From farmlands to freeway, small town has changed a great deal

Originally published Saturday, January 23, 1999

By TERESA TALERICO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Sitting in his Fife living room, Louie Cerqui, a strapping man of 60, pulls out an old black-and-white photograph of a little boy perched happily on a tractor.

"OK, who's that?" he asks, a twinkle in his eye.

Of course, it's Cerqui. When he was barely old enough to ride a bike, his father -- an Italian immigrant who settled in Fife -- began teaching him to farm. Lettuce. Cabbage. Onions. Carrots. Squash. If it was a vegetable, they planted it. And it grew. In abundance.

It was the mid-1940s, and Fife, a tiny rural community bordering Tacoma, was experiencing something of an agricultural renaissance.

Farmers whooped over the Puyallup River Valley's deep, rich, rock-free soil. City folk from Tacoma and Seattle snapped up the produce for their salads and dinners. On weekends, Fife's Century Ballroom hosted the kings of big swing bands, and Benny Goodman and Harry James kept off-duty farmers and Tacoma's hep set dancing until dawn.

Then the freeway came to town. It sliced Fife in two, plowed through farmland and forever altered the landscape and lifestyle of this once-tranquil agricultural hamlet.

"The real death knell was when I-5 came through here," Cerqui says today.

People in Fife have a love-hate relationship with the freeway, whose construction through the town was completed in 1962. They love how it makes traveling such a snap; they hate how it has commercialized the city.

With Interstate 5's arrival, the quaint vegetable and dairy farms have gradually wilted, weeded out by fast-food restaurants, motels, gas stations, car dealerships and industrial warehouses that have brought a massive tax base to this town of about 5,000.

Longtime Fife residents worry that such economic progress means sacrificing precious farmland and the city's true identity. They hope to retain the agricultural heritage of a community renowned for its lettuce and cabbage crops, its deep fertile soil, its solid roots and generations of family farmers.

For both residents and city officials, the challenge is to balance lucrative industry with rural charm.

Louie Cerqui and his wife, Lucy, couldn't imagine living anywhere else. Neither could their 25-year-old son, Rob. Though he graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in liberal arts and business, he hopes to remain in Fife and continue farming the same land on which his grandfather prospered.

Most people his age can't wait to leave small-town Fife, he admits. But Rob, who also studied agricultural business, hopes to preserve what his ancestors began.

"It's such a neat place to live," he says. "You're close to the action, but you're still on a farm."

Newcomers understand the appeal. For them, Fife is much more than just an interstate pit stop littered with a Taco Bell, Burger King, Motel 6 and gas stations. Just beyond the highway are rural homes, stretches of farmland and stunning views of Mount Rainier. And if you want a night out in the city, Tacoma is next door and Seattle is only 30 minutes away.

"I'm not leaving," says Brandy Spitzer, a 48-year-old former hair salon owner who moved to Fife last summer with her husband, father and three Chihuahuas. They wanted to escape the congestion and big-city aloofness of Seattle.

"I'm going to be buried here," she says. "This is the best of both worlds. Fife still has enough country and city mixed together. In Seattle, there was no community, no sense of 'these are your neighbors and they'll be your neighbors 10 years from now.' "

Today, she lives in a four-bedroom home built in 1937. With hardwood floors and the Hylebos Creek gushing through her back yard, Spitzer feels at home here.

Still, residents wonder how long they can retain those pockets of quiet country living. Industry is booming in Fife. Businesses such as Davidson Plastics, attracted by the town's location between Seattle and Tacoma and its easy access to I-5, have snapped up property for warehouses.

Fife, city officials boast, has the largest tax base of any town its size in the state. Inevitably, the pastoral landscapes are becoming extinct.

"Fife has become one big car dealership," bemoans Joe Rozenski, an 84-year-old City Council member.