A city of memory
Seattle has undergone stunning changes. But what is sometimes more remarkable is what hasn't changed.
One thing about living in the place where you grew up is that the city often seems like a rain-soaked sponge. Everywhere I step, memories and associations ooze out. The landscape has become part of my mind, and vice versa. Even the smallest things carry a personal significance. It is one reason I find change so difficult, even painful, sometimes.
I complain a lot about how the city has evolved, but despite growth, upheaval and displacement, I am often struck with ways in which Seattle hasn't changed. Vacant lots have disappeared, housing is more expensive, some parts of the city have been radically over-hauled (South Lake Union, the light-railed portions of Martin Luther King Way), landfills are now parks, downtown sprouts a fungi of ugly high rises. But many parts of the city are stoic in the face of a century of radical transformation.
When I was 12 or so, my father loaned me a camera and I decided to document aspects of my neighborhood that I was certain would not be there when I grew up. I photographed overhead telephone pole and trolley wires because surely these ugly wires wouldn't withstand the tide of progress. As a child of the Century 21 Exposition era, I expected big things from the future — Space Needles, not power lines.
An old friend once told me he was in a science fiction writer's group back in the 1960s or '70s, and he brought in a short story he'd written to share with his pals. His tale took place in the 1980s or thereabouts. In one scene, his character stepped off a bus. My friend said the whole group protested and scoffed that buses wouldn't still be around in the 1980s! Having a character riding the bus in a futuristic story was just not credible. I often think of this as I ride a rattling electric trolley to the U. District.
Old technologies are reluctant to go away, and often find uses in new ages. Major parts of the region's transportation debate are about walking, biking and electric trains, not flying cars. Our police officers ride horses, and mountain bikes. Remember when wood stoves made a comeback? And now locally grown food and hand-made goods? All these things were familiar in turn-of-the-century Seattle. Sure, we wear Gore-tex and blab away on invisible mobile phone headsets, but the old world is still present, and sometimes, even cutting-edge policy (Car-free Sundays, anyone? Grazing mini-goats?).
I was particularly startled by the slowness of some change when I came across a memoir of my father's childhood in Seattle. My dad dictated some of his childhood memories late in life, after he had gone blind. My mother dutifully transcribed the tapes, put them in a binder on a shelf, and they've been forgotten ever since. I stumbled across them a couple of weeks ago, nearly two decades after my father's death.
My father, also Knute Berger, was born in 1915 at Mrs. Mote's rooming house, now gone, which stood on Capitol Hill near the corner of 12th and Pine. After a couple of other stops (Green Lake, east Queen Anne), the family moved into the house my grandfather (another Knute, by the way) built in the mid-1920s. My dad spent his boyhood prime in this small stucco home on Mt. Baker Boulevard, just off McClellen St.
I grew up just a few blocks away along that same street, across from Franklin High School and a series of Olmsted-designed parks that run from Lake Washington to Rainier Avenue where it collides with Martin Luther King Way. My dad and I attended the same grade school, John Muir, played in the same parks, had paper routes on the same streets. Three generations of my family lived there over half a century, and while my people have died or moved on, the neighborhood is still part of my weekly orbit 35 years after the last of us moved out.
What strikes me about my dad's memoir is how recognizable the neighborhood is. The parks are still there, still used, still full of beautiful old trees. My father mentions a chestnut tree he loved as a child, and I know just which one it is because I played there too and it's still there. My dad describes the row of houses that were on the block where his father built their home, and they are still standing too, some exactly as described. A few have been up-sized, but a Rip Van Winkle from the 1920s would know where he was.
Nearby, the Mt. Baker Community club, where both my father and I learned to "dance," is much the same. Adjacent, there is a small commercial stretch. In the '20s, there was a grocery store there (Kefauver's); in my youth there was the local drugstore (McNamara's). My dad used to rush over to scan the latest issue of Amazing Stories; I parked myself on the drug store stairs to read Superman comics. Now Mio Posto's pizza and a pilates studio keep up the tradition of commerce on the site.
Like what you just read? Support high quality local journalism by becoming a member of Crosscut.com today!
Comments:
Posted Fri, Sep 26, 7:46 a.m. inappropriate
----------------------
People often keep mementos of their lost relatives; gifts they were given and other things for which emotional significance far outweighs size. My father left me an entire city.
I wasn't at the 1960 World's Fair. I never went to watch the Pilots - Seattle's first major league baseball team - play at Sick's Stadium. Nor was I alive when the Beatles came to play Seattle in 1964; I wasn't lucky enough to pick up my morning paper and see a picture of the Fab Four fishing from the window of their room at Edgewater Hotel on the Seattle Waterfront. Nevertheless, the memories of these things are vivid because I lived them through my father's voice. He cheerfully shared all of the stories from his own childhood growing up in what was then a small city (or big town, depending on your point of view) in the furthest corner of the contiguous United States.
Everything about Seattle is attached in some way to my father–Robert Stephan Myrick. Every hill I crest points me west toward the Olympics and the mountain that claimed his life when I was 12. While he was alive, my brother and I tagged along with him to every neighborhood, like school-agers on urban safari. Our little red Toyota pickup truck carried us on our cultural tour. Ballard. Fremont. West Seattle. Shilshole. Lake Union.
Our itinerary on any given weekend was more of a courtship ritual. His enthusiasm made sure we would fall in love with the city he loved.
My dad's love for Seattle taught me what being home was all about. Now, the city is also my only real scrapbook of my time with him. I connect with the city so that I can still, in some way, connect with him.
* * * * * *
I've posted the complete essay at Unequal Time http://unequal-time.blogspot.com.
Posted Fri, Sep 26, 9:42 a.m. inappropriate
Rainier Renaissance?: Gentrification in the South end might be decried by some, but do consider the word.
I once heard gentrification defined as transient ownership of those who "had the word defined for them in College". The typical pattern involves first time homeowners moving into a place, fixing it up, then fleeing to the suburbs around the time the kids get to be school age.
Mt. Baker is one of Seattle's finest neighborhoods, but it is perhaps a bit of a 'show' horse. Madrona, to the north, is perhaps Seattle's best example of a 'work' horse neighborhood. At the end of the bus line, above Lake Washington, the neighborhood straddles some of the finest waterview homes in the City as well as one of its historically poorest neighborhoods..
Though many casual observers would come to the quick conclusion that any growth in a neighborhood would be perceived as bad, it has happened here, and it was done well, including involvement by some folks living in the area.
On two full blocks there is a thriving business district, with offices, studios and 3 story residential developments. The transitional blocks adjoining have seen development, including an elementary school, but this is broken up by neighborhood parks as well.
And, go figure, it works.
This is David Brewster's neighborhood (I believe still), as well as the neighborhood of Rev. McKinney, and Dwight Pelz. FWIW, in four years of active residence in the area, just prior to its recent blossoming, I never ran into a single one of them. Joel Connelly, out walking his dog, was the only 'connected' celebrity of the batch.
I was back there for the first time in quite a while Wednesday, got lunch at the iconic 30 year old institution the High Spot, where I once sipped at the espresso bar on a daily basis. My place, a duplex conversion across from the elementary was once, as I was told, HQ for the Seattle Black Panthers, circa the Boeing bust. At that time houses could be had in the area for 30k.
The house still bears the paint job I did with thanks to my landlord during a tougher period for me. The park's neighborhood meeting room still holds the pew we carried down the street from a rehab being done for a certain streaming company start-up - and perhaps most importantly, the neighborhood artist operating from the 'Creative Manifestations' storefront still holds court across the street from the Conley Hat manufacturing Company.
My story on Madrona isn't up on the blog right now, but it is still, nonetheless, timely.
My Blog
Perhaps it is time to get to work on the Rainier/MLK triangle - if I might suggest, also, we start changing the name of 'Gram' street back to Graham, perhaps adding the moniker 'Martha' to the needing to be replaced street signs...
-Douglas Tooley
BTW, Leschi's pretty decent too, just south of the recently daylighted Madrona Creek, on the lake.
Posted Fri, Sep 26, 10:03 a.m. inappropriate
Wow, Knute, I think our families may have crossed paths before.: I had the privilege of knowing my great grandparents until I was 11, and my Seattle grandparents until the last one passed on a few years back. Gramps would have been amazed at the growth and changes. He, like I, would get lost in the new Bellevue (they have a Westin Hotel? Really?).
I recall his amazement when they built 405 and Southcenter Mall (who the hell will shop way out there?). On the other hand, Grandma would have been thrilled to see Garfield restored (class of '23). My dad and his brothers were amazed when Franklin got it's upgrades. (classes of 53, 56 and 60)
That side of the family lived on Mt. Baker Blvd. The house still is there, and hardly untouched. As kids, we used to make great money selling the parking spaces in the driveway and in front of the house during the hydro races. They were the first in the family with a color TV, and Sunday dinner meant being able to watch Disney's Wonderful World of Color beyond the black and white Admiral at our house in the newly minted development of Lake Hills.
What seemed like a HUGE tri-level still stands where I grew up, but the woods where we played are long gone. They have even rebuilt my elementary school. Like you, I took photos as a newly found hobby in the 60's. Weird to think they are considered historic now.
Gramps took us out of school to bring us into town to watch them place the dining platform onto the not yet finished Space Needle. I recall taking a water tour on Lake Washington that cruised by the not yet finished Evergreen Floating Bridge. Dad remembers taking ferryboats over to the east side and watching the FIRST bridge being built. Gramps, till the day he died, could recall the name of the police officer who gave him a ticket on the first day the Aurora Bridge opened. Icons that are still here, and the story still lingers.
Thankfully, there is enough of the old still left to spark the retelling of history as my family lived through it. Like you, I hope the next generation gets a chance to hear it shared by those who were there.
Posted Fri, Sep 26, 10:48 a.m. inappropriate
Correction: Make that 'Show' Bear or 'Work' Bear!
...though I'm not sure which category Mr. Connelly would place himself.
-Doug
Posted Fri, Sep 26, 5:20 p.m. inappropriate
A sponge full of memories all right: but not one clear drop when you squeeze it, murk murk murk
and the mist of sentimentality.
Posted Tue, Sep 30, 10:10 a.m. inappropriate
Five generations of Bergers! My branch of the Lukoffs has only been here since 1964, and I was born 11 years later, so just as I'm a first-generation American, I'm also a first-generation Washingtonian and Seattleite. But so much has changed even in the 30 or so years I've been aware of my surroundings. It is heartening to note that there still does remain enough of the city that was built before the dot-com boom to provide a sense of historical continuity. We are nothing if we don't progress, but we are similarly nothing if we don't remember where we came from.