Walking into Ken Weeks’ home is like walking into a photo album, except these “photos” are oil paintings, ink sketches, and piles of antiques. Scenes of farmsteads and fishing boats compete for wall space with close-ups of herons and chickens. A Radio Flyer accompanies a ship’s wheel. The effect is immediate intimacy. And when Ken begins sharing his past, these illustrations bring his stories alive.

Ken does not claim the “oldest Lopez family” distinction, but the Weeks were here from the start. Great-grandmother Irene was the sister of Hiram Hutchinson who ran the village store, and in the 1870s, she and husband Liman Weeks moved from California to Lopez to farm. One of their four kids became Ken’s grandfather, Bertie Weeks. Bertie married Viola Coffelt – from another old family–and Ken (Senior) was born, grew up, and married Varian Martin (yet another old Lopez name). So if Ken Weeks, Junior, feels a swell of pride driving down Weeks Road, he’s entitled.

According to Ken, the Weeks owned all the village land between Fisherman Bay Road and the water, of which Great-grandma Irene donated two acres for the Community Church. Great-grandpa Martin and Grandpa Bertie built several notable houses, including the Hoedemakers’, and the Metcalf house where the Lopez Quakers meet. That ship’s wheel? It came from the Seagull, which Grandpa Weeks used to take folks around, before the ferries.

Work was hard to come by, so Ken’s parents homesteaded in northeastern Washington near Kettle River, close to the border. An oil painting shows a green clearing hunkered within tall, dark trees. Here Ken was born in 1941, sandwiched between two sisters. Ken Senior farmed, logged, and drove a school bus to support the family. Ken Junior was pressed into service, receiving his first chainsaw at age 14. “I cut the limbs and topped ‘em, Dad did the heavy bucking,” Ken says. He also got to drive the Cat – there it is, another bright oil painting. Ken used his log earnings to buy school clothes. An ink drawing shows an old logging truck in amazing detail; Ken drew it in 8th grade.

Happier in shop class than math, Ken discovered his artistic talent in school, doodling. Performing was another perk, especially playing the part of Baby Bear in “Goldilocks.” After graduation in 1959, with neither the desire nor the budget for college, Ken worked at various jobs for two years, then followed a friend’s lead and joined the Army.

Ken’s first airplane ride took him to Fort Rutger, Alabama, which he loathed. After two years he was relieved to transfer to Germany, working as an aircraft mechanic’s helper at the height of the Berlin Wall crisis.

Back in the States in 1962, Ken dived into a series of jobs: fire lookout; sawyer; brush crew worker and service station attendant. A year’s training as a riveter at Boeing did not pan out, but: sawmill; railroad yard; mental hospital. ..work venues of startling diversity unfolded. Finally Ken used his Army service to procure himself a spot at Eastern Washington University. He could only afford one year, but in Cheney he met, courted, and married Shirley Wise.

The Weeks moved to Elgin, Oregon in 1967; Ken hired on as school custodian, and they started their family. A son followed two daughters, one of whom died just after birth. Over eight years, Ken proved his value to the community. “That last year, I saved the school from burning down when the boiler went haywire…it was starting to melt, but I got it shut down.”

Shirley wanted to move back to eastern Washington, so a new series of jobs began: aluminum boat builder, hospital custodian. Then Ken hit his stride: 25 years as lead custodian for Spokane Falls Community College. When Shirley left him and the kids, aged four and nine, he had to pull double duty as a single dad. “The church helped me,” Ken says of this time, citing a love for church that began in his early childhood.

In 2004, Ken came back to Lopez to look after his mother, and began clearing himself a homestead in the South End woods. At nearly 70, Ken single-handedly felled 12 tall firs and put in a factory-made home. His art studio, a cozy trailer, sits on the property near his Yamaha Virago. (Another drawing shows Ken and his dad on motorbikes.) Ken’s main social outlet remains the Community Church, where he enjoys ringing the bells “for Irene.”

While the past is very much with Ken Weeks, his past, as William Faulkner wrote, “isn’t even past.” He not only stays in touch with his nine grandchildren, he regularly Skypes with some of his six great-grandchildren. No doubt such a scene – a small girl peering into computer – will soon appear on his wall, in ink, or maybe oils.