Rudi Becker, Part Two

Rudolph "Rudi" Milford Becker was named after Uncle Milford and father Rudolph.
He lived in Ballard and started in Scouts in Troop 125 in 1925. In the summers he went to Eastern Washington, probably to live with their Uncle in Benton City. He was active in the Scouts except for the period 1928-1929, when he probably lived in Benton City and gone to school there. He had been expelled from Ballard for his "practical jokes". He also always had a surplus of energy and was what might be called a hyperactive person. He liked to have fun each day and live life to the fullest. He thought he would have to live five hundred years to do all that he wanted to do.

In the US Census of 1920 and 1930, he lived at 7507 10th Ave NW or 11th Ave NW. His father was a bond salesman. He had two sisters and a brother. He lived next door to scout friend Al Simonsen in the 1930 census.

He enjoyed going to the Seattle waterfront and seeing the ships and docks.

Rudi graduated from Ballard High School in 1931 age 18, and got his Eagle badge.

He graduated in the worst of the Great Depression and he says he worked in many parts of the United States and its territories. He did not speak of this time and did not talk about what he did during the War.

He was oversized, large and loud. He said that he weighed seven stone and stood nineteen hands high: he was huge.

He said that he had married three times before the end of the War. We know that in 1937 he married Marjorie Williams in Skagit County. In 1943 he married Betty Shrode Tremper in King County.

In 1946 he bought a government surplus launch for $3,000. In 1947 he used the tug Dusty to pick up logs on beach lost from rafts... with wife Betty.

In 1950 he started to work each summer for ten years on the waterfront as manager and barker for the Elliot Bay Tour Company. He also by 1952 was securing customers for a charter fishing boat. He also worked in Alaska. He had a ready store of sea lore that he could tell.

At 949 NW 64th, in early 1950's he built a house and wired and plumbed it. He did not finish it, and sold it in 1952.

Later he had a house at 11117 7th Ave NW, near Carkeek Park. He lived next door to his brother Bob. He fashioned the front door and many parts of the home from scrounged material from ships and beachcombed from beaches.

About 1960 he married Kay, Katherine, a teacher at Lake City elementary school.

About 1960 he became a sales engineer working with his brother Bob for Olympic Prefabricators company that built buildings.

They moved to a home that had been a stable at 737 Carkeek Drive. They build onto and remodeled this home to show off the parts of ships and stain glass windows they had collected.

He said that he was a lecturer, composer, skin diver, beach comber, craftsman, inventor, photographer. From this home Rudi took pictures that were published in the newspaper of a coyote in Carkeek Park and a deer in their orchard.

Sometime in the 1970's he was a salesman for the Garco Western Company selling construction materials for building projects in Alaska.

He was a booster of Seattle and loved the mountains, deserts, and waters of Washington.

Rudi Becker was everybody's favorite "practical joker." Honk a horn overly long behind Becker and he was liable to come back to your car, lift the hood, yank out the horn wires and say pleasantly, before driving off, "Your horn was stuck, but I fixed it."
In the early 1950's Rudi put on a deer suit and drove his friend, Al Cummings, radio disk jockey, around town. A man (a dummy) was tied to their front bumper.
Rudi hated cars behind him honking honking their horns at him on the Ballard Bridge.
Emmett Watson documented in a book that Rudi pointed a huge rifle at a rude driver and fires, detonating a noisy air horn that leaves the rudenik "in a pallid state of near seizure." (Rudi did this because "Some people have to be taught to be nice to other people"-)

In the 1970's he drank at John Franco's Hidden Harbor and Francisco's. Had his own glass at Franco's. He liked to show the boys at Franco's his inventions; which could not do any practical thing, or provide a useful purpose. He sometimes had a picture of his inventions in the newspaper, and sometimes the Associated Press picked up his pictures.
One invention at his place above Carkeek Park was a bird feeder that was supposed to be critter proof, but did not work.

He had many newspaper reporters and photographers and he counted some among his best friends. He called and contacted them often to tell them his idea or to some see his house. Most of what he told them or showed them was newsworthy, and published in the newspaper.


He was called "quintessentially Seattle", by Emmett Watson, a newspaper columnist.

He died on 11 October 1976 due to a heart attack. In his last will and testament he said: "It's a wonderful world, and anybody who dosen't like this life is crazy."