June 4-23, 1998
I hadn't planned on Seattle; it crept up on me. Laurie learned about a convention for indexers ("Stand back, Shriners!") and had enough frequent flyer miles to swing it. I needed new perspective on my career possibilities and had never been to the Pacific Northwest. So it fell into place.
Including a place to stay. Laurie's sister, Lee, and her husband Nick ("The Groom" from the San Diego letter), had just leased a pied-à-terre (French for "crash pad") in Seattle and we could be its first occupants. Leaving Abbie with the Johnsons, we jetted west on May 12th, gliding into Seattle over stretches of deep green with swaths of yellow flowers.
The Condo Pulling up to the condo in our red rent-a-car we found Nick's daughter Brielle and son Matt running down the stairs to greet us. I think their running says something good about Nick's family, and not that they run five minutes late. It's about caring enough to run and not wanting to keep others waiting. It was heartening.
The first excitement was parking the rent-a-car in the condo's garage; the spaces there are laid out in shoe sizes rather than car widths, tailored not for the Chevy, but for the Schwinn.
Speaking of small spaces, there had been last minute heroics involving the new sofa bed it wouldn't fit into the elevator until the ceiling was removed and wouldn't tilt into the apartment doorway until the across-the-hall neighbor returned home and opened his door but we were blissfully unaware of these exertions. The apartment was furnished, provisioned, and Miss Brielle gave us excellent instructions on its many visitor-friendly features before she and Matt disappeared to sport with fellow members of their youthful species.
We tumbled into bed, slept like the weary travelers we were, and awoke refreshed at 3:30 a.m. ready for a new day. But it was dark out, so we held very still for three hours pretending to sleep in hopes of fooling the jet lag.
Street People, Pike Place & Chowder at Duke's At dawn, Seattle time, the adventure began. The apartment has a view of Elliott Bay; I opened the blinds, sat on the edge of the bed, and watched ships, seaplanes and eagles. I thought, "I can't do this at home." Laurie's convention didn't begin until the afternoon, so we went together to the Pike Place Market. Many towns have markets, but Pike Place is a beaut. We saw embankments of pink and silver fish on beds of ice. We saw flowers; we saw veggies, almonds, cherries; we saw wonderful shops and restaurants, people in fleece and down vests, Eddie Bauer chic, rosy cheeked families. We saw a grime-encrusted Japanese man with long pointed fingernails and a yellow Walkman.
And then Laurie motored me to my first stop, the office of Jim Hutchins, a crony from my days at Silverman Mower Advertising, heartily transplanted in Seattle. Laurie sped off to Cavanaugh's, the convention site, and I turned to enter a concrete building with a sculpture of several workmen out front, almost as if the occupants had hated to see them go when construction was complete. Hutch and I shook hands three times because it had been a long time. "This is so cool," he said, and it was.
We walked to lunch at Duke's. It was raining lightly, but Hutch didn't wear a raincoat; they ignore the rain in Seattle, and it goes away. As we approached the shore, we walked by a row of goslings following their mother; I commented on how cute they were, and Hutch said, "Yeah, until an eagle comes down and carries one away." I admired the yachts; Hutch noted that they make them with helipads. So much of Seattle seemed to be about sailing and flying, sea and sky.
I had a cup of Duke's award-winning clam chowder, and fish & chips. Back at the office, Hutch reviewed my portfolio, told me I could walk into any agency in the U.S. without embarrassment, made some helpful suggestions and gave me the lowdown on the market. It was invaluable information, and enabled me to abandon all hope of a job in Seattle a city with high real estate prices and a vast corps of well-known and talented freelance copywriters. I could now enjoy the week as a free spirit.
Miss Heather's Wild Ride Dinner that evening was with the divine Heather Mikey-Tully, wife of Mr. Goodvibes and by profession a statistician who can tell you if your representative sample was large enough to actually prove that your pill works better than sugar. She had moved from Syracuse to Seattle a year before, and had wonderful stories of being the only person to open an umbrella on a rainy day.
Heather drove us to the Elysian Brewing Company in her gray Toyota with the "I Like Mike" sticker and broke many traffic laws as she showed us the city. She also told us how she'd hit a goose on a bridge while roaring along in densely packed traffic. Between the eagles and Heather, it's a wonder the geese aren't all in counseling.
As I worked my way through samples of Elysian beers, Heather told us that one of the hardest parts of adapting to Seattle was the lack of big trees in neighborhoods. "There's such a history of logging out here that when people to see a mature tree on their property they think in terms of board feet, rather than beauty."
I watched people. There was a woman in black motorcycle leathers and short blonde hair, reveling in how good she looked before blasting off on her bright yellow motorcycle. A young man escorted his date's very young son to the Men's Room and was endlessly patient. When they finally emerged, the free end of the boy's belt hung to the knee of his bluejeans. The man said, "That's quite a belt," and the boy looked up and proudly replied, "It's my mom's."
After dinner, in the light of dusk, we drove through downtown, and saw wonderful buildings. Over one entrance, carved in stone was "Aerie No. 1, Order of Eagles." We saw terraced buildings decked with foliage, like the hanging gardens of Babylon. All week we would marvel at the rhododendrons growing like weeds, some decades old and more than a story tall, their stems too thin for logging.
Adventure in Edmunds The next morning, Lee and Nick arrived from Virginia. Having promised us the condo, Nick was called to Seattle on business, so they were staying at a hotel. What hosts!
I, meanwhile, was bracing myself for adventure, driving to Edmunds to meet with Steve and Jeannie McMacken, who I knew through e-mail, friends of a friend of a friend. Steve is a freelance art director and Jeannie a freelance writer. Lunch was at Arnie's in Edmunds, and Steve and Jeannie, a much more handsome couple than one would guess from e-mail, let me have the seat with the panoramic view of the mountains and bay. Steve talked about the advertising business, the life of a freelancer, and clients who combine demands for one-day turn-around with glacial payment. Jeannie talked about how an eagle had flown over her while she was gardening (probably too full of gosling to be a threat). I had a cup of Arnie's award-winning clam chowder, and fish & chips.
A Brewery Tour But no beer, because I was bound for the Pyramid Brewing Company. A year ago, I had written an article for All About Beer magazine on brewer bikers, and Pyramid has gone whole hog with two house Harleys, a sun-yellow "Fat Boy" and a cherry-red Harley with a side car. Today I was to meet the brewer who had provided me with the best paragraph in the article:
"The prize for living large surely goes to brewer Dan Houck, who while traveling 55 m.p.h. on his Honda CX 500 was nailed full in the chest by a red-tailed hawk. Houck managed to stay upright, and pulled over to the shoulder of the road where he and the hawk traded stunned looks before the bird flew off. 'He must have just finished a squirrel lunch or something, because there was fur and meat spread out for a hundred feet or so.' When not bird watching, Houck favors Pyramid's new DPA for its medium maltiness and high hop content. 'Perfect after a hot ride,' he notes."
You can't make that stuff up, and Houck, in the flesh, was a delightful guy. We sat down with Michael Goldsberry, the PR facilitator who had united writer and subject; while I worked my way through a wonderful Pyramid sampler, we talked about beer. Dan had one particularly good story about a local ale that had been cask-conditioned in a bourbon keg oh, to live in Seattle. I told Michael I enjoyed sending postcards, and he brought me a stack of 50. It was as good an afternoon as you could ever hope to spend, and I hated to leave.
Meeting Nick at the Nerd Farm Right at five, I met Lee and Nick in the lobby of Cavanaugh's. Nick loves Seattle, and was excited to have somebody new to show it to. He'd already poked his head into the convention suite, and commented, "It looked like a real nerd farm up there." A few minutes later, Laurie emerged from the elevator amidst a herd of people with sensible shoes to be surprised by her sister and Nick, and myself, on time and on location as promised, a small miracle considering the temptations I had encountered along the way.
We recessed to the Rock Bottom Brewery for a beer sampler and snacks, and then Laurie and I went off on our own to the Pike Place Brewing Company for dinner. I worked my way through my third sampler of the day, and topped it off with salmon stuffed with goat cheese, pesto and capers, wrapped in a pastry crust.
Encore at the Pike Place Market Friday morning, I drove Laurie to the conference then took the car back to its slip and began walking through downtown. I saw a Native American woman who was smiling ecstatically and wearing a hat covered with buttons, and as she passed I could hear her sing, "Tie me kangaroo down, sport!" I went to the Pike Place market again and found loot for Abbie a Celtic t-shirt and Chinese earrings and spent a good long time in a shop with old postcards where I found views from Syracuse and one, amazingly, from Silver Bay on Lake George. And a dozen of old post offices; "We have a whole section of those," the clerk said, and you can imagine the electric thrill.
At another shop, I found a postcard of Bessie Love, an actress of the 1920's. I had seen her obituary several years ago, an old actress who played character roles at the end of her career. But here she was younger, much younger, photographed in a shadowy studio in Paris, sitting on a sofa and warming her hands in front of a glowing furnace, dressed in white satin high heels.
Thundercloud, on the other hand, had long white hair and a nose ring. He was working out of a shop at the market that specializes in herbs and divination, giving Native American Tarot readings for $20. But I really didn't want to know the future, although I was pretty sure it included clam chowder, probably an award winner.
Laden with postcards, I walked down to Pioneer Square to find the "Underground Seattle" tour, and look in the bookstores. I saw a copy of Hunter Thompson's Hell's Angels for $450. Nobody had any books about the post office. And then back to the condo to rendezvous with Laurie, Lee and Nick, and head out to Ballard for Jenna's birthday party.
Birthday Party Jenna Van Sanford, the daughter of Nick's daughter Kari (who doesn't even own a raincoat), was three years old, and we were invited. I'd picked up a copy of "Blueberries for Sal" at F.A.O. Schwartz and a necklace at the market, but I could have brought a sledload of toys and not done justice to the occasion. Four generations were in attendance, and there was no gunplay. There were oysters, including tiny Olympias with a drop of lemon juice. I'd purchased a six-pack of rare and fabulous porters at the Pike Place Brewing Shop; Nick and I split them. We admired Jenna's father's new truck, and Jenna's new brother, Reier, who has a smile like a flower. Nick's mother, having heard of my postal fixation, had brought me a very old and beautiful postcard. There was good food, magical art on the walls, and reading aloud. I sat and marveled at my good luck, having married into a family that then married into this one. This was coat-tailing at its finest.
Fish, Mummies and Trolling at Roasters Saturday morning, Laurie had one more session, so I went to the waterfront Aquarium to rub shoulders with bizarre creatures. I stood inches away from a white octopus; I stared at a yard-long electric eel, capable of cranking out 800 volts, enough to turn you into your own night light; I saw the four-eyed fish, with two eyes above the surface and two below; I saw male tubesnout courting, waving their bright orange pelvic fins to attract females; I saw the flatfish, who lie on their sides after they're born until the eye on the underside migrates over the top of their head to join the other. I sat in the underwater viewing dome and looked up at shark and sturgeon, big fat orange fish, silvery schools. Rather than rush from window to window, I sat and waited for the fish to come to me, and they all did. A nearby sign read, "In the end we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."
Farther down the waterfront was the Olde Curiosity Shop, which came highly recommended, a large shop with curios and exhibits including two mummified human bodies standing up in glass cases, and several authentic shrunken heads. There was even a tiny shrunken torso of a "belle of the jungle." Fleshing out the exhibit was a pickled pig with eight legs and three snouts and many other oddities. The mummies had stories; the male was found in the desert, and still has his hair. He apparently died of a gunshot wound, still visible, and his body was preserved by the dry heat and shifting sands. His clothes were gone, but a tasteful sash at his waist covered that which surely must be shriveled, no doubt to spare male onlookers a horrific glimpse of the future.
When my appetite returned, I went to the market and ate at The Athenian; I had a cup of their award-winning clam chowder, and crab cakes. Outside the window, tugs and sailboats and pleasure craft were enjoying the Saturday sun, and a fireboat paraded by with its hoses spouting to set the stage for tugboat races. On the way back to the condo, I sat by a totem pole, enjoyed the view, and listened to a woman talking about socialism as a cure for all of America's woes.
Laurie, meanwhile, was wrapping up her conference in a blaze of success, having learned everything she came to learn, and taking away a better sense of who she was and what she was doing for a living.
In the evening, Nick and Lee took us to Kirkland for dinner, to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We ate at Roasters, starting with deep fried calimari, onion rings and pot stickers. I topped this off with a broad bowl of their award-winning clam chowder. I also had a cask-conditioned Hale's IPA that was a symphony in a glass.
While we were snacking, I spent a lot of time watching a woman at the bar who was trolling, a sad lass wearing a white, sleeveless blouse with some unemployed buttonholes; she moved through a variety of alluring poses, including the classic 'hands-clasped-behind-the-back stretch,' with no success. As each candidate sat down next to her, she would feign casual and confident indifference, then dart a predator's glance out of the corner of her eye for five seconds. Her final hopes rested on a young stag in a sport coat, but after ordering his beer he took a call from another woman on his cell phone.
Going Underground Sunday morning, we drove down to Pioneer Square to meet Lee and take the Underground Seattle tour. Before the tour, we had a cup of tea at the Starbucks across the street, and smiled as a Japanese tourist took a picture of his wife seated next to us. Once more, I wondered how many photo albums I am in as a bystander.
The Underground tour was great fun. There was a time in Seattle's history when they decided to regrade, raising the level of the city to create more flat land and allow the sewers to drain more effectively. But merchants who had already built their buildings didn't want to move, so the city just built walls at the curb and raised the streets between them; ladders at every intersection enabled pedestrians to climb up to the street and then back down to the sidewalk on the other side. Horses that fell off the street onto the sidewalks below didn't climb back up.
Eventually, new sidewalks were built at street level, and former first floors became basements. The neighborhood, the home of the original Skid Row, deteriorated and no one thought to tear anything down and rebuild. Thus there are scores of wonderful old buildings that have survived and an underground world of long forgotten sidewalks, entrances to nowhere and tattered rooms with traces of pressed tin ceiling, stenciling on walls, and weathered wainscoting.
The guides had wonderful stories of early Seattle, of people like Henry Yesler who was known as The Bastard, a title he earned both naturally and by hard work. The early politicians were corrupt in an open and amusing way; Mayor Yesler once sued the city as Henry Yesler, private citizen, and as Mayor Yesler settled out of court with himself. He made his niece the City Secretary, and mailed her checks to Ohio, where she lived.
The City Fathers took a census that revealed that the city had 18,000 lumberjacks and mill workers, and 3,000 seamstresses. One dim bulb suggested that Seattle tax sewing machines. After several weeks of looking, he could find none. Another industry was springing up around the, ah, seamstresses, however. These working girls had lots of money, but no time to shop; messengers began accepting a small fee to take their money and a shopping list to merchants and return with small parcels. As the parcel service thrived, it began to branch out. Today, it's UPS.
Lee vs. the Chopsticks From Pioneer Square, Laurie and Lee and I headed towards the International district, a.k.a. Chinatown, and took the recommendation of one of the Underground guides to visit a large Japanese grocery store. I felt like I was back in Tokyo, or at least Costa Mesa, and upstairs I was thrilled to discover a Kinokuniya bookstore, the Japanese Barnes & Noble, where I scored a new sumo book and three packs of sumo trading cards. Banzai!
But the high point was the House of Dumplings. I have often heard of, and seen, the fabled Oriental reserve, the masking of emotion, the self-control for which the Japanese and Chinese are justly famous. But I have never seen it tested so dramatically as now, when Lee picked up her chopsticks and began to stalk her suddenly elusive dumplings. Watching the sticks as they bobbed and weaved, seemingly guided by two separate intellects, I was reminded of a child with her first pair of stilts. Surely this Chaplinesque display was visible to other tables; surely the other diners could not have been faulted had they quietly cleared their throats, raised their napkins over their faces and barked like hyenas. I know I wanted to. But dining continued as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
Salmon Heading back to the market, we faced the hour of decision. How much salmon could we fit into our luggage or ship to Syracuse? Our advisor in this was Jeff, a handsome lad with a twinkle in his eye and scales on his apron, at City Fish in the market. With the patience of a saint, he spelled out all our options. We settled on the fresh smoked salmon, some with garlic and pepper, some plain, that he had offered us as a sample our first day at the market. It had been working on our imaginations all week.
Lee asked about fresh crab, and Jeff said, "This is fresh," taking a crab off the ice, cracking open the shell, showing us the juice running out and sharing the tender white meat. Sublime. As promised, Jeff triple-wrapped our salmon with a cold pack, and it didn't scent my luggage in the least. (Upon our return, we gave half to the Johnsons in a hostage exchange for our daughter, and kept the other half for some future feasting.)
Sunday evening, our last in Seattle, we dined with Lee at a small restaurant near the market. I had the Copper River salmon, and it was sublime. We spent the evening packing, re-packing, and re-packing. Monday, having finally adjusted to the new time zone, we arose three hours early to get to the airport and return to Syracuse.
Ali in the Airport In Pittsburgh, waiting for our connecting flight, we saw Muhammad Ali, still tall and trim, but slowed and shaking, perfectly dressed and perfectly gracious as 20 or more people asked for his autograph, or to pose with him for a photo. As he walked by us, he was looking down, and trying to eat a cookie between requests. He still has charisma, like no one else I've ever seen.
All this, and a City Fish t-shirt too. It was a fabulously successful trip.