B Street: The Notorious Playground of Coulee Dam

by Lawney L. Reyes

B Street tells intimate stories about the street of shops, restaurants, bars, and brothels where the workmen who built the Grand Coulee Dam spent their recreational hours and wages. From the beginning, B Street was the place to play and let off steam for the white workingmen who had faced the hard times of the Depression. It was a raucous playground that denied blacks and most dark-skinned Indians access to the frivolity, good times, and pretty ladies that were the main attractions of that provocative place.

This vivid story of a colorful era is based largely on the memories of Lawney L. Reyes. As a young boy he wandered B Street with his little sister, Luana, and their dog, Pickles, while their Indian mother and Filipino father eked out a living running a Chinese restaurant. His mother's diary and the stories told by his parents and older members of the Sin-Aikst tribe contribute to his story.

Reyes tells of hard times, dreams, and extreme courage and reveals the humor, toughness, and recklessness of the adventurers who came to work on the dam. He also describes the history and culture of the Indians whose villages were flooded and whose way of life was irrevocably changed by the building of the Grand Coulee Dam.

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Molly Blank]

As a Washingtonian with local roots, this book helped to transform my understanding of the Grand Coulee Dam and its impact on both the indigenous locals and the transplants to the area looking for work and hope. The story is focused on a family, which transports you into the time and helps you consider the complexity of human problems when weighed against environmental and broader social justice.

This is an absolute must-read for folks with some knowledge of the area, but is an exceptional book for anyone looking to read a rich story that helps you understand a place and time different from your own.

[SnowLeopardMaster]

I was forced to read this for school, and it was so utterly boring that reading it in school made me want to die. The only reason I remember this book at all is because it's become an inside joke between me and my friends.

It's an interesting enough topic, but the writing style was so dull and emotionless, and even though some very serious stuff happened that had the potential to be tear jerking and emotional, Lawney Reyes seemed so indifferent about what happened to the people in the story that I had trouble caring about something that, in the hands of an author like Lauren Oliver, or Carl Hiassen, could have been a very emotional and sad scene.

Reyes almost seems to be taunting the reader by mentioning all the actually interesting stuff that was taking place at the time, writing a single paragraph about it, and then goes off and writes about his parent's Chinese restaurant, which has really nothing at all to do with the rest of the story. There's next to no plot, and the characters were all very 1-dimensional and personality-less. I don't care if this was based on the author's real life experiences, you'd think he'd be able to give his father more personality, because as it is, his father is doomed to go down in history as the guy who was addicted to chewing tobacco.

It's just a boring, poorly written book, and it's a shame it turned out that way, because it could have been a genuinely good one. I don't recommend reading it unless you're forced to.

[Diane]

Interesting because I live near the Grand Coulee Dam and am interested in the history of the region. This is a marginal description of the Indians village flooded by the dam and of the early days of the town of Grand Coulee. The writing is too florid and stilted for the topic. If the author had simply written in the first person, told the stories he knew and stories he heard, this would have been so much better. The best parts are when he tells about his family trying to start a Chinese restaurant after eating in a Chinese restaurant one time and of the amazing arrival of a real Chinese cook - but even these stories are stilted and lack any warmth. I assume this was self published because it seems to lack even a breath of editing. Still, it is important to have these stories and memories.

[Becky]

Good book. It was interesting to read about Grand Coulee in its hey day. There was a lot going on back then. B Street is completely gone now and even when I was growing up in the Coulee there was no B Street. It kinda sad to see the street now, but fun to think what it was like.

[lorena boyd]

Interesting history about the building of Grand Coulee Dam.

[Buck Edwards]

Living less than a hundred miles from the Grand Coulee Dam, I read "B Street" primarily for research for my latest novel. But remembering our own family visits to the Dam, it was a well-detailed reminder of the boom years of the 1930's.
But this fine, short history also tells the conflicting side of the area Indians, who lost, not only homes to the flooding in the region, but also cultural and economic ways of life.
Author, Lawney Reyes, inserts himself and his parents in the story, as he was an eye-witness to much of the memorable times in that boom town.