POULSBO — As Pauline Rindal prepares to celebrate her centennial in October, she has seen a sleepy little Norwegian village boom into a city with national retailers like Wal-Mart and The Home Depot.
Poulsbo City Councilman Ed Stern has pointed to her as an honorary spokeswoman for the city’s celebration of 100 years of organized governance because of her unique personal history in the area.
As the better half of one of the owners of the Rindal and Ness General Store, Pauline arrived in Poulsbo in 1932 when her husband and brother-in-law took over a small feed store they purchased from the Kitsap County Co-op.
“It was on the water, and we really liked to be on the water,” she said.
A native of Vashon Island, she met Bjarne, who was four years her senior, and lived in Port Orchard for a time before landing permanently in Poulsbo.
The couple’s first home was on the corner of Eliason Street and Ness Lane right across the street from Leif and Esther Ness’ home.
“We knew just a few people around where we were living, but we didn’t know many,” Pauline said.
Until his mother went to work for one of the local doctors, her sister-in-law Esther Ness and her family got together quite a bit, her son Bjarne Rindal, Jr. said.
“That was her support group until she got to working for the doctor,” he said.
Being a working woman during a time when many women chose to stay home and raise children wasn’t a big deal, Pauline said.
“It didn’t bother me,” she said.
The outbreak of World War II made a lasting impact on the city as it brought a massive influx of people from other places to work at the Keyport Torpedo Station.
Just before the war, the Rindals completed their new house on the shores of Liberty Bay on Fjord Drive, but because of gasoline rationing, Bjarne Jr. said he remembers times when his mother drove a feed truck on her rounds as a nurse.
For Pauline, the war didn’t bring any detrimental changes, even though it meant some lifestyle adjustments.
“I suppose we didn’t go out as much,” she said. “We did our getting together at home.”
The war slowed things down some as the family didn’t travel outside of town much during that time, she said.
The family also had people living with it on a couple of occasions because of the war, she said.
“We had barrage balloons around here, so we had a captain living here for a few years,” Bjarne Jr. said.
The war brought in The Projects, which was housing built for government workers, and is now where Poulsbo Place and Poulsbo Place II are, he said.
Downtown was far different in those days as it was at the heart of the city, he said.
“In those days we had three grocery stores downtown,” Bjarne Jr. said. “There were a couple of drug stores, a liquor store, two gas stations and Ford Motor Company. Every building on the west side of Front Street sat over the water.”
When asked if there was any particular event that marked the transformation of downtown into a tourist destination, Pauline simply replied, “It just sneaks up on you.”
