Memory holing is the act of making an unpleasant or inconvenient fact go away–to hide it, obscure it, avoid it, until it becomes forgotten. Above is a famous photographic example of Stalin’s government, which updated history based on his latest political reality. When you fall out of favor, you disappear from his photos.
We can point at the grainy old efforts of a long-dead dictator, and have a good laugh. But memory holes are like the blind spot in your field of vision–you can’t see it; it’s not how your brain works. What has Vashon memory holed?
Have you ever heard of Michael B’s? It was a restaurant on Vashon, on the highway near town. Restaurants come and go; who cares about a long-closed and long-forgotten eatery?
I bring it up because of the way in which it was closed: an arsonist burned it down. And the whisper mill at the time said the choice of victim was motivated by racial considerations. What an ugly piece of Island history. The last I heard of it, the case was unsolved.
To learn the hard lessons of the past, we have to remember that past. Go out and see if you can find any detail of this incident? I failed–it’s not mentioned in our own archives, nor any search engine, nor any other searchable archive I tried. Is my memory correct? Should I even write about it, or should I just accept the amnesia of our digital world?
If anyone knows Michael, please do tell him that The Loop will cover this if he wants to talk about it. Otherwise, this Substack article might be the only remnant of a piece of Vashon history.