Rankin reflects on small town life

RITZVILLE – Local proprietor John Rankin didn't plan to spend three decades of his life in this small farming community.

"If you told me 35 years ago that I would end up in Ritzville, I'd have said you were crazy," he said.

Rankin, 69, started life in southern California.

At age 10, Rankin, his parents and three brothers moved from his birthplace in Whittier, Calif., to Spokane Valley where his father worked for Kaiser Aluminum.

During his high school years in Spokane, Rankin developed an interest in mechanical drawing and history. Based on his early skills and interests, an adviser recommended he pursue architecture after graduating high school in 1972.

Rankin settled on University of Idaho in Moscow. He stayed long enough to establish residency. His tuition was $198 a year; his monthly rent, $50.

At college, he studied architecture and art four years and worked at the college FM radio station as a disc jockey, program director and music director. He also worked with a friend printing T-shirts.

But while preparing his thesis for an architecture degree, Rankin realized he didn't want to pursue that career.

"I'm easily bored and like to learn a lot of things," he said. "I just couldn't see myself detailing bathrooms."

So in November 1979, he moved to Seattle where he took a job with The Seattle Sun and The Rocket, the newspaper's music-and-arts magazine.

He later worked for Boyd Sign, a company located on Dexter and Mercer Street in Seattle.

"I did a combination of designs and sales, and looked after the white-collar part of the business," Rankin said, noting he rented a large house overlooking Lake Union.

During his tenure with the sign company, Rankin freelanced for Seattle's Bumbershoot and Folklife festivals, and later started freelancing full-time.

But with Seattle's skyrocketing housing prices, he couldn't afford to buy his rental home.

"I kept trying, but every time I made an offer, the price had increased $30,000 to $40,000," he said.

So Rankin moved.

"I've always been intrigued with the ice age floods and wanted to live near the channeled scablands," he said.

When his wife finished law school and took a job as deputy prosecuting attorney with the county, Rankin ended up in Adams County. The couple rented a five-bedroom farmhouse on Phillips Road south of Lind.

"The house was situated on top of Providence Hill," he said. "That's where I came up with 'Flying Arts Ranch' for my business name."

Later, they moved to Ritzville and Rankin found a former laundromat that now serves as his studio. He purchased the building in 1994, remodeled it, and over the course of three years, moved the rest of his studio from the Lind area.

That building - King Mercantile - has been his studio headquarters for nearly 30 years.

Inside the front door is a retail space displaying years of Rankin's artwork. But the bulk of the structure provides storage for paints, an art library and various contraptions used in silk screening, sign creation and esoteric art projects.

Soon after moving to Ritzville, Rankin inadvertently became involved in county politics.

He recalled the contentious election of 1998.

"There were six candidates and I did graphics work for four of them," Rankin said. "David Sandhaus was the county prosecutor and several people who worked for him were unhappy.

"At that time, I drove wheat truck for Bill Heineman. Once a week, before going to work in the morning, I would climb a ladder and spray anti-Sandhaus graffiti in red paint on the side of my own building.

"That started the town buzzing. The cops even checked the local hardware store for sales of red spray paint."

After several weeks, Sue Gardner, who worked for The Journal, confronted Rankin. He confessed, admitting that the graffiti was his handiwork.

In 1998, Rankin's wife quit her job with Adams County, went to work for the Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, and over the next several years started divorce proceedings.

That circumstance led Rankin to reevaluate his priorities.

"I decided to spend more time working for the betterment of my adopted community," he said. "I also quit drinking alcohol."

He became one of the founding members of the Ice Age Flood Institute and the Ritzville Downtown Development Association.

"I was vice president for about nine years while Bruce Benzel was the president," he said.

During his tenure with the association, Rankin began creating "ghost signs."

"We have an advantage when painting ghost signs here because Harland Eastwood authored many books about Ritzville," he said.

As part of that effort, Eastwood collected photographs from various sources, including Bert Kendrick's photo studio.

"No other town of this size has such a resource," Rankin said. "You can see what a building looked like in 1906."

Rankin noted that early signs were uniformly black and white. Mixable colors were developed later.

"Sign painters like me came to a town, worked for a while, and moved on," he said. "They carried brushes and bought paint locally."

Rankin said researching historical signage presents challenges. In places like Harrington original building signs are still visible.

"But it's harder when the original signs are covered with three or four layers of latex paint," he said.

"For the Ritzville Trading Co. project, I had to grind layer after layer of latex to get down to the original oil-based paint," he said.

In the months ahead, Rankin plans to repaint the old Safeway building on Main Avenue. The grocery store was constructed the same year as the movie theater.

"I'm basically creating a Hollywood movie set," he said. "We're painting the downtown to make it look like 1939."

Rankin noted that he and his partner, Linda Kubik, spend about 40 hours a week between the Ritzville Downtown Development Association and the refurbished Ritz Theater that originally opened in 1937.

In 1984, Herb Benzel purchased the building at an estate auction and donated the building to the Ritzville Downtown Development Association in 2012.

As reported in The Journal, "The community came together and provided labor, volunteers and monetary support to help renovate the theater."

It reopened nearly a decade ago.

"The only reason the movie theater is still there is because I'm stubborn," Rankin said. "When I accepted the project in about 2012, I hoped it would spur other renovations downtown. And it did.

"My goal was to save the theater so someone else could operate it."

When the Ritzville Downtown Development Association was formed in 2003, that organization became a Main Street affiliate.

"Every state has a Main Street program to revive municipalities by promotion, design, and economic restructuring," he said. "They provide ideas to make your town work better. It's geared toward smaller towns that lack strong bureaucracies."

At an Oct. 5 ceremony, the Main Street program presented Rankin and Kubik an Outstanding Special Project Award for the ghost sign restoration projects here.

Main Street Director Breanne Durham said, "With these building improvements, the Ritzville Downtown Development Association has actively and intentionally fostered a culture of pride and possibility. Attitudes are shifting from discouragement to hope for the future of Ritzville, with downtown as its crown jewel."

Rankin views himself as realistic - not pessimistic - about the town's long-term prospects. He sees two major issues impacting the city's future – water availability and affordable housing.

"The aquifer is being depleted. That needs to change. Also, people working service jobs need decent affordable housing," he said. "Right now, many of those folks are coming from Moses Lake, Lind or other communities. If low-cost housing were here, you'd see some population growth."

Regardless of the town's long-term prospects, Rankin plans to stay.

"I've reached the goal I set 30 years ago," he said. "This is where the train stopped. I'm not going further."