Click+here+for+a+preview

 Going to Seattle by Janet Grimes

When I was growing up in Mount Vernon, Washington, in the 1940’s and 50’s, Interstate 5 was no more than an idea, and driving the sixty miles south to Seattle took two hours. Highway 99 ran through town as a two-lane street; passed through Marysville and Everett, with a string of stop lights; and negotiated an endless stretch of billboards, real estate office, motels (and older “auto courts”), restaurants, and gas stations—from Lynnwood to the city center. Two or three times a year, from age four or five until I graduated from high school, my family made all-day shopping trips. Recalled now, they form a series of impressions of a small-town girl’s Saturday trips with her family to the big city. We started early—my parents my aunt and uncle, and myself. My father and Uncle Ralph sat it front, while I sat between my mother and Aunt Claire in the back. Sometimes Aunt Claire applied nail polish in the car, then splayed her fingers and shook them to dry. Until Marysville, we passed through rural countryside, chatting about plans for the day, watching for landmarks as we made our way south. One such landmark was the “Upside-Down Bridge” across the Snohomish River between Marysville and Everett. When I was quite small, we had taken a train trip to Seattle; viewed from the train trestle below the highway, to me the road bridge had seemed upside down. South of Everett the highway widened to four lanes as we began to get into the “rhubarbs” (//suburbs// in the family lexicon). Moving along wide Aurora Avenue, we passed the Evergreen/Washelli cemeteries with row upon row of white grave markers, theTwin T-Ps Restaurant, Green Lake, the Aqua Theater, and the pedestrian overpasses near Woodland Park. When we spotted the big globe, around which revolved the neon words, “It’s in the P-I,” we were almost downtown. Our usual parking lot was near the ultimate department store, Frederick and Nelson. Underneath the parking lot were public restrooms. I recall a white floor made of tiny octagonal tiles, and a restroom matron who was lame. For lunch we rejoined the men at Ben Paris’ Restaurant, just down the block from Sherman Clay, where my father had gone to admire the Hammond organs he could not afford. Ben Paris’ was down a long flight of wide stairs from street level. At the bottom was a pool with live trout swimming and coins at the bottom. To the left was the sporting goods store, with guns, fishing tackle, camping equipment, and, mounted on the supporting pillars, trophy heads of moose, elk, deer, and other game animals. After lunch, Uncle Ralph would browse there for fishing tackle. To the right of the stairs was the restaurant, its wooden booths varnished dark brown. The menu listed something pleasing to each of us; for me, a hot turkey sandwich. After lunch we separated again. When I was small I went along with my mother and aunt. First we headed for another restroom stop, this time the family lounge on Frederick and Nelson’s sixth floor, taking a side trip through the alcove displaying Steuben glass. I could have lingered there for hours admiring the figures and landscapes etched in glass prisms and mounds, or molded figures such as a leaping trout on the verge of catching a bright gold insect—all displayed against dark blue velvet. In the family lounge, adjacent to the women’s restroom, was a row of telephone booths and a number of telephone directories from cities all over the country. Once I looked up my hero, Guy Madison (Wild Bill Hickok on TV), in the Los Angeles directory, but without success. When my best friend, Sharon, moved to Bellevue, I could call her for ten cents from one of those telephones. Almost as exciting as talking to Sharon was using the dial phone. In Mount Vernon we did not have dial phones until I was in seventh grade; when we lifted the receiver we had to wait for an operator to ask, “number please.” The afternoon shopping itinerary included The Bon Marche and Rhodes, and sometimes Penney’s, Nordstrom’s (which then was a high class shoe store), and Best’s Apparel. If there was time, the women went to the Public Market. None of this appealed to me, especially the Market, which was smelly and confusing. I hated shopping and felt dragged along. One day, when Uncle Ralph had not come to Seattle, my father invited me to spend the afternoon with him. Thus I gained entrance to a world infinitely more fascinating to me than that of my mother and Aunt. The afternoon was there to enjoy by going, seeing, doing—not to use prudently for shopping. One time we went down to Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe on the waterfront, where a stuffed mermaid—supposedly fished out of some distant sea—adorned one wall. We saw a passenger ship depart for the Orient, with people on board waving to those left behind on the pier, just like in the movies. Another time my father guided me along First Avenue, past bums and beggars, to the Smith Tower, the tallest building west of the Mississippi. We took the elevator to the Chinese Room on the top floor and watched the tiny cars and people below. While there we saw a miniature fire engine, its siren faintly sounding, leave its stationhouse and wind its way through traffic. If the weather was disagreeable we went to a movie. We saw //Mogambo, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, Marty,// and //The Rose Tattoo//, all first-run films at big downtown theaters. Mount Vernon’s two theaters showed only second-run films, sometimes almost a year after they were first released. The epitome of Seattle movies was //The Day the Earth Stood Still// at the Coliseum. It was one of the best of a series of 1950’s science fiction films about extra-terrestrials. The huge theater’s acoustics were so good, my father said later, that when the flying saucer landed he felt as if it were coming down on top of us. As much as I enjoyed that movie, I was even more impressed with the theater. Constructed during the heyday of filmmaking, it was a true movie palace—the gaudiest, largest, most extravagant theater I had ever seen. The walls were marble (or appeared to be); there were three balconies (neither of Mount Vernon’s theaters had even one); and when the deep pink curtain rose, the bottom edge gathered into elegant scallops. Emerging from movie wonderland in the late afternoon, we found the downtown streets had changed. Hurry was in the air, people rushing to catch buses, parking lots emptying. Now I noticed street vendors, some selling popcorn or unshelled hot roasted peanuts in paper bags. Newsboys hawked the evening edition. Once headlines ominously declared that President Eisenhower had suffered a heart attack. When we rendezvoused with my mother and aunt near the candy counter in Frederick’s, Aunt Claire was laden with purchases: new shoes, leather gloves, lacy undies, sometimes a new suit. She was a working woman and could justify such extravagance. My mother also had packages, most of which were quickly packed away in the car’s trunk and forgotten until they reappeared as Christmas or birthday presents. In the dusk, our car’s interior lighted by neon signs and headlights, we joined the slow procession moving out of the city and chatted in spurts about the day’s incidents. Viewed from the Aurora Bridge, the big “Grandma’s Cookies” sign at the north end of Lake Union dominated the twinkling lights below. We drove north and then stopped for dinner somewhere along Aurora or closer to Everett. One place where we ate had a television set behind the counter. Before the hostess led us to our booth I caught a glimpse of the Lone Ranger on Silver, chasing the bad guys on a screen about eight inches wide. It was the first television I had ever seen. Driving on after dinner, my mother, with some rustling, produced several white paper bags containing various chocolates from Frederick and Nelson’s candy counter. There were quarter-sized wafers coated with white “beads,” chocolate-covered raisins, peanut clusters, droplets with ridges that swirled to a peak. We chose two or three apiece; then the bags disappeared, saved for parties and holiday gatherings. As we continued north, conversation dwindled. Lights flashed past less frequently. Thoughts turned inward, and the day’s events began shaping themselves into stories to be told to family members awaiting us at home; later to be recalled among ourselves as family lore; now to form this composite tale. North of Marysville, we pushed homeward in silent darkness, lulled by the engine’s steady hum, our own thoughts, and the presence of each other.