Antique Bothell engine can keep on trucking

Randy Parkhurst keeps a long-handled duster with him when he drives the 1929 Model A Ford firetruck. When he parks, he whips out the duster and wipes specks off the piece of Bothell history that has led the city's Fourth of July parade for 75 years.

The truck is the city's second fire engine, purchased when only 900 people lived there.

Parkhurst wants people to see it and understand how far firefighting has come the past eight decades. But after pouring sweat and organizing hundreds of volunteer hours into refurbishing the vehicle, he also wants to protect it from fingerprints, scrapes and the weather.

Parkhurst, a lieutenant with the Bothell Fire Department, is about to enjoy the best of both worlds.

A $7,500 grant approved last month from the King County 4Culture program will buy a large trailer to be fitted with giant windows. The truck will be parked inside the trailer and put on permanent display.

The small but important grant puts the antique truck and the Seattle Mariners on the same playing field when it comes to money. Funding for Qwest Field and for heritage grants such as the trailer come from the same pot — King County lodging taxes. That's the same wallet the Seattle Sonics want to tap for a possible KeyArena remodel.

Since 1990, King County's 2 percent lodging tax has provided funding for sports stadiums and cash for arts and heritage purposes. Stadiums annually receive the first $5.3 million. The excess has been split in varying percentages among cultural purposes, stadiums and youth sports.

While professional sports facilities glean the lion's share of the tax, the windfall has pumped $34 million into cultural facilities throughout the county. Since 2002, the lodging taxes have provided money to 190 arts and heritage groups. It is distributed by the 4Culture offices, a public development authority created to oversee the art, public art, heritage and historic preservation in King County.

Which means the cultural community has just as much at stake and just as many high hopes pinned on the extension of the lodging tax beyond 2020.

"The extension would backfill some lean years coming up when we're expected to live on an endowment," said Charles Payton, heritage coordinator at 4Culture. "This is not just a Sonics deal. It would allow the county to keep funding arts and heritage."

Although the $7,500 grant to Bothell would hardly cover the cost of a door in a new stadium, such cultural grants mean a great deal to local heritage groups. A $2,150 award to the Eastside Heritage Center will buy a security and fire-detection system at the historical McDowell House in Bellevue, and $25,000 to the Northwest Railway Museum will help complete a conservation facility for restoring old train cars. In the same round of grants, the Museum of Flight in Seattle received $15,000 for an exhibition of a 1926 Boeing Model 40-A airplane.

For Parkhurst and the Bothell Fire Department, the grant means the fire engine can be on permanent display instead of hidden away in the underground parking area at the police department. Building the display case on a trailer means the engine can be trucked to events throughout the region.

"I drove it to Paine Field for a fire prevention show, but it took all day to get there," Parkhurst said. "The fire truck's top speed is 35 mph."

Not all historical artifacts come with a pedigree that can be traced so perfectly.

Bothell City Council minutes from 1928 include the vote to purchase the Model A for $3,136, more than half the city budget. Today, a new fire truck runs about $350,000. The $500 down payment for the Model A came from the city's first fire truck, a 1922 Model T sold to Sultan.

"We've tried to buy it back from Sultan, but it was their first fire engine, too, so they don't want to give it up," Parkhurst said.

When old-timers learned he was interested in the antique equipment, they taught him how to drive the Model A, showing him all the levers, shifts and tricks to keep the engine going.

Bothell isn't the only city with an old fire truck.

A few years ago, the Redmond firefighters union bought back the city's second firetruck, a 1949 GMC. The union has refurbished it, and each holiday season it uses it for neighborhood Santa Claus visits.

Seattle has a horse-drawn American LaFrance apparatus from about 1916 and a hand cart and pumper built shortly after the 1889 Great Seattle Fire. The Last Resort Fire Department in Ballard is a museum of restored old firefighting equipment.

Kirkland also has a 1929 GMC fire truck. It was sold as surplus some years ago and refurbished by a private collector. Upon his death, Rex Lindquist, former Kirkland Deputy Fire Chief, and several others took up a collection to buy the truck back. It is part of a tiny museum in one bay at the Houghton Fire Station.

Sherry Grindeland: 206-515-5633 or sgrindeland@seattletimes.com