Category Archives: Family Stories

A Father’s Promise

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Happy Father’s Day to all those great men who shepherd their progeny through the formative years and beyond. Your influence on your children is enormous and felt throughout their lifetimes. Thank you. You are, in many ways, the architects of the future, helping to mold young minds and hearts to take their places in our human society.

Happy Father’s Day to my husband, who has stayed the course with our three children, all adults now. He was there for every school event, every teacher conference, recital, and concert, every soccer and baseball game, even coaching for many years. He takes seriously his role, his responsibility of being a dad beyond providing for the essential physical needs, food, shelter, and clothes. He extended that fidelity to our grandson, who grew up in a one-parent home. Our daughter does an amazing job being the all-around parent, but Henry appreciates having a Grandpa to help guide him, talk about guy things, and give him tips on golf and baseball. Thank you, Ken.

I had a friend who was a jet fighter pilot. As needed in his profession, he had a strong ego, a decisive personality, and many stories to tell about daring deeds. Once, when I asked him what he valued most in all his experiences, he said, “Making memories with my kids. Every day, I try to make at least one memory with each one of them.” He recognized the impact he had on the future and took it seriously. I admire him more for that than any of his brave military exploits. Thank you, Rick.

I’ve written many times of my relationship with my father. It was never expressed during his lifetime, overtly, effusively, or loudly. He was my friend without making a big deal of it. He was my counselor without lectures or making it obvious. He was my dad in every way. A witty, happy-go-lucky guy on the outside, he had lots of demons on the inside. He was powerfully affected by his service as a gunner on a bomber in the European theater of WWII. He received shock treatments for depression when he returned from overseas. He told my mother the only thing he wanted when he was well was to have a baby girl. Mom obliged. I fulfilled his wish.

To my recollection, he never discussed the war in any way. I didn’t learn about his part in the war until after he was dead. Mom said he told her that he wanted to see Germany from the ground someday. He flew many missions over that country, dropping bombs of destruction. He saw how beautiful the country was from the heights of an airplane and, after the war, wanted to visit it in peace. He never did. However, in 1978, ten years after he died, Mom and I went to Germany in his place to witness the peace and beauty of the country. We took a cruise down the Rhine River from Koblenz to Rudesheim, paying homage to my father’s memory.

I remember one day in May, when I was seven, I took home a fancy Mother’s Day card that I made at school. My mom showed it to Dad. When my dad thought I was out of earshot, he said, “I wonder why she never makes me a Father’s Day card?” That hit me hard. We didn’t make Father’s Day cards at school. I’m not sure why. But from that day on, I made sure he had a Father’s Day card, created by me each year. I knew it was important to him.

I was horse-obsessed as a child. I had books and books filled with horse stories, The Black Stallion, Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry’s Book of Horses, to name a few that I remember.  I dreamed horses. My dad bought me countless statues of horses, plastic ones, china ones, carved wooden ones, and cloth ones. When he went on business trips, he always brought back a horse or two for me. I remember a gorgeous pair of china horses, cream colored with gold manes and tails, that he brought to me from a trip to the East Coast. He named them Prince and Grace because it was the year Grace Kelly married the Prince of Monaco. My collection grew and grew with each Christmas and birthday. I played with farm sets like most girls played with dolls. My mother loved dolls and couldn’t understand why the dolls she bought for me were abandoned and unloved. They kept my attention for maybe an hour, then back to my farm animals, fences, barns, and especially horses.

Dad promised to buy me a horse someday. He was raised on a farm and had Old Nobby, but we always lived in suburban environments with no place for a horse. He made sure I got my horse fix. My parents leased horses from stables and individuals for me to ride. I had riding lessons and as much horse time as they could squeeze into their busy lives.

After I was married and had a baby, my father called one evening to say he had bought a horse for me, just as he had promised so many years earlier. My husband and I lived in a small house on an acre of property that we rented from his parents. We had minimal room for a horse, but horses were allowed on acre properties within the town limits. The horse was a Palouse Welsh pony. Every few years, when the wild horse herds became overpopulated, the State of Washington rounded up dozens and sold them at auction. Dandy, a lively brown and white gelding, was delivered to my door. He was housed in the shed area beside the garage and had full use of the acre. He had been tamed but not broken to ride. I started the process and taught him to take me bareback, but not with a saddle. I put our seven-month-old daughter on his back and led him around the property with no problem. He loved to follow me, like a dog, around the yard. The next step was to teach him saddle manners.

Then I found out I was pregnant again. No more riding or breaking horses. With a new baby coming in January, we decided that we needed a bigger house. We had to move and couldn’t afford acreage. I found a good home for Dandy with a local riding stable that needed a small horse for children’s lessons. Dandy was a perfect fit. I was sad to let my horse go after waiting all that time, but my life was taking a different course. My father understood why I had to sell Dandy, but he was happy that he had bought a horse for me as he promised. Dad died suddenly the following February at the age of 52, a little more than a year after he delivered on his promise. Promise made, promise kept. Thank you, Dad.

Planes, Trains, Automobiles plus Boats

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I do not appreciate jewelry, new clothes, furniture, cars, etc. I love to travel. I like to look at those beautiful things, but I don’t want to own them. I would much rather spend a dollar on an experience than on acquisitions. Well, books may be the exception. Give me a trip to someplace, anyplace, and I’m a happy woman. I’ve been fortunate to have traveled a bit in my life, and it is never enough. I want to go, go, go, see, see, see, learn, learn, learn.

One of my earliest memories is a plane trip from Wichita to Denver when I was five years old. Back in those glory days, shortly after the dinosaurs disappeared, a plane trip was fun. Today, I think of it as a laborious task and a necessity in some instances. In 1950, my parents walked me out across the tarmac to the plane, and I was handed over to a gracious stewardess (flight attendant, before the term “flight attendant” was coined) in full uniform and high heels, who treated me like a visiting princess. I was safely delivered to my grandparents at the end of the trip in Denver. Plastic flight wings were awarded to me on each flight, and once I was taken to the cockpit to sit on the captain’s lap and pretend I was flying the plane.  There were no lines, no TSA, no restrictions on preflight parental supervision at the departure lounge.  I was offered food appropriate for a child, coloring books, and small toys to keep me entertained. The stewardesses were all very kind (no stewards in those days). I was showered with attention. I was usually the only kid on the plane, and for sure, the only solo kid. Unimaginable today – a five-year-old flying alone with no worries. I spent four summers with my grandparents from age five to eight, and all but one of those round trips were by plane.

I learned to love flying then and continued to love it until about twenty years ago. The rigmarole, the security checks, and the hassles, plus the too-small seating, make flying uncomfortable and tedious. Don’t get me wrong, after 9-11, I’m happy there are some rules in place now to prevent disasters. I question, however, the efficacy of TSA after reading some of the reports.

My father was in the Army Air Corps during WWII, and maybe my love of flying was transferred from him. He certainly endorsed my trips by air to visit my grandparents. I’m sure his experiences as a gunner on a B-24 Bomber were not nearly as pleasant as mine on Continental Airlines as a child.

During one of my summers in Colorado, my grandmother and I rode a train from Denver to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to visit some old friends of my grandparents. My grandfather was on the train too, but he was working. He was a brakeman for the Union Pacific. I remember the gold UP pin on the lapel of his jacket. I’m not sure what he did, but he was very impressive in his wool uniform and his flat-top, squared UP cap with Brakeman on it. I felt very special when Grandpa came through the cars to visit with Grandma and me. As I recall, he rode in the caboose of the train, and his job was considered dangerous. His best friend, the one we visited in Wyoming, was also a brakeman and was killed a few years later. Then my grandfather retired.

Since then, I have traveled by train, short distances between European cities and the U.K., never overnight. Even the Eurostar trip through the Chunnel, UNDER the English Channel, from London to Paris was interesting. I was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be enjoyable. We were underwater for less than twenty minutes. Who can’t hold their breath that long?

My three children and I took a train trip from L.A. to San Diego in 1977. Our family rode the Durango–Silverton narrow-gauge train in the Colorado Rockies in 1984. All are very pleasant memories. I’ve longed to take a trip by rail to see parts of our country.

We love road trips. Ken and I will get in the car for a day trip at the drop of a hat. We are not opposed to weeklong trips either. I’ve written before of our family’s fourteen-month 1984-1985 odyssey through the continental United States by van, when we went to every contiguous state at least once, also visiting parts of Canada and Mexico. That is a highlight of my entire life, the trip of a lifetime. We did that before cell phones and Google Maps. All communication was by payphone, and we navigated with AAA TripTiks. Two adults, three kids, and two dogs – we were off the grid. And some prophesied, out of our minds.

Finally, I love boat trips. One of the side excursions during our U.S. odyssey was a 7-day Caribbean cruise. We went to Cozumel, Grand Cayman, and Jamaica. We had a ball. I love ferry rides from Seattle to Victoria or the surrounding islands in Puget Sound.

Later, Ken and I invested in a sailboat and cruised for several years around Puget Sound and the Canadian Gulf Islands. My mother once remarked, “Why are you buying a sailboat? You hate being in water.” My reply was, “That is WHY we’re buying a boat, so I don’t have to be IN the water, I’ll be on it.”

I guess I can throw parasailing, white-water rafting, and skydiving into the travel bucket. Bottom line is, travel, in whatever form, is my go-to expense when I have an extra buck or two. Put me on wheels, wings, or waves, and I’m happy.

Seattle – Part 6 Finale, Green Lake to Pier 56

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Green Lake Memorial Lantern Float photo by Vuong Vu

As a final episode in our tour of Seattle, I will take you to the Green Lake neighborhood. It is a quiet neighborhood that I love to walk around. Green Lake is 259 surface acres and was named because of the algae that formed, causing the lake to turn green. At times, it produced noxious odors. The algae caused rashes for many who tried to swim there. Attempts to clear the lake were unsuccessful until about twenty years ago. Now people can swim in it. Motorized boats are banned on the lake, but people still splash around in kayaks, canoes, and on paddleboards. There is a large open area for picnicking and nearly three miles of paved paths around the lake. Every year since 1984, a memorial lantern float is held to memorialize the victims of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings.

At some point in the 1920s, a bathhouse with changing rooms and showers for bathers was built at the edge of the lake. That building now houses the Public Bathhouse Theater, one of the many public theaters in Seattle. It offers a wide variety of entertainments and is a starting place for actors.

Green Lake had an aquatic theater in the 1950s, where the Aqua Follies were produced.  It was the site of concerts and live entertainment by some of the pros, such as Bob Hope, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead, among others.

Woodland Park Zoo is at the edge of the Green Lake neighborhood and connects through the park. It is over ninety acres of animals, exhibits, and family fun. When our kids were young, we spent many hours at the zoo and the children’s theater.

 While a student at the University of Washington, our son lived in the attic of an old home just up the hill from Green Lake. Then he moved for a time to the Wallingford neighborhood across the I-5 from the University District. His house was actually tucked in under the edge of the elevated freeway. He and his buddies started a raucous rock band called Legacy. It quietly ended shortly after graduation.

Of course, the University District and The Ave hold a myriad of adventures and students who are in the active process of becoming. I spent many hours exploring my favorite emporium, The University Book Store on the Ave. On a couple of occasions, when my husband wanted to WOW me, he gave me a large dollar gift certificate to “the bookstore”, where I escaped into other worlds for hours in distracted bliss. The downside for him was that I came home laden with books that he then had to move from house to house each time we moved. He said he’s not moving them again, so I guess we’re here for the duration. Love me, love my books.

There is the Ravenna neighborhood that we bypassed, and the International District with great dim sum. You can lose yourself in the culinary delights from around the world. There are Rainier Beach and Sodo (South of Downtown) areas. There are the Roosevelt and Sand Point districts, Montlake, Phinney Ridge, toney Madison Park, and the exclusive, completely walled-in and gated neighborhood of Broadmoor. I went to a party in Broadmoor once, a political do as I recall, but the memory is vague – it must have been a very “good” party.

 We passed by Beacon Hill in the southeast section of the city. It is the original headquarters of Amazon.com. Beacon Hill is primarily an Asian neighborhood, mostly residential. We sometimes shopped at an Asian import store on Beacon Hill. I brought a three-foot-tall laughing Buddha to Tucson with me as a reminder of that neighborhood. He happily reigns over our backyard in the desert.

 We didn’t spend much time in downtown Seattle, the mega-mecca of everything big city. For a while, our eldest daughter lived on the eighth floor of a thirty-two-floor building in the high-rise forest of the mid-town business district within walking distance of her office and her place of worship, Nordstrom. Nordstrom began in Seattle as a family-owned shoe store in the 1920s. It transitioned to a big-time department store in the 1960s, expanding far beyond Seattle. I think its growth was financed, in large part, by our shoe-addicted daughter.

 We’ve missed a significant portion of the waterfront where ferries ply their way across the Bay and Puget Sound to various islands and Victoria, Canada. Pier 56 is known as Fisherman’s Wharf. It is full of shops and entertainment opportunities. The Seattle Aquarium is underwhelming compared to other city aquariums we’ve visited. Not worth the money.

The Great Wheel – Seattle

The Great Wheel is interesting. A Ferris wheel that is 175 feet high and extends 40 feet out over Elliott Bay has views of Seattle, the Olympics, and Puget Sound (on a clear day). They have a spectacular light show. Each of the forty-two climate-controlled gondolas holds eight passengers. There is one VIP gondola with special appointments that holds four passengers. The Wheel revolves three times in the twelve-minute ride.  It doesn’t compare to the London Eye, which is 445 feet high, anchored in the Thames, but it is worth the $13 to experience, and you don’t have a twelve-hour flight to get there.

We bypassed the industrial part at the south end of Elliott Bay, where big tanker ships and commercial barges load and unload from ports around the world.  It is less than elegant, but it does provide a comfortable living for those working the docks.

At various times, Seattle was named the most educated city in the US and the most literate city. But then, it has also been named the most livable city, and I’m sure whoever came up with that was smoking something stinky and missed all the suicides. It is a city of eclectic neighborhoods, each a little world unto itself.  Some began as immigrant enclaves but changed in character as Seattle grew. When you travel around Seattle, it is like taking a trip to different lands, different customs, and cultures without needing a passport. You will have to come back with me again sometime and explore the places we missed.

In future posts, I will share some of our sailing experiences in the Puget Sound area. I will take you to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island during the Jazz festival, to the Victorian town of Port Townsend, harboring at Orcas Island, and the legendary Fluffy Duck cocktail, visits to Stuart and Sucia Islands, going through seaside customs on our way to the Gulf Islands of Canada. Killer whales played with our sailboat as we cruised the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

I’m not sure how Seattle informed me as a person during my 40 years of incarceration. I spent so much time resenting it that I really didn’t let Seattle in. My interior barriers blocked any positive influence that threatened my bias. I took a cue from my adorable little grandmother when she came from Kansas to visit for the first time. We took her up in the Space Needle. Her comment was, “Yes, it is beautiful from up here, but you can’t see anything when you’re down there because of those damn trees.” To each his own. To some, trees provide a beautiful landscape; to others, they are an impediment to seeing the horizon.

I enjoy going back to embrace Seattle for all its gifts, now that I know I can return to Tucson’s blue skies. My children, all born with gills and webbed feet, love Seattle and always have. They thought we lost our minds when, through my insistence, we made our escape to the desert twenty-eight years ago. Two of those Seattle-loving children presently live in sunshine, one in Texas and one in Tucson. Only one stubbornly remains in Seattle, her little webbed feet firmly planted in the muck. Seattle is a very watery, water-oriented place. Water – everywhere.

No more clammy feet, soggy clothes, frizzy Bozo hair and gray skies for me. If nothing else, Seattle taught me to appreciate blue sky, clear air, stars, and yes, even the heat, it’s a dry heat. I love Tucson. I will live 40 years in the desert to dry out and make up for all the years I endured Seattle…then, on to somewhere else, preferably Paris. I know the weather in Paris is not ideal either, but it is PARIS.

Ahhh, Paris

Seattle Part 5 – Queen Anne, Elliott Bay and Magnolia

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Discovery Park takes up a major part of the land on Magnolia Bluff. It is the largest park in Seattle with trails, forest, meadow, and beaches for a diverse outdoor experience. Magnolia was misnamed by a military surveyor back in the 1800s because he thought that the red-barked Madrona trees that cover the hill were Magnolias.

A caveat of the Treaty was the promise that any surplus military land would be returned to the original owners. Following the Korean War, Fort Lawton was considered surplus land. In 1970, there was a nonviolent demonstration for four months by indigenous peoples led by Bernie Whitebear with supporters such as Jane Fonda and the Black Panthers to increase national attention to the cause. The result of the negotiation was that the Fort would be turned over to the City of Seattle for a public park, and the United Indians People’s Council would receive a ninety-nine-year lease for twenty acres to become a cultural center. The Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center was completed in 1977 and is a cultural and educational magnet for visitors.

Like every piece of land in Seattle, Magnolia belonged for eons to Native Americans.  The native Americans considered themselves custodians of the land. A gathering place for possibly 10,000 years. Archaeological evidence shows sustained settlements in the area with tools, homes, canoes, etc. The Euro-white invaders forced the indigenous population to reservations by the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott with promises (still not kept) regarding healthcare and economic opportunities. The land was turned over to the military and became Fort Lawton until the 1970s.


At the base of Magnolia Hill is Elliot Bay Marina where we moored our sailboat for years. It has a magnificent view to the east of downtown Seattle across the Bay, spectacular views of Puget Sound to the west, and Mount Rainier to the South. We lived aboard our boat for part of a summer while we had our house remodeled – a six-week project became three months. I remember sitting on the aft deck with a glass of wine in the evenings, the boat swaying gently with the tide, puffs of crisp sea air coming off the Sound, watching the moon rise over the Cascade Mountains and Seattle, thinking there couldn’t be a prettier sight – one of my Stockholm hostage moments. Reflection of the setting sun on windows in the city made a warm copper glow emanate from some of the buildings. Lights in the skyscrapers cast multicolored rippled beams across the water of the Bay as the sky grew darker and darker. Adorable harbor seals swam into the marina and barked at each other and boat dwellers. They are creative beggars, slapping the water to get attention and rolling on their backs, inviting gifts of food. Eagles swooped down over our boat from the tops of the madrona trees on their way hunting or fishing. Idyllic. Inner city peaceful.

Elliott Bay Marina

Palisades restaurant at the marina is one of my favorites in the city, and their Mangorita is the best. Maggie Bluffs Café is unmatched for Sunday brunch. The king crab Benedict is unbeatable. Fisherman’s Terminal is another great spot for dining on the freshest fish. One undeniable benefit of Seattle is the fresh seafood, especially my favorite, crab. From our earliest days in Seattle, a friend of ours gave us crab that he caught near his house north of Seattle. We had mountains of crab and salmon in the refrigerator and freezer all the time. I took it for granted, even said I was tired of it. Now I crave it. I must stop the restaurant tour because I’m making myself too hungry.


From Magnolia, we drive back southeast to Queen Anne Hill, the grand dame that looks down over Seattle and the Bay. Queen Anne is the highest hill (but not the steepest slopes) and has many of the earliest mansions built by Seattle pioneers. Lavish old homes perch on hillside lots with rounded tourettes, bric-a-brac details, and gingerbread that place them in a bygone era. Even newer built homes echo some of those details. At the base of Queen Anne to the east is Lake Union. Lake Union is lined with restaurants (which we will not visit on this trip due to hunger concerns) and nautical businesses. It is the freshwater mid-point on the canal between the Sound and Lake Washington.

A friend of ours rehabbed an old Conoco gas station into a lovely two-story home on Westlake Avenue on the hill above Lake Union with views up and down the Lake. She was one of the most creative, imaginative people I’ve known. She was also a gourmet cook and owned a restaurant in Seattle. I would extoll her varied and unique menu, but sadly, her restaurant is no more. Besides lovely lake views and boat watching, she had a view of the floating houses moored on the west edge of Lake Union. They are a unique living concept and, I’ve heard, some can be rented for a Sleepless in Seattle experience.

Lower Queen Anne on the south side of the hill is the location of the Seattle Center, the Opera House, the Seattle Repertory Theater, the Pacific Science Center, sports arenas, a live theater district, and the famous Space Needle.  Ken took me to the revolving restaurant atop the Space Needle for my eighteenth birthday, and gave me a diamond and pearl ring – a promise to get engaged. And here we are sixty-two years later.

Our younger daughter lived in an apartment on Upper Queen Anne for several years. It is a distinguished neighborhood with a significant part of cultural Seattle at your feet within walking distance. I loved her apartment, embedded in an old mansion that had been rehabbed into a multiple dwelling building. It had character and charm, a perfect setting for a young writer of romance novels. Alas, she didn’t write romance novels.

Lower Queen Anne, on the south side of the hill, is the location of the Seattle Center, the Opera House, the Seattle Repertory Theater, the Space Needle, the Pacific Science Center, sports arenas, and the live theater district. It was the site of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. Elvis fans will remember he made a movie there…sigh. Kurt Russell was in the film, It Happened at the World’s Fair, as a little boy who kicked Elvis in the shin. Not to be missed is the Chihuly Glasshouse. If you haven’t seen the genius of Dale Chihuly glass, this is the place to explore. The Center holds so much magic it takes days to explore it all. At the edge of the Center is the Experience Music Project, now called MoPop, a spectacularly ugly structure originally dedicated to music, mostly rock and roll, but now includes symbols of modern pop culture. A monorail connects the Center to the main part of downtown. It is the location each year of the Bumbershoot Festival and Taste of Seattle. I could go on for pages about The Center. It takes days to explore it all.

Time is short, and the pages are long, so we’ll leave now. We’ve missed West Seattle and Alki Point, where our best friends lived, and the actual birthplace of Seattle. We passed by Ballard, the Scandinavian part of town, where Shilshol Bay is. Ballard is the home of all the fishermen in Seattle, and they have funny accents. Maybe that’s a little stereotyped, but it’s true, ya sure, you betcha. I’ve skipped Belltown, a waterfront neighborhood just north of Pike Place Market with lots of good restaurants and nightspots. Belltown is also the home of the P-Patch, where public gardening is offered. The next post is the last in the tour. We will visit Green Lake and the University District, and I’ll tell a smidge about our sailboat life. There will probably be other posts in the meantime. Lots of things swirling in my mind.

Part 4 of Our Seattle Tour – SeaFair and Skipping School

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Today is one of those not-quite-sunny-but-definitely-not-raining days, so we’ll go to another part of Seattle where I once worked, Leschi. It is on the east border of Seattle along Lake Washington, just north of the Lacey V. Morrow floating bridge (the second longest floating bridge in the world, next to the other Lake Washington Evergreen Point Bridge further north on the Lake, which is the longest in the world). Lake Washington is a navigable body of water about 22 miles long. It is deep enough for ocean-going vessels to enter its ports through the canal, then down to the south end. Across Lake Washington, further east of Seattle, are Bellevue and Medina, where my family lived.

Leschi is a mix of beautiful homes, from craftsman bungalows built in the early 1900s to stately Tudors and contemporary homes built later. It was originally a place for summer cottages, but now it is an enclave for multi-million-dollar lakefront properties. I remember the day when, in one of those million-dollar waterfront mansions at Leschi, Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head, leaving Nirvana headless. Sorry, bad joke.

In the late 80s, I worked for two companies at 120 Lakeside Avenue in Leschi. Both were headed by multi-millionaires. First, I worked for a venture capitalist S.S. Besides being a successful entrepreneur, he was a philanthropist. He owned a mall in north Seattle and a prominent grocery chain, which became part of Kroger. He donated to various charities and supported an inner-city elementary school with a $1 million per year endowment. There were only five of us in the office. I was hired as a secretary/receptionist with general office duties. He didn’t have much work that challenged me, and I had time on my hands. It was while working in his office that I taught myself computer skills – back in the day of DOS.

One story about S.S. that I remember was when my husband and I decided to purchase a boat. I told S.S. we were looking around for a modest sailboat. He owned a sailboat, did a lot of cruising, and had some good advice. One piece of advice though, depicts the difference between his place in the world and ours. Speaking very earnestly, he told me to be sure the sailboat had a washer and dryer onboard so that when we were out cruising for weeks, we could have clean clothes. I know my mouth gaped when he said it, but I recovered and thanked him for his advice. His idea of a sailboat was more YACHT than boat. On neither of the boats we eventually owned was there room, let alone hookups, for a washer and dryer. Nor did we cruise for more than ten days at a time. Oh well, a girl can dream.

Later, I went to work for his friend T.L., who, with his partner D.S., managed the upscale commercial building of offices, retail, a marina, and gas dock on the shore of the lake. S.S. bragged to T.L. about my computer skills, and T.L. was just beginning to get savvy about computers for his company. He offered me a job with challenge and a better salary, so I left S.S. We all remained friendly. T.L.’s offices were downstairs from S.S. Cabin cruisers, yachts, fishing boats, kayaks, commercial hauling boats, ski boats, and sailboats paraded past the lakeside windows of my office daily. I managed and leased office space and kept books for the dock facilities. I also set up their computerized accounting system. Those who know me will laugh. I am terrible with numbers, but I do understand computerized systems. Well, I did then when they were less complicated than today.

Let’s have lunch at BluWater; it used to be the Leschi Café when I worked there. They had the very best clam chowder in town. Well, maybe second best next to Duke’s. It’s a nice enough day so we can sit on the patio with a jacket on, watch the boats, and look across the lake to the city of Bellevue, connected to Seattle by the floating bridge. Until the 1940s, the only way to get across Lake Washington was by ferry boat. You can now zip across quickly in your powerboat or go across one of two bridges.

Our son and his friend Mike sometimes skipped a class in high school on a nice day and drove Mike’s speedboat across the lake to my office. I treated them to lunch at the pizza restaurant downstairs in our building before they went back to school. I was not a terribly strict mother. I’ve always felt that experience trumps classroom learning. I occasionally practiced the art of experiential learning as a high school student.

Big Ships at dock during Fleet Week

The last week of July is the celebration of SeaFair, with SeaFair royalty and pirates in the torchlight parade, boat parades on Lake Washington, Navy Blue Angels exhibitions, Boeing airshows, Fleet Week in Elliott Bay with tours of big naval ships, and all manner of hilarity. The size of those naval ships is astonishing. Both of my mother’s brothers were in the Navy during WWII. My Uncle Johnny described his harrowing experience in the Battle of Leyte Gulf and recommended a book, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. It is about a different naval battle, but he said it brings the feelings to life. In his later years, he talked about it rather matter-of-factly, but I sensed the emotions it brought back.

Hydroplane races on Lake Washington during SeaFair

One of the most exciting things I remember about SeaFair is the hydroplane races. Flat-bottom boats with powerful airplane engines race each other around a course reaching 200+ mph, lifting off the water. It is thrilling to watch their explosive water fantails shoot high in the warm August air. Just as in car races, their roar is so loud you remain deafened for a few hours afterward. SeaFair was a highlight of my youthful summers, I think, because it was usually such a nice weather week with so many diversions.

To continue our Seattle tour, we’ll drive up and over First Hill, one of the original seven hills of Seattle, which we called “pill hill” because of three big hospitals located there. Now we’re in the Central area, the most ethnically diverse neighborhood. It started as a Jewish settlement and is still the home of Temple de Hirsch Sinai, the largest Jewish congregation in Washington. Rabbi Raphael Levine was the leader of that congregation when I lived in Seattle and he was a towering presence throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, fighting for civil rights and brotherhood. A Buddhist Church is nearby as well as a Japanese Congregational Church. The Central area had the highest population of blacks in Seattle. The Central area was the childhood home of Jimi Hendrix, Dave Lewis, Quincy Jones, and Bruce Lee, and a staging area for the Black Panther movement in the 60s.

I remember the Central area most because that is where I often went when I skipped school in my senior year. One of the high schools in the area is Garfield. Garfield’s basketball, track, and football teams made the championships every year in the 50s and 60s. In 1963, they had a jukebox in their lunchroom. One of my friends, Kelly, had a car, and her boyfriend, John, was a basketball player on the Garfield team. Kelly and I would leave our school in Bellevue at about 11:30 in the morning and drive across the lake to Garfield to dance to the music and eat our lunch with John and his friends. We got back to our school in time for last period and went home at the proper time. We had friends in the attendance office who made sure we were marked present officially during that time. Can’t get away with that these days.

One time, Kelly and I were walking the halls of Garfield on our way to the lunchroom when a phalanx of large – think football player – young black men with their arms across each other’s shoulders blocked the hall, wall to wall. They wore serious eye-squinting faces as they marched toward us. There was no escape except to go through them. We did. We ducked under their arms. They broke out in laughter. Hearts pounding, we were relieved it was a prank, not a threat.

My French teacher was suspicious and called my house one day when I missed her class one time too many. Usually, that was no big deal because both of my parents worked, so she would not have reached anyone. This was in ancient days before cell phones and message machines. Just my luck, my father was home sick that day, and she told him I missed French class several times in a few weeks. When I got home at the regular time, my father greeted me at the door.

“Where were you all day?” he asked.
“School,” I said with total truthfulness, I left out that I had been in two different schools.
“Miss D called to say you were not in class today and had been absent several times.”
At that point, I was speechless. I thought I had everything pretty well covered.
“I’ll ask again. Where were you?”
“I was at school,” I insisted, but then admitted, “At lunchtime, Kelly and I went to Garfield to see John. When we got back, it was too late to go to French, but I did get to my last class.”
“Don’t do it again,” he admonished, but I could see he was stifling a grin, knowing that was an empty directive. “I told her you came home and weren’t feeling well. She’s watching you.” Then, as an aside, “And don’t let your mother know, you know how she is.” Dad always had my back.


That was the end of the conversation and the end of the episode. Miss D didn’t give up trying to catch me, and I strived to get back in time for her class when we skipped for lunch. I got a B in French (a class I really liked). In retrospect, I think Miss D was one of the teachers who actually cared about my future. She tried her best to give me advice, even keeping me after class to explain how I was cheating myself and that I had so much potential. I blew it off, but I remember her now as a mentor, a failed mentor, but not from lack of trying. It was not the end of my “experiential learning”. My mother never learned about my truancy until I told her years later, after my dad died, that he had been a co-conspirator in my escapades. Her remark was, “That sounds like your dad.”

I graduated with a respectable B average and was accepted to Washington State University for the fall. I liked school and classes, but I enjoyed being a little rebellious, too. I do not think I learned a lesson or reaped the consequences for my misdeeds. Although my college career was short-lived, it was a fun year. That is another story entirely.

On our next tour, we will visit Discovery Park in Magnolia, Elliott Bay, and Queen Anne. I will tell you a little about living on our sailboat.

Seattle, Part 3 – Millionaires and A Troll

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Continuing our tour, we go north to Capitol Hill, one of the most interesting, in my opinion, of Seattle’s varied neighborhoods. It is the center of the gay, lesbian, and transgender population of Seattle. Punk hipsters with tattoos, pink mohawks, and multiple piercings are commonplace, sharing the streets and sidewalks with men wearing business suits and carrying briefcases.

Capitol Hill has the steepest streets in Seattle, a few plummeting as much as 21% grade, and some swanky residences line Millionaire’s Row. The Row is a National Historic Landmark District with homes built at the turn of the 20th Century.

Lobby of Harvard Exit Theater
Harvard Exit Theater Lobby

It is the home of grunge music and my favorite movie house, the Harvard Exit. The Harvard Exit was formerly The Women’s Century Club. The century referred to is the 19th Century. It was opened during the last decade of that century by Carrie Chapman Catt, a suffragist who succeeded Susan B. Anthony as leader of the national organization. The building was sold to a theater operator in the 1960s who converted it to a two-screen movie house. It became a favorite place for movie aficionados who like eclectic, off-beat movies. When the movie house closed, long after I left, the Mexican Consulate leased the building. The Exit was allegedly haunted by a woman who hung herself in the upstairs theater. I never met the ghost personally, but the possibility was titillating. The other great old theater nearby was once a Masonic lodge that became the Egyptian Theater. These two theaters put on the Seattle Film Festival every year, screening weird and wonderful films. I never missed it. There was a wonderful bakery on Capitol Hill called Bella Dolce. I used to order cakes for special occasions there, and they are incredible – yum. I haven’t checked to see if it is still there.

Capitol Hill is the location of Lakeview Cemetery, where Bruce and Brandon Lee are buried. An inscription at their grave site is one that I like, “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering”.

Our eldest daughter called Capitol Hill home for a year after she moved out of our house in the mid-80s. It was near her work, and there was a dance group that she joined. She moved away from Capitol Hill because the constant day and night activity, including gun shots, made it hard for her to sleep.

Capitol Hill has several aged Catholic churches and was once the center of Seattle’s Catholic population. It is also where St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral stands regally on a hilltop, a cliff actually. It is a massive and beautiful old cathedral with a rose window on its east wall that makes the interior glow during the day, even in light-challenged Seattle. As a child, my family went to our neighborhood Episcopal Church in Bellevue each week, but we attended Christmas services every year at St. Mark’s Cathedral. Their Compline Choir is world famous. I felt so holy in that place. Many years later, our daughter performed in the Christmas service at St. Mark’s with the Seattle Girl Choir. The annual Christmas service is televised in Seattle.

This neighborhood is where our son, age eight at the time, learned what a prostitute was. Our daughters were members of the Seattle Girl Choir in the 70s. We took our younger daughter for a choir rehearsal at St. Mark’s. While she rehearsed, my husband, son and I walked down a couple of blocks to get dinner. On a corner, we encountered a very obvious prostitute looking for her next customer. Under his breath, my husband made a comment about her choice of business location, only a block from St. Mark’s, and our son overheard.
“What does she do?” Casey asked.
“She’s a hooker,” said my husband.
“What’s that?” Casey needed more information.
“She sells her body for a price.” I enlightened our son.
“Oh.”
And that was the end of the conversation. When we returned to the Cathedral after dinner, we walked down the same street. I totally forgot our before-dinner conversation.
“She must have gotten her price,” said Casey when we passed the corner.
“What are you talking about?” asked Ken.
“The hooker. She must have gotten her price because she’s not here anymore.” A brief lesson in Capitalism on Capitol Hill.

Tucked in just south of Capitol Hill is First Hill, referred to as Pill Hill because of the number of hospitals and medical facilities housed there. My only connection to it was the times I spent visiting family members in hospital. Not the best memories.

Chittenden Locks raise boats from sea level to the freshwater level of Lake Washington

After Capitol Hill, we go north and a little west to Fremont, another of my favorite places. It is bordered on the south by the ship canal that was dug in 1911 to connect Lake Union and Lake Washington to Puget Sound. West of Fremont in the Ballard area are Chittenden canal locks that you have to take your boat through to get from the fresh water lake to the salt water Sound and visa versa. We took our sailboat through a few times. It is an interesting but nerve-racking experience.

Most interesting at the locks is the fish ladder. Salmon are hatched in freshwater lakes and rivers then make their way to the open sea. When it is time to lay their eggs, they return home. The fish ladder has twenty-one “steps” to help the salmon migrate from sea level to the higher level of Lake Washington. Local sea lions can be seen supervising the gates to the fish ladder, looking for a quick meal. We loved to take a Sunday afternoon to watch the boats go through the locks, walk the surrounding park, and, from the underground viewing room, watch the fish swim up the ladder.

Waiting for the Interurban

Fremont is the artist community of Seattle. It is sometimes called the People’s Republic of Fremont, and their motto is “De Libertas Quirkas,” which means, loosely translated, “the freedom to be quirky”, I think. A sixteen-foot statue of Lenin was bought by a resident of Fremont after the fall of the communist government in Czechoslovakia. It was installed in the Fremont neighborhood in the 1990s. Another sculpture called “Waiting for the Interurban” stands in the middle of a thoroughfare near the Fremont Bridge, where no public buses pass. It is six people and a dog with a human face waiting for public transportation. The people of Fremont dress the sculpture inhabitants appropriately for the seasons – Hawaiian shirts or scarves and mufflers.

Another sculpture in Fremont is under the Aurora Bridge. It is the Fremont Troll. There was a legend of the troll under the Aurora Bridge, similar to the old Norwegian Fairy Tale about the three Billy Goats Gruff. As a result of an art competition and to keep random drug paraphernalia away from the bridge, an eighteen-foot-tall concrete sculpture of the troll appeared. He is crushing a Volkswagen Beetle that he grabbed from the bridge above in his left hand. The car in his left hand is an actual VW bug encased in cement. It contains a time capsule.

The Fremont Troll


Fremont is an eccentric mix of businesses, shops, and residences, very free form. They have a Summer Solstice Pageant every year with nude cyclists. I go to Fremont just for fun. Other than fun, my Fremont connection is negligible. I took a one-semester off-campus Seattle University class in that neighborhood in the 70s; and my husband and I went to a Fremont hypnotist to lose weight one summer.

Seattle, Part 2 – Totems and Toilets

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Our tour continues with a little bit of history. Seattle is built on seven hills: Beacon Hill, First Hill, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne Hill, Cherry Hill, Yesler and Denny Hill, with Magnolia Hill, West Seattle, and Mount Baker as later annexed inclines. You get the point – it is a very hilly city. Things are built on slopes, some notoriously precarious. Landslides are a geological gamble in Seattle. Whole neighborhoods have slid into Puget Sound. In fact, one of the original hills, Denny Hill, a total of 62 city blocks, slid slowly but steadily into Elliott Bay between the years 1903 and 1928. Denny Hill is now the Denny Regrade. The Bay accepted the transfer of soil with equanimity, being over 300 feet deep in places. I will take you to some of the hills that had meaning to me.

There is a rich Native American heritage in Seattle. Mainly, the Salish, Snoqualmie, and Duwamish peoples settled where the city is now. A couple of dozen tribes along the coast left their imprint on the area. Totem poles are in evidence throughout the Northwest as symbols of native traditions and storytelling.

My high school mascot was a totem pole. I was in the first sophomore class at the new school. The students voted for the mascot. I voted for the cougar as a mascot, being an animal lover. However, the cougar was the mascot of Washington State University, and living in western Washington, the home of the U.W. Huskies, cats weren’t popular. I got on board with the totem because it honored the Native Americans who first inhabited the area. As a legacy for the school, our senior class had a red cedar totem pole carved to stand proudly in front of the school.

For fifty years, we were the Totems until the enlightened ones decided that a totem pole is a form of cultural appropriation and “can possibly cause psychological harm to Native American children”, instead of being a sign of respect for the native culture. The mascot was changed to the Redhawks. A Redhawk, of course, is a Ruger double-action revolver. Could it be that the powers-that-be prefer a firearm rather than a totem to symbolize a high school? I hesitate to guess the inner motives of bureaucrats. Maybe they meant to honor the red-tail hawk, which is prevalent in the Pacific Northwest, as indeed the picture of their mascot is an angry-looking red-headed bird. Who knows?

Pow Wow celebrations of Native American culture and heritage are held throughout the state. The SeaFair Celebration, held annually in late summer, has a Native American Pow Wow component. I will talk about SeaFair in a later post.

Seattle lies on a fault line that runs under the west coast of the US. The roller coaster effects of earthquakes are another thrill that residents of Seattle have an opportunity to experience. Most are minis reaching no more than 1 or 2 on the Richter scale, but they do upset the equilibrium. A BIG one hasn’t happened in Seattle since the 7.1 in 1949, but Alaska and California have felt the effects of 8+ earthquakes, so it may be just a matter of time. Our napping teenage son was once shaken out of slumber and off the couch by 5+ seismic event.

The combination of earthquakes and damp, saturated ground poses a constant threat of landslides. Yet, many of the most expensive homes are built on bluffs above the water with expansive views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains. Duh. It is like building along the coast of Florida, where hurricanes are omnipresent. “Youse rolls the dice and youse takes yer chances,” as an enterprising Irishman once said.

Steep streets are a challenge when slippery wet. Many a manual-transmissioned car has slid backward down a slope or into other cars when piloted by an inexpert driver. I’ve seen it happen.

We will continue our tour by going to Pioneer Square near downtown Seattle and Skid Road. Its real name was Yesler Way. In early days the road had wooden planks (skids) laid along it, covered with grease to help the oxen or horses pull the heavy loads of lumber to the port. It was the dividing line between the affluent part of town and the sketchier mill-worker part. During the depression, it became Skid Row, demarcating the area where the downtrodden resided. One didn’t want to be seen south of Yesler, the grittier side of town.

I can recommend a book about Seattle during its formative years called “The Mercer Girls” by Libbie Hawker. Women were recruited in the 1860s after the Civil War by Asa Mercer, a member of one of the pioneer families of the area. He advertised in the East and Midwest for high-minded women of good character to come to Seattle to “elevate” the male population. At the time, there were ten men for every woman in the city, mostly lumberjacks and fishermen. Asa was the first president of the University of Washington and a member of the State Senate. A large residential island in Lake Washington is named for his family, as well as a principal street in Seattle.

North of Yesler is Pioneer Square, where the original white settlers started the town after they left Alki Point. It is a more sheltered part of the bay, better for their commercial objectives. Now it’s a historic district where, in 1914, the tallest building west of the Mississippi, the Smith Tower, was built. The Tower has been dwarfed by countless skyscrapers built within the last fifty years. Smith Tower is the only building in town that still has elevator operators who wear uniforms and white gloves and have to maneuver the elevator cage with a dial lever to just the right spot at each floor before they can open the glass door, then the multi-hinged metal guard to let people on and off. The elevator shaft is enclosed by glass so you can watch the elevator ascending or descending from floor to floor. There are no call buttons, only the elevator operator’s watchful eyes as he or she passes the floors. It’s fascinating. It is tempting to stay on the elevator for hours just to watch the expertise of a bygone era. *This anachronism may not exist due to a spate of modern safety regulations. It was a joy to behold when I lived there.

Captain Vancouver, an Englishman, explored the Pacific Northwest in the late 1700s, giving impetus to the idea that the land west of the Rocky Mountains had possibilities for commerce. Lewis and Clark did their inland exploration in the early 1800s. Euro-American invaders followed to settle the northwest in earnest. A group of entrepreneurs led by George Yesler and another by the Denny brothers, Arthur and David, homesteaded and settled at Alki Point in the 1850s. They recognized the potential value of the western port. They soon moved across Elliott Bay to an area now known as Pioneer Square in Seattle, where the Bay was deeper. They each headed competitive lumber operations. Seattle grew at tide level. It was a town that mainly shipped lumber, raw or finished, from its harbor. The Alaska Gold Rush of the late 1890s further encouraged white people to move West.

The timber industry flourished, and Seattle grew on the tidelands at the edge of Elliott Bay. Sawmills were constructed. Wagon loads of timber from the abundant surrounding forests were transported to the sawmills, then loaded onto ships for export around the world. Seattle was built with wood. Buildings, sidewalks, even water for plumbing was sometimes transported through wooden ducts.

The forward-looking capitalists of Seattle heard of indoor toilets – the White House had one installed in 1853. In 1881, Seattle was one of the first cities in the US to receive a bulk supply of Crapper Toilets. Over time, it became apparent that having the city built at tide level was a mistake. Sewage that was supposed to flow down into the Sound was sluicing back into the streets. Toilets backed up, creating fountains of effluent in homes twice a day during high tide. Streets were infamously turned to mud by rain and tides.

Pioneer Square was devastated by the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, which burned twenty-nine city blocks, destroyed what was then the central business district. Since it was apparent that having the city at tide level was a mistake, the city fathers decided to rebuild ten feet higher. Seattle was rapidly rebuilt and nearly doubled in size, due in part to all the new construction employment. Instead of wooden buildings, zoning codes required brick and stone buildings to be erected. After the fire, the streets were raised and built over the area that had been at tide level.

Now, there is an underground tour, ten feet below the current street level, that you can take to see the original storefronts and streets of the old city. You will see toilets mounted on pedestals like thrones to lessen the tidal backwash. I encourage any resident or visitor to take the fascinating tour.. Ghosts even haunt the underground.

Speaking of toilets. Seattle has some impressive “salles de bains” at the Columbia Tower. The 967-foot Columbia Tower has seventy-six floors with 360 ° views of Seattle, the Olympic and Cascade mountains, and Puget Sound. The Tower is the tallest building in the State of Washington. The first three floors offer retail and restaurants. The remaining seventy-three floors are luxury offices for discerning companies. The 75th floor is the Columbia Tower Club, an exclusive private club for members or invitees only. Besides having excellent gourmet food, you are treated to the poshest potties in the world.

We were invited by Janice and Jack, who were members, to join them at the Club for dinner and the city fireworks display on the 4th of July. When we arrived, Janice suggested that she and I go to the ladies’ lounge before we sat down to dinner. She stood back as I entered the lounge to watch my reaction. The room was luxurious, well-appointed with plush carpet, cushioned chairs, dressing tables, and chaise longues, but the startling feature was the individual toilet stalls along the outside wall. Each had a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the city. I gasped. How do you do potty business with the wide-open sky in front of you and the city at your feet?

Of course, I had to show Ken. We went back to our table, and I urged Ken to follow me to the ladies’ lounge. He demurred, but Jack encouraged him to go. Jack had seen the sight, as had other male club members. It was common for men to discreetly look in the “Ladies'”. The men’s room had no such marvel. Seattle has come a long way from the erupting Crappers on tidewater flats in 1881.

The fireworks were the second most interesting part of the evening. We were perched on the observation floor high above the loftiest rocket sent skyward that night, so we looked down on fireworks instead of up. An unusual sensation.

The tour of Seattle continues in my next post, featuring a lady of the evening and a troll.

Seattle

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Recently, I visited Seattle, where I have not lived for over 28 years. It was a short, impromptu visit to see our daughter. The weather was atrocious, but the company was great. She and I had a nice long time to share memories and reconnect. However, I was reminded of the reason Ken and I fled to southern Arizona.

This essay, which I will publish in several parts, is based on memory and journal notes from the years when I lived there and shortly thereafter. The Seattle we left is not the same as the present-day city. None of the reports from people who live there are especially favorable about the conditions in the city, relating stories of homelessness and crime. I witnessed a few of the changes in the days I was there. Traffic is abominable – a moving parking lot, very like LA. I have no desire to return. I’d rather live with lovely memories of what was.

SEATTLE

I want to tell you about a city I hated, but grudgingly learned to appreciate. I was a captive for nearly 40 years under gray, drizzly skies, wrapped in its suffocating blanket of onshore flow and tedious droplet-laden air. How does one breathe when the air is saturated with water? Seattle has an enormous diversity of smells, sights, and textures, but the overriding constant is wet, moldy dampness. During the day, the vibration of color is muted because of the lack of light, sunshine. Color doesn’t exist without light. Everything is enveloped in dimness. When you look up, you see a dull white sky. Haze covers the bright orb we were told was the sun. A clear blue sky is rare. Seattle has one of the highest rates of suicide in the US. I can certainly understand why. It has the distinction of being the US city with the highest sales of sunglasses. You use them on a sunny day, then by the time another sunny day arrives, the sunglasses have been lost or seriously misplaced, and you must buy another pair. Mine were found once in the freezer…but that’s another story.

Contrary to common thought, it doesn’t really rain in Seattle; it fatally mists you. It would be a welcome change if rain actually fell, fat full drops in quantities of a tipped-over horse trough. But no, gloomy clouds hang low overhead, spritzing gauzy water day and night. The average rainfall in Seattle is less than in Little Rock, Arkansas, Atlanta, Georgia, Lexington, Kentucky, or New York City. In those places, rain falls with intent – the intent to make things wet. In Seattle, you can walk around all day in the vaporous fog and never have a single drop of rain slide down your face, but you are damp nonetheless from the outside to the bone. You can walk between raindrops in Seattle and be saturated by the artifice of rain.

My father accepted a transfer with Boeing to Seattle in 1957. I was ripped from the wide open sunny plains of my Kansas home as a child of eleven and whisked off to the Pacific Northwest, boxed in by low clouds and lofty, dark, sentry-like evergreens. You cannot see many vistas or horizons in Seattle because of those damn giant black-green trees. I became a victim of Stockholm syndrome. I learned to identify with and, grudgingly, admire the city that was my captor.

Now that I am liberated from its bondage, I visit the city with an entirely different attitude. I appreciate its energy, its diverse population, and its distinct neighborhoods. I still do not admire the weather. There are approximately five sunny days sometime between late July and late August, and then another five in February. On those rare days, the city is stunningly beautiful – a dazzling jewel nestled at the base of the snowcapped Cascade Mountains between Lake Washington on the east and the cerulean sparkle of Puget Sound to the west. On clear days, you can see Mount Baker to the North, and Mount Rainier looms up over the city to the South.

Let me take you on a virtual tour of my Seattle, some of the places that have meaning and memory for me.

Our tour begins. It is a liquid, dark September night, and light from building signs reflects on the drenched black asphalt of Pine Street. The street shimmers with smears of circus colors like a Monet painting in front of the Inn at the Market, where I stay when visiting, and Sur La Table next door. Pine Street slides with a 9% grade downhill west. From the front of the hotel, you see over the top of the Pike Place Market at the end of the block to the waterfront and Puget Sound beyond. We are on the western edge of downtown Seattle proper.

Jazz music flows from The Pink Door in Post Alley, playing deep into this night. The Alley, just above the Market, is where the Market Theater and the gum wall are. The gum wall is a brick wall of chewed gum in a variety of colors, grape, cherry, lime, and plain gray spearmint, originally created by people who stood in line to go to the theater. Years of ordinance after ordinance failed to keep that wall clean. It became a bizarre tourist attraction that turned up in the movie “Love Happens”.

You can’t talk about Seattle without mentioning Starbucks. Starbucks started here near Pike Place Market in the 1970s. Now, it’s an international megalith for coffee worshipers. The Starbucks at Pike Place still has the original logo with the bare-breasted Norse maiden in the middle of the medallion. I’m generally a tea person. A nice cup of double-strength Irish Breakfast Coffee is my morning wakeup. I prefer Seattle’s Best for coffee because it doesn’t seem as bitter. Coffee, anyone?

Seattle is a city of frenzied days fueled by Starbucks (one on every corner with kiosks mid-block), people traveling up and down endless rain-slicked hills, and long nights lubricated by microbreweries like Pike Brewing Company and Elliot Bay Brewery, and lots of good music. We’ll stop by Kell’s Irish Pub for a short one and then turn in. The tour will continue tomorrow.

Good morning, we’ll start our tour here near the famous Pike Place Market where “flying fish” are sold. I’m sure you have all seen this well-known marketplace on TV or the internet. The owner and staff of the Pike Place Fish Market made a video of their shop and developed a motivational training program for employees who work with the public based on the Fish Philosophy of “Play, Be There, Choose your Attitude and Make Their Day”. The fish sellers have great fun with shoppers at the Market, throwing whole fish back and forth to each other like footballs over the heads of wary customers, using rhyme and signals to let each other know a fish is coming their way. An unsuspecting patron often nearly gets hit by a fish thrown in his direction, but caught at the last possible second by one of the fishmongers. A massive slippery open-mouthed monkfish lures you close and then jumps at you. Pike Place Market is a destination for most Seattle tourists. The high-jinks are worth the trip.

If you have the time, enjoy this six-minute video of the Fish Philosophy.

Pike Place Market exudes tantalizing aromas of newly picked farm produce, the woody, musky tang of incense, and the sweet bouquet of flowers, plus the salty ocean smell of fresh fish.

My favorite shop in the Market is Tenzing MoMo. An intense potpourri of frankincense, myrrh, ylang-ylang, patchouli, and sandalwood beckons you into the dark, magical, Asian inspired apothecary. They deal in herbs, tarot cards, chai tea, brass bells, ear candles, essential oils, and all manner of other necessities. It is deep in the belly of the Market which is built on a cliff plunging three stories down from the street. The top floor, at street level on the east side, looks westward across Elliot Bay toward Puget Sound. My favorite restaurant at the top level is a French bistro, Maximilien’s, with a terrace that allows a 180-degree view of the Sound. I cannot resist the Croque Monsieur.

Pike Place Market was created in the first decade of the 1900s as a fresh produce co-op market for local farmers. It retains that promise but has expanded to include buskers, homemade baked goods, handmade clothing and jewelry, antique dealers, restaurants, comic-book vendors, and crafts – something for everyone. The Market also houses a senior center, a childcare center, a medical clinic serving the working poor, elderly, and HIV-positive patients, and has HUD-subsidized housing for about 500 people. Rachel, a big brass pig, nearly three feet tall, greets visitors at the front of the Market. Her snout is rubbed for luck. She is a giant piggy bank that collects coins for charities supported by the Market.

In the early 80s, I worked six blocks from the Market up the insanely steep hill on Pine Street at the Bon Marché Department Store in their construction department. Often on my lunch hour, I negotiated the incredible downhill to the Market, roaming the nine acres of vendor stalls for something delish for lunch. My family was treated to the farm-fresh produce for dinner. Then I trudged up the hill with my treasures, back to work – my exercise for the day.

Next time, I will take you through a little history of Seattle, a smidge of the underground tour, and The Seattle Toilet History (a remarkable story).

Happiness or Gratitude?

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I recently encountered an individual who said they were in pursuit of happiness. They had experienced some setbacks in life and were feeling low and had been counseled to make happiness a priority.


I posited, on the contrary, the pursuit of happiness is a hollow pursuit. Happiness is a feeling, a mood. Happiness is insubstantial, subjective. It comes and goes. It is transitory.


Gratitude, on the other hand, is concrete. With an attitude of gratitude, you cannot help but be happy. You look around you to sense the beauty of nature or reflect on the objects in your home that you bought or have been gifted, and remember the why, when, and who of each object. Remember the happiness that each object brought when it was newly purchased or received. Gratitude for friendship. Gratitude for family. Gratitude for the people who serve us in our daily activities, from the grocery store to medical professionals to our military and law enforcement, who keep us safe.


You can use your God-given senses to appreciate and be grateful for – the spring smell of blossoms or the scent of your lover’s warm skin; the taste of chocolate or the first cup of coffee in the morning; the softness of a kitten’s fur or the feel of an embrace; the sound of birds calling or a favorite song that makes you want to sing; a wonderous sunset in a desert sky or glistening raindrops that inch down a window pane. Gratitude for being alive in this tangible world is what actual happiness is. Beyond this world, the spiritual realm conveys meaning to life. The comfort of God or whatever spiritual practice you observe is a specific conduit to happiness.


I think of my friend Diane, who told me one day many years ago that she was diagnosed with ALS, a death sentence. Not just a death sentence, but a torturous journey through advancing body paralysis. The prospect she looked toward was months, possibly a couple of years of her body slowly becoming frozen while her mind remained alert. That sounds like torture of the worst kind, being fully coherent as body parts are rendered useless, slowly dying piece by piece. Diane was the most vibrant, energetic person I knew. She could do anything.

She decided to master the grand piano at the age of 40, having never played piano before, and she did it. She set a goal in May of her first year of lessons to give a caroling party by Christmas, and she met that goal. She printed out the words of each carol for all the participants. Each year her playing became more powerful, proficient, and complex. We loved hearing her advancing abilities. Her friends coveted invitations to her Christmas caroling parties. Over the years, she became more skilled and her repertoire more sophisticated, so that she was invited to piano competitions across the country.

She made it a point to tell me that she was going to be happy until the end. She was going to be GRATEFUL for every day she had and for every little thing that she could do day by day. She was an amazing inspiration. She traveled with her family and went on cruises. She continued to practice the piano until she could no longer make her fingers do her bidding. She had parties at her house until she was incapable of managing it. She played golf until she couldn’t stand and walk. She kept in touch with friends until the only part of her body that moved was her eyes. She could only speak through a computer that she manipulated with her eyes. She was always grateful to have people around her and, to the end, said people were what meant the most to her. She created her happiness from her gratitude for every small thing.


I remember when I was sidelined by two broken ankles. I realized how much walking, moving myself from place to place, meant to me. Even though I had a scooter, it was not the same as the independence of standing and walking on my own. I was very jealous of people I saw walking past my house or on the street as Ken drove me around. Then and there, I promised myself that when my ankles healed, I would not only walk every day, but I would appreciate each step. Still today, I am so grateful to Dr. Ty for his surgical skill, his encouragement, and his humor as I recovered step by agonizing step to be fully functional again. I’m grateful for a body that healed so well. I’m grateful to Ken for his care and patience as I rehabbed. I am not a patient patient, so I’m sure my mood was not the best, but he persevered and encouraged me when I was exasperated.


Today I am grateful for Ken’s commitment to his own therapy. As a man with Parkinson’s Disorder, he works two or three hours, sometimes more, each day to stave off the impact of the mayhem being perpetrated on his body by his own brain. He is learning to overcome some of the effects by retraining his brain. Automatic functions like walking, speech, and swallowing are diminished day by day with this disorder. He must fight to consciously instruct each part of his body to do his bidding. He has to walk, each step with intent. He has to talk, each word with intent. Nothing is taken for granted because those abilities are slowly eroding. He is exhausted at the end of a short walk, not because of weak legs or feet but because his brain has to work so hard to create each movement. Talking wears him out because he has to force his voice to be at a level he can be heard. He must enunciate each word slowly in order to be clear. Parkinson’s robs him of volume and makes his words slur into a jumble of incoherence unless he articulates each one carefully. His throat muscles are compromised so coughing and choking are ever present. His physical therapy includes muscle rehab and balance training. There are days when I know the struggle is enormous. His attitude is “never give in”. He is rewarded by being able to do as much as any 80-year-old can do. He’s not 17 anymore, but still enjoys his life. For all the effort he makes,I am grateful.


Gratitude is an affirmation of life. Stay grateful and happiness will be the consequence.

An Ode to Isoroku Yamamoto

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I would not be alive

Were it not for December 7, 1941,

A brazen incursion of Japanese chutzpah.

I am a consequence of war.

A Kansas farmer joined the Army Air Corps

To fight the good fight.

He trained at Lowry Field in Colorado.

My mother, a young Denver girl,

Met him on a blind date.

Relationships blaze quickly in wartime.

They married within weeks.

Thank you, Yamamoto