Page 32 - Family History

Family Stories

• You either love cream toast or you don’t! My brother David is not a Poulsen –
he is a Backman. Most Poulsen’s love it – most Backman’s (including
David’s sons) don’t. They have something else for Christmas Day breakfast.

• One summer (1972 I think) I lived in a small travel trailer in Port
Townsend that I parked on the property of my buddy Doug Guenther’s house.
That summer I worked at the Crown Zellerbach paper mill. The trailer was
small and cramped. Occasionally Doug would invite me into the house to eat

with them and to return the favor, once I decided to make a cream toast
breakfast for them. I didn’t know it then but apparently it made quite an
impression. Nearly 40 years later Doug and I were talking and believe it or
not, the subject of cream toast came up. They love it and have it all the time!
They never forgot the recipe and my buddy Doug has since gotten his whole
family hooked on the stuff! You love it or you don’t.

So … as the apparent source of the cream toast recipe and as the source of fond
childhood memories for my mother and as I discovered from some research,
others too, Lum Soo deserves a prominent place in the Poulsen family history.

The following is an edited section of another family history as found on the
internet:

A good friend of my father's was Lum Soo. They became acquainted
many years before when dad was a boy and used to weed garden and

prepare vegetables for market for a Chinese family living in the Ennis
Creek valley. Sometimes, dad would stop by Lum Soo's house on Eighth
Street. He sought gardening advice or cabbage plants. Lum Soo had a
variety store and lived in back with his family. He was much older than
dad and we were sure that he was very wise. When we got to go with dad,
it was like opening a window on the Orient. Lum's wife came to him from

China and had bound feet. We glanced but dared not to stare at her tiny
feet. She was a cripple because of this. She showed us gold fish in the pool
in her garden and had cages of exotic birds hanging about. We were given
a taste of some exotic candy imported from China.

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