In the beginning there actually were real yard birds, two of them, and they were named Skinny and Fatty.
Boyhood friends Rich “Skinny” Gillingham and Bill “Fatty” Jones left home in desperation during the Depression, playing music for food and board as they rode freight trains across the country. They went on to serve in World War II, then returned home and started hawking fire hoses, X-ray film, coffins and other army surplus from a tent in Centralia in 1947.
They called their store “2 Yard Birds Army Surplus,” taking their fowl name from a wartime expression for the not-so-dashing Air Force mechanics who prowled the repair yards.
The tale of their visionary expansion into a retail empire hit the big screen on Saturday, as two former Centralians, Rob and Karma Hugo, released their full-length Yard Birds documentary during a pair of showings at the Olympic Club in downtown Centralia on Saturday.
Karma Hugo said a dinner conversation about Yard Birds four years ago revealed how little they actually knew about the store that held so many positive memories for them.
“I think some of the best decisions in life happen on a whim, and that’s what this is,” she told the full house, many of whom worked at Yard Birds over the past 60 years.
“Skinny & Fatty: The Story of Yard Birds,” is a collection of old photos and home movies mixed with narration from two dozen people closely connected to the store and the partnership that gave it life.
“It was a very good combination of two very remarkable men that took something as unique as toilet seats and army surplus and created an empire that was worth millions,” former store manager Beverly Quante said to open the 88-minute DVD.
From its first building in an old radiator store down the street from a house of prostitution called “The Calico Ranch,” the store was rebuilt into the building now housing the Sunbird Shopping Center. Around 1970 the store moved down the road to its current location, but only after much of the hillside to the east was dredged for fill.
Their store was a dynamic mix of entrepreneurial spirit, flamboyant promotion and a ground-breaking process of global bulk buying and low costs that was later perfected by Walmart’s distribution system.
Jones, who baffled new employees by riding a unicycle through the store, was painted as the promoter, the one who pushed to expand and who was happy to spend $20,000 on a garish 60-foot-tall bird he called the 8th wonder of the world.
Gillingham was portrayed as the consummate retailer, the one who handled the day-to-day operations and pushed for perfect signs on every merchandise display. Less interested in the growth pushed for by Jones, Gillingham eventually ended their partnership and started the Sunbird Shopping Center, which is still owned by people with Yard Birds connections.
The documentary’s cast of characters includes wives, children, employees, customers and an ever-evolving beady-eyed Yard Bird that seemed to change along with the artists who drew him.
The film highlights Yard Birds’ heady heyday, when Santa would land on top of the store by helicopter and customers were greeted in the store by a menagerie that included a miniature horse, raccoons, skunks, an alligator, a porcupine and three monkeys known to occasionally pee on employees.
The climax of the store’s history seemed to come in 1976, an eventful year that saw a growing acrimony between the two founding partners end with Gillingham selling his share to Jones. Within months, Jones sold to the Pay ‘n Pack corporation. Shocked employees saw their disappointment embodied when the giant Yard Birds statue, which had beckoned customers from I-5, burned to a crisp that October after a car passing underneath backfired and caught fire.
Employees eventually bought the store, but even that development in 1987 couldn’t save the enterprise. Deluged by water in the 1990 flood and by a changing retail landscape, the company closed its Olympia location in 1993 and its Chehalis and Shelton stores in 1995.
Jim Haslett of Napavine, a former Yard Birds office manager and a prominent voice in the movie, said during the film that working at Yard Birds was so fun, he would have paid for the opportunity.
After the closing credits, Haslett told The Chronicle that Yard Birds had a magic he’s never experienced since.
“I wish my grandkids could see what Yard Birds really was,” Haslett said. “I went back to Walmart to work a couple Christmases to get that old retail feeling back, but it just wasn’t the same.”
Highlights from ‘Skinny & Fatty: The Story of Yard Birds’
By The Chronicle
• The Wild Gila Monster: Richard “Richart” Tracy, Centralia, said a gila monster went missing from the pet department one day, emerging at night to eat and drink before hunkering down again.
One day an employee found the venomous lizard sitting on a stack of merchandise.
“That thing scared me so much and that idea scared me much,” Tracy said. “You can’t be with that grin on your face having a good day when there’s a gila monster up there.”
• Shopping in the Buff: During the streaking craze, people would race through Yard Birds in the nude. The store’s quick-draw illustrators responded with a billboard showing a hen-pecked Yard Bird sans tail feathers.
• Bug-Eyed Birds: The store made dozens of statues and set them up on roadsides from California to Idaho. Most were eventually stolen, as was a giant bird set up on top of the Olympia store, King Kong style. That huge mascot usually ended up on top of North Thurston High School. “It was good advertising,” said store manager Noel Cole.
• Celebrity Visitors: Crowds lined up to see Darth Vader, Barbie, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and other costumed characters. Santa would arrive by helicopter, greeting throngs from an elevated platform he shared with a scruffy black yard bird.
• From Coffee to Caskets: A group of long-time customers at the snack bar would come for morning coffee and often stay until noon. When one died, his family had the funeral at Yard Birds because he spent so much time there. When another later died, his family made the same request.
• Bird as Self-Portrait: The public face of Yard Birds has changed over the years. The first person to truly put his fingerprint on the google-eyed mascot was the late Bing Orr, described as “a living version of Mad Magazine.”
A later graphic designer, Paul Downing, still lives in Centralia and does work for the Yard Birds Mall. He said the mascot took on the physical elements of the person drawing it, starting with Orr.
“He was kind of a stout person, and so his bird style was kind of a stout little bird,” Downing said. “I noticed when I started it looked more like me, kind of tall and skinny. But then as I got older and stouter, it started getting stouter too.”
To Learn More
No additional local showings have been finalized for “Skinny and Fatty: The Story of Yard Birds.”
More information on the DVD is available online at www.yardbirdshistory.com, which also has a collection of stories that didn’t make it into the documentary.
Brian Mittge: (360) 807-8234
