"Salt chuck" in a surprising place

[Jeffrey Kopp]

At 09:28 PM 5/20/2003, you wrote:
>I find it surprising to see a current nationally-published guidebook, the
>American Austomobile Association (AAA) "Campbook" for the Northwest states,
>including a description of a campground in Washington's San Juan Islands as
>having a "salt chuck".  No one but a few geeks (sorry) on this list & a few
>old-timers from the Pacific NW would understand that term, right?

I think the boating/yachting culture of Puget Sound keeps the term alive
there, even among those unaware of its origin. As "salt" is English and
"chuck" has an English homonym, the expression isn't obviously something else.

I seem to recall the Sound and Lake Washington were once distinguished as
"Big Chuck" and "Little Chuck."  (Or was it the ocean and the sound? They
might have had different meanings to sea sailors and weekend boaters.) A
hasty search of Google didn't turn up an answer right away. Memories of my
"Seattle days" are getting fuzzy. (They weren't all that clear at the time...)

(Off-topic nautical digression, from my long-ago Coast Guard service:
Anybody else here know what it means to "kiss the camel," and why you very
much wish to avoid doing so?)

Due to the total lack of email from Seattle-area whites during the six
years my site's been on-line, asserting the Jargon is or was their "insider
slang" (practically a challenge), I suspect nobody bandies Jargon terms
about they way a few still did when I was there twenty years ago. People
were already quite shy about it then, refusing to explain or even
acknowledge it when a Jargon word "slipped out" occasionally, leaving me
baffled until I finally looked it up a decade later.

When I built the site I presumed the high-tech, progress-boosting
Seattleites were still just trying to gloss the relative recentness of
their rough frontier days. But they really got over that self-consciousness
during the sixties, after the World's Fair, the Seafirst Tower, the 747 and
the Kingdome firmly established their place in the 20th century. I now
think they were already becoming sensitive to cultural issues, and realized
the Jargon brought up a touchy historical area. As an "outsider" (from the
disdained "rival" Portland) who was pretty naive about Native history, I
overlooked that angle completely--and they were loath to spell it out for me.

Regards,

Jeff
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