Guest Opinion: The Tank’s History as Social Media

By Tom Welch

The history of the Tank as social media is interesting.

As a high school student in the mid-sixties, I sat on the Tank with my classmates for yearbook photos. You can see us sitting on an earlier, larger version of today’s tank in the yearbook for 1966 that is in the new library collection of Orcas Island Viking annuals.

By 1967-68 kids on the island had started ‘tagging’ rocks along the roads with graffiti, and it was becoming a community nuisance. Don Lohman, the Deputy Sheriff in those days, made a proposition to the teens on the island: paint whatever you want (within reason, of course – this is Orcas, after all), on the tank and leave the rocks alone.

Finding this acceptable, island youth started using the Tank as what we would now refer to as ‘social media’, drawing, painting, and writing their thoughts and ideas on the Tank. So a certain ‘social’ tradition, in the sense that it was in no way commercial, began in our community.

That, as I understand it from Jane Barfoot-Hodde and others who were here at the time, is the history of the Tank as social media on Orcas Island.

It’s interesting that a discussion has arisen about this, with some questioning why it’s not okay for businesses or their supporters to advertise on the Tank. Well, to that I would say that some traditions are important for so many little reasons that they can’t possibly be articulated well in the few words of this opinion; but the words ‘slippery slope’ come readily to mind when thinking about advertising for local businesses; and, finally, that keeping a little local ‘funk’ in the community isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Advertising a business on the Tank may not necessarily lead to neon signs on Indian Island, but that’s a direction I don’t think any of us want to go.

Let’s keep the funky Happy Birthdays and local events on the Tank, and look for pies elsewhere.

Tom Welch is a local businessman and historian, the author of  Images of America: Orcas Island.