Mike McMenamin: That’s always the question: Who would have a history department?

Shannon McMenamin: That’s my dad, Mike.

Mike McMenamin: You know, other people might think that’s absurd, especially in the restaurant business when it’s hard to make money anyway.  And then if you’re trying to do a lot of art and history research along the way… We were fortunate that we had a strong pub foundation to begin this whole thing.

Shannon McMenamin: History wasn’t always part of the thing, or rather, the McMenamins experience. It’s something that’s developed over the decades, that developed into a department, the small but mighty force at McMenamins responsible for so many things you see at our properties: the signs above the door, sometimes the door itself, the fixtures on the walls, the art on the ceiling, the records in the box… posters on the wall…

Our first stop is at the Mission Theater in Northwest Portland. Today when you walk into the Mission, you’ll see an intimate venue with an ornate balcony filled with comfy theater seats surrounding a dance floor and stage.

You might not suspect that underneath rock stars and raucous crowds is where our historians research and archive our company treasures. Yep, we’re heading into the subterranean archives of the history department.

Jon Smart: My name’s Jon Smart. I’m the history department manager. I usually come down to the theater basement, and get online and see if anybody’s asked any pressing history questions [laughter], and we’re in the archives.

Shannon McMenamin: And we are surrounded by boxes and boxes and boxes that are filled with papers. And, I mean, God, what else? There’s like little cassette tapes and there’s all kinds of strange things that are on shelves…

Jon Smart: Menus.

Shannon McMenamin: We’ve got a bottle of Edgefield 1991 Extra Dry Sparkling Riesling. So that was probably one of our first attempts at a champagne-style sparkling.

Jon Smart: Oh, well this t-shirt that I found the other day of the one millionth keg. This was …

Shannon McMenamin: I think I’ve seen some brewers wearing that.

Jon Smart: Yeah, this was made for the brewers at the time. We end up with little things like that.

Shannon McMenamin: So it’s historical. [laughter]

Jon Smart:  It’s historical in some way.

Shannon McMenamin: Jon starts to point out more historical artifacts. Signed baseballs from pro players of the past. Cigars circa the prohibition era discovered under a dance floor. Even a folder labeled “EVIDENCE” with a prop gun inside. Okay, we really do have a lot of historical items here in the basement.

Jon Smart: The sheet music we found underneath the floorboards in the Crystal Ballroom – the copyright on it is from the late thirties. That was trumpet music, and Hoagy Carmichael was the composer of the music; “Blue Orchids” is the name of the song. Jimmy Dorsey recorded it in the forties, and so it was really cool to just listen to that and think about that playing in the Crystal Ballroom while people were dancing.

Shannon McMenamin: Many of our properties are historical and informed by the buildings’ former lives. Take the Mission, where we are – it has a long and storied past, from Swedish churchgoers to longshoremen, from actors to beer-drinking film buffs.

My first memory of the Mission Theater was coming to see E.T. with my soccer team, and that was probably like around the time that it opened. It was in the eighties, right? Yeah.

Jon Smart: The Mission Theater opened in ‘87. It was one of the first theaters that McMenamins opened up as a place that you could drink beer, get a pizza, watch a movie. You can do that pretty much everywhere now, but that was pretty rare back in 1987.

Shannon McMenamin: Jon seems at home here, but his path to the history department was not a direct one. When he graduated from college with a history degree, he was trying to figure out what he could do with it; someone told him to check out McMenamins.

Jon Smart: I did come to McMenamins because I wanted to get involved in the history department. I didn’t think it would take 17 years to get there.

Shannon McMenamin: You heard that right… 17 years. Like many people in this company, he’s had a lot of different roles.

Jon Smart: I saw a delivery driver [job] for McMenamins so I was like, “I can do that.” And a new job came up, so I was able to work my way into facilities.

Shannon McMenamin: Jon kept his eye on the history department, and all the while he was developing priceless insider knowledge of McMenamins properties and people. He has personally assembled artifacts, hung art and history on the walls with my dad, and had his hands on just about everything. With his eclectic experience, Jon brings another dimension of meaning and depth to his role in the history department.

Jon Smart: Yeah, I mean it was pretty different finding a place that valued the history enough to have someone on staff.

Shannon McMenamin: When Jon says someone on staff, it’s because for many years we had just one historian, Tim.

Tim Hills: It’s an amazing opportunity, amazing job. To be able to work with artists and musicians and coffee roasters and, you know, gardeners. There’s just not another company or opportunity like this. I can’t think of a better job for me.

Shannon McMenamin:  If you live in the Pacific Northwest, and you love history, you may have run into Tim at a McMenamins History Pub. When I think of Tim, I definitely picture his hair. Yeah, it’s amazing, like it may be one of the first things you notice about him. But it’s his inquisitiveness and unassuming presence that just make you want to tell him your story.

Here’s how he discovered McMenamins back in the nineties.

Tim Hills: At the time, my wife and I, we had just recently moved to Portland, and the Fulton Pub became a favorite place of ours. And pretty quickly, you know, we discovered Hawthorne, and the Barley Mill, and the Bagdad. And we started to put together, “Oh, these are all the same people, you know, the same company doing this stuff. And it just dawned on me: these places have stories. Where are the stories?”

III.

Truckin’ Through Time: The Evolution of History at McMenamins

12:14

Shannon McMenamin: At the same time Tim started wondering about the stories, my dad and uncle Brian had just discovered how powerful incorporating history into a property could be. At our Edgefield hotel property, they had worked with Sharon Nesbit, a journalist and founding member of the Troutdale Historical Society. Sharon invited people who used to work and live at Edgefield to walk the halls with our artists and share their stories to inspire the art. This was a pivotal moment looking back – because Sharon showed us how powerful it was to talk to the community.

Here’s my Uncle Brian:

Brian McMenamin: It’s really neat to see it.  But the locals you know, when they come down, they’ve taken pride and ownership in it too because they’re looking at the history of their town, on the walls.

Shannon McMenamin: From that moment on, my dad and Brian were hooked.

Brian McMenamin: You start thinking more about the history and stuff.

Mike McMenamin: History was always important to us because Dad, Bob McMenamin, was always into history. Took us to estate sales, took us to museums. There was a state history quarterly that came through and he always had those. So there was all these old relics, you know, cool things that you were always kind of connected with.

So that was just in the DNA, I think.

Shannon McMenamin: I think it is in the DNA because during my freshman year in college, I worked in the history department with Tim to research, among other things, our Hillsdale location. My whole summer was spent bouncing around between records offices, the Oregon Historical Society, and the downtown Portland library. Then at the end of the day checking in with Tim to show him what I’d found. It was so much fun. I was hooked, too.

IV.

Chronicles of Improvisation: Before Tim There Were Artists

13:48

Shannon McMenamin: We can’t talk about history at McMenamins without talking about art, because over our 41 years in business, they’ve become synonymous.

Brian McMenamin: It gives it a whole ‘nother level for a customer, I think. I mean, again, it goes into that, what is called, like, “the fourth dimension.”

Mike McMenamin: It gives it depth and gravity.

Brian McMenamin: It draws people in.

Shannon McMenamin: In other words, the depth and gravity from combining art and history gives the experience more dimension. You can feel it when you’re in a place, but you might not recognize it.

So, let’s take a step back. Before Tim Hills, and my dad and uncle ever got together, there were eight or nine pubs, and the artists would paint whatever they wanted there. As my dad put it, “We had good-sized walls to cover.”

Here are artists Lyle Hehn and Kolieha Bush in an archival recording from a History Pub led by Tim Hills back in 2015. They explain how the artwork started out as… practical.

Archival Recording of 2015 History Pub with McMenamins Artists:

Lyle Hehn: Some of the work is just about nothing. It’s just decorative. Because there wasn’t any research.

Kolieha Bush: Well, before Edgefield…

Lyle Hehn: …there were like eight or nine pubs…

Kolieha Bush: …and you just painted, like, whatever you wanted. Crazy, wild…

Lyle Hehn: Right, it was very informal.

Kolieha Bush: Yeah.

Tim Hills: So Mike did have an input?

Lyle Hehn: I would paint at the Fulton, whatever came into my head, and I never heard back [laughter] if it was acceptable or not. [laughter] That stuff’s still there – some of it.

Kolieha Bush: Joe [Cotter] painted at the Thompson brewpub in Salem, and he painted everything in all-encompassing psychedelic insanity. And that’s what, you know, he’d go and do that every night. It’s like, wow!

Lyle Hehn: Lots of fun. Mall 205 was based on the signs that were fake beers ads. And the snail just happened to be in there because I put a snail in the picture. [laughter]

But the early pubs didn’t really have some local thing attached to it.

. . .

 

Mike McMenamin: Before, we just kind of piecemealed it together just from people’s stories and from, you know, not professionally, more just over-the-bartop stories from regulars.

Shannon McMenamin: Bar talk?

Mike McMenamin: Yeah. But then we got into the Crystal Ballroom.

Shannon McMenamin: The Crystal Ballroom was the very first one to be researched like that?

Mike McMenamin: That was the first one we really got into.

Shannon McMenamin: My dad couldn’t really devote the time, but he knew the building had power and history. He described the place in the late sixties as having a kind of “underground current,” and it’s this era that had really captured his imagination. He and my uncle knew they needed to go after it.

V.

A Friend of the Devil Is a Friend of Mine: The Spark

16:30

Tim Hills: When I heard about the Crystal Ballroom, you know, there was press about the renovation of it, and so I got the contact for Mike and sent him a letter. And he said, “let’s meet up and talk over stuff.” And, that was just one of the best days of my life.

Shannon McMenamin: Here’s Tim at the Crystal, describing that first meeting.

Tim Hills: I’m looking up and seeing these amazing tall windows where the ballroom is on the third floor. I walk up the narrow stairway and come into the back end of the ballroom and it just opens up, and I’m blown away.

It was just the two of us hanging out in the middle of a completely vacant, rundown ballroom, but it was gorgeous and exciting. And I couldn’t wait to dig in.

Mike McMenamin: We were buzzing off each other pretty good. I just remember that it was obvious that we needed to work together.

Tim Hills:  Mike was really excited about the project too, and he really wanted to have the history of the place revealed. And, man, that’s exactly what I wanted to do too.

Shannon McMenamin: So Tim came on board to dig into the colorful history of the Crystal Ballroom, and the collaboration sparked a fire that still burns today.

Tim Hills: You know, from the start with our relationship, we were both like little kids, you know, it was like, “You won’t believe what just turned up!”

Mike McMenamin: He was excited, he got me excited, we were both excited. So we excited each other… Every day, it was like, “James Brown played there in 1959,” you know? And you go, “What?!” Just that kind of stuff.

Tim Hills: Folks like Garnet Mims and the Enchanters, fantastic. Wilson Pickett, incredible. The Temptations. Ike and Tina Turner, of course. Junior Walker and the All Stars. It’s just the top of that time period, they’ve got them all, coming through the Crystal.

There was no expectation, but it was just remarkable in the sense that all of these projects would reveal this incredible stuff you’d never, ever believe would be connected with these places.

Mike McMenamin: There was so much, because I mean it ended up being a book, right?

Shannon McMenamin: From that first project, the stories Tim uncovered didn’t just end up on the walls, they also went into a book he wrote called The Many Lives of the Crystal Ballroom. His research also influenced the renovation when he uncovered the blueprint for the floating floor, which we were then able to recreate on the second floor in Lola’s Room for smaller shows.

None of that would have been possible without Tim’s research.

Mike McMenamin: So it just kind of opened our eyes to the power that’s there that you don’t know about unless you really have somebody that can really get into it. And Tim obviously loved what he did. It was easy. We got together and chased history. Everywhere. Still are!

Shannon McMenamin: The Crystal Ballroom is where – and when – the history department was born, about 7 years into our family’s brewpub business.  Inside the ballroom today, you can see circular murals on the walls surrounding the floating floor. They’re bordered by hundreds of light bulbs.

Tim Hills:  You’ll notice on each of the beams in between the murals, you see this jester face, and a lot of people think, “Oh, that’s great. McMenamins put those in.” And that’s not true. They’ve been there since 1914, when the place opened. And of course, if you know the lore back hundreds of years, the jester was always the performer, the musician, and that seems perfect for the architectural flourish that the jester provides.

Shannon McMenamin: Before Tim came on, art was happening but there wasn’t really a direction, so in half of the murals, the artists were already riffing off the existing jester theme. But the second half, thanks to Tim, portrays stories about characters and communities that had a specific connection to the ballroom. The art became more intricate, more referential.

For example, in one mural, Lyle Hehn painted the history of Ralph Ferrier, who was not only an owner of the ballroom for 30 years, but also ran a coffin making business out of the building. And, there’s a mural by artist Joe Cotter in the center of the south wall. It depicts the Romani Feast of the Dead held in the ballroom in the fifties and sixties; Tim explains how that came about:

Tim Hills: When a member of the community passed away, they would go to the burial at the graveyard, and following that, they would have these feasts of the dead. And literally, hundreds of people from the community would come here, and there would be barbecued meats that they would bring in, kegs of beer, musicians singing. It was a celebration of their lives.

The artists really made it come alive.

Shannon McMenamin: One of our artists, Jenny Joyce, says it really well: “History and art add a dimension to the experience that’s hard to monetize, but it’s about the importance of community and restoring, not just the building, but the legacy of what came before.”

It’s the fourth dimension my Uncle Brian talked about earlier. When it comes to the McMenamins experience, it’s everything.

VI.

Ripple Effects: Tapping into Community to Shape Our Universe

22:17

Shannon McMenamin: Tim’s research goes beyond inspiring art. His process for unearthing history has helped us to create live events that connect us to each other.

Tim Hills: It didn’t happen quickly. You gather all this information, and along the way you meet some really interesting people who have plenty to talk about that will make us understand what’s so special about those particular properties. Then you try and coax some of these people who initially had this experience in the property. And if we can get them involved and have them tell their own story, that’s where everything kind of started.

Shannon McMenamin: Tim has created living connections and relationships that bridge past and present. Like Poison Waters, a well-known Portland drag queen who has been hosting events at McMenamins since 2011. I didn’t know that it was Tim who first met Poison Waters until just recently. Of course, we’d love to take credit for discovering her, but Poison has been performing drag and co-hosting at Darcelle XV Showplace since the 1990s.

Poison Waters at a 2024 Drag Queen Bingo event: What’s gonna happen today is we’re going to play Drag Queen Bingo, which is bingo… with drag queens!

Shannon McMenamin: Poison Waters is a huge talent, a wonderful person, and professional through and through. Even when she’s calling you out from on stage.

Poison Waters at 2024 Drag Queen Bingo: How are you? Welcome! Look at your little tutu ballerina skirt and fabulous bag. And you’re LATE — sit your ass down!

Poison Waters: So in 2011, the McMenamins folks opened the Crystal Hotel in downtown Portland, which had previously been the Silverado, a gay men’s strip club. And Tim Hills – who I fell in love with immediately – he contacted me and said that my name came up when they were researching what had been on the property before. So, I had hosted a show called The Church of the Poisoned Mind for about 10 years at the Silverado…

Shannon McMenamin: From Tim’s research, we knew this whole area, previously named Stark Street – now Harvey Milk Street – had been rich in queer history, but Poison Waters lived that history and could speak to it.

Poison Waters: I came in and they asked me if I would just host a show, a little happy hour show in Al’s Den down below, which used to be the Silverado. And so, of course, I did that, and it was only supposed to be one day, the first day. And it was so much fun, and I was such a hit, if I do say so myself, that they said, “Oh my gosh, can you come back the rest of the week and do the whole opening?”

And so we did and they said, “Okay, well now your show is a really big hit and it’s such a great connection, so can you just come once a month and do the show in Al’s Den?” And that’s how it all started. I was just supposed to be a one-time wonder and here I am now, 13 years later.

Shannon McMenamin: Today, in addition to the building being on the National Historic Register, the Crystal Hotel has been designated a National Historic Site for the LGBTQ+ community.

And you can find Poison Waters hosting brunch, the Academy Awards, and of course, Drag Queen Bingo on a monthly basis across our properties. That’s what Tim’s connection led to.

Poison Waters at Drag Queen Bingo:  I see you, I hear you, I support you in your journey…

Shannon McMenamin: How else has historical research shaped McMenamins as we know it today? Well, if you’ve ever passed through McMinnville in May and seen thousands of people dressed as aliens and parading down the main street, you might not immediately suspect that Tim’s quiet research at the county library was behind it, but it was!

Sounds of parade: We’ve landed in McMinnville, Oregon! Welcome to our planet!

Shannon McMenamin: In 2000, we were renovating Hotel Oregon, a historic hotel in the heart of McMinnville and wine country, and Tim uncovered the story of a UFO sighting from 1950 on a family farm just down the road.

Tim Hills: It was the Trent site, the farmer who saw it up in the sky and he told his wife to run in and get the camera and came out and took two photos. It was like, boom, boom, as it’s going across the sky.

Shannon McMenamin: The photos were published in LIFE magazine and to this day are undisputed by experts. Headlines around the world read, “Farmer Trent’s Flying Saucer” and “At Long-last, Authentic Photographs of a Flying Saucer?”

I hadn’t seen the photos in a while, so I wanted to take another look. They’re black and white photos of a typical flying saucer shape hovering in the middle of what appears to be a clear sky, backed by Oregon hills and trees.

 

Tim Hills: First of all, I will say I was not interested, per se, about the subject, but I’m like, that’s just too wild; we have to do something. I found Bruce Maccabee, a UFO researcher. He had been studying this for years and the Trent case was the one that he was the expert on.

Bruce Maccabee in an archival video: My analysis of the complete case leads me to believe that the Trents were actually telling the truth. An unusual object did fly at some distance…

Tim Hills: We got him a ticket and brought him out here, and all these people showed up, so many more than I thought would, coming from all parts of the country. We hosted him in our Paragon Room in the Hotel Oregon, and it was packed. People were out in the dining area, trying to hear what he was saying.

I didn’t at first even think, “Oh, let’s do another one next year,” but we did. And then in the third year, the thing that blew it up and made it incredible, was to add the parade and that’s what drew all the people.

Shannon McMenamin: Today, it has grown to be the second largest UFO festival in the nation after Roswell, New Mexico. The whole community comes together to participate, and it’s part of McMinnville’s main street charm. But a huge part of the event continues to be the incredible variety of speakers: from ufologists to firsthand witnesses to former government employees.

In 2025, it’s going to be the 25th annual celebration – and it’s going to be stellar.

Tim Hills: I was always looking out for things that personify what this place has been, you know, initially and how it may have changed. A lot of the original use for these properties changed quite a bit. But I guess the one constant is the group of people who came over all those years, you know, and their stories and their experiences.

Shannon McMenamin: Tim realized people have stories to tell and he wanted to give them a platform to share, so he created McMenamins History Pubs.

Tim Hills: Part of my job immediately was to talk to people who had some connection to the properties. In the process of doing that and meeting up with these folks and hearing their stories and photos and other things they might want to share, it’s like, “Wow, we should be doing more than just stories.” And of course, history goes very well with beer.

Shannon McMenamin: While today Tim continues to research, historian Elysia Scholl runs History Pubs.

Elysia Scholl: Hi my name is Elysia Scholl. And I work in the history department. I started out with Tim.  I’m in charge of putting the History Pubs together, which have actually gone on for a really long time. Over 10-15 years I want to say.

We bring in historians, authors, sometimes it’s first-hand experiencers, people who have a story to tell about local history.

Archival audio from a History Pub, Lola Baldwin’s grandchildren: And she was, at that time, the first woman to be a policewoman in the United States.

Elysia Scholl: Sometimes we have documentaries about historical topics; we especially like to focus on history of the Pacific Northwest in general.

It’s always a really fun time, because you can have a beer and eat and drink and, you know, listen to a lecture in a more casual atmosphere.

Shannon McMenamin: My dad has yet to find anything that doesn’t mix with beer. And as Tim said, history seems to go quite well with it. History Pubs are happening regularly across our properties in Oregon and Washington.

Elysia Scholl: History is important because, I mean, that’s our life, that’s where we are, you know; it’s just part of what makes us, us.

VII.

Tim’s Garden: A Legacy

31:11

Shannon McMenamin: So… We research and bring the history to life at our locations, we invite community members who lived the history into the fold, and we put on events to celebrate the historical revelations.

Tim really created a map for how we approach these projects, and he not only influenced the way we do things here, he instilled in people a different way to think about history and has shaped present and future historians.

I got a taste of that as an intern but I wanted to hear from other people, so we reached out to Caitlin Popp, a historian who researched one of our most recent properties, Elks Temple in Tacoma, Washington.

Caitlin Popp: It really is a treasure hunt. We are given a very surface level amount of information about these buildings, so it was our job to go a little deeper, and I spent a lot of time up in Tacoma in the archives at the library, fishing for just the little hidden treasures. There’s a lot of forgotten history when it comes to historic buildings that we steward.

You know, we would hear names, and we would look up names in Ancestry, or just put out calls, you know, for folks to see if anyone had any idea, and a lot of interviews. And that’s kind of where the best stories came from – just interviewing people who had rich memories of these places.

Shannon McMenamin: What was it like working with Tim?

Caitlin Popp: He really brought a lot of passion for living history. And it really is history of communities, histories of people and places and things. And I think that is what sets him apart and makes him such an important historian for McMenamins, because it’s not history of governments or, you know, these things. It’s really rich history of what creates community.

He was trying to get at the heart of what makes the McMenamins buildings such an important part of the history of the community. And for him, it was emphasizing and highlighting these histories that have been forgotten to time – and I think that is what Tim fights for, what he advocates for. And he, in and of himself, just became such a rich part of the history of preserving these buildings. And so he, in and of himself, is a part of the history of McMenamins. And I think that’s something that’s really, really special.

Shannon McMenamin: Who’d have thought that all those years ago working with Tim, as a kid, would lead me down this path of wanting to hear stories and pass them on? He’s a big reason why this podcast is so important now. And why even today, our historians continue to dig through newspapers and archives, research artifacts, and talk to more people.

As a part of the second generation of leadership in McMenamins, we have a responsibility as we move forward to keep the history alive and keep it fresh.

The history department is integral to the very nature of our company.

Or as my dad would say…

Mike McMenamin: You couldn’t separate it, really. It’s part of the whole thing.

Shannon McMenamin: I’m Shannon McMenamin. Thanks for listening!

34:24

The Red Shed Tapes is produced by McMenamins, Jess Is Creative and Gretchen Kilby.

Our writers are Kat Nyberg and Jess Lyness of Jess Is Creative, and our editor is Michelle “Jake” Robbins.

Sound editing by Gretchen Kilby.

McMenamins’ production team includes Kat Nyberg, Renee Rank Ignacio, and Michelle “Jake” Robbins.

Our podcast theme music was composed by Jim Brunberg & Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

Additional music from Epidemic Sound, Pond 5 and BlueDot Sessions.

Podcast artwork by Lillian Ripley.

Thanks to all of the artists who have brought history to life at McMenamins, and a very special thanks to the “motley crew” in this episode, including Lyle Hehn and Kolieha Bush.

A cosmic expanse of gratitude to all of the UFO Festival guests and participants, as well as our crew at Hotel Oregon.

And a special note: Dr. Bruce Maccabee passed away on May 10, 2024. He conducted the most comprehensive study of the UFO sightings by Evelyn and Paul Trent, and he will be remembered as the brilliant sole speaker at McMenamins first UFO event in the year 2000.

Thanks to Sharon Nesbit and the Troutdale Historical Society, and all the libraries, records offices and historical societies in the Pacific Northwest.

We’re eternally grateful to Tim Hills, the historian who changed everything. He continues chasing history along with the entire McMenamins history department, including Jon Smart, Elysia Scholl, and Chloe Gladden.

Find more of our history at mcmenamins.com.

Get in touch with The Red Shed Tapes by emailing podcast@mcmenamins.com.