“Best RR Trip Part 7:
Because we didn’t get to Seattle’s Ramada Inn Downtown until after midnight, we slept in until after 7am. The Monday morning, June 6 (D-Day) weather was good, warm and sunny, a few clouds. As usual, I was up and abluted first. I went down to the lobby exploring while Pop dressed. Found the Ramada restaurant and a rack of brochures on all things to see and do in Seattle. When he came down we had the restaurant to ourselves (not normally a good sign) for a leisurely breakfast and planning meeting. Saw the monorail trains pass above us every 10-15 minutes. The waitress was really friendly and recommended several menu delicacies and spots to visit. I got a northwest variation of a western omelet and Dad got pancakes or maybe it was the other way around (but whichever it was, it was the other way around the next morning). The food was good for a stationary place, much better than the dearth of patronage had suggested. We decided to walk downtown 4 blocks to catch the monorail, visit the Space Needle, then take an afternoon tour bus tour of the city. I called the phone number for the tour bus to see if we could get on at the last minute, and if so, where did we meet it? Shoot yes, we can get on, and they would pick us up at the door of the Inn at 1pm, for a 3-3.5 hr city tour, all major credit cards accepted. Perfect! Day 1 in Seattle was planned.
While eating, we had what I guess was a typical Seattle shower – a sudden 3-minute downpour, followed by clear sky and sunshine. We got the little camera and headed south to the monorail station. On the way we stocked up on film at a local drugstore where I also abruptly learned the local cash register customs. I got the film and walked up to the register behind the person being waited on, a serious breach of Seattle drug deal etiquette. “Sir, …SIR! (who, me?) You may not approach the register until called! The line is behind you!” I turned and saw 12-15 people milling around in one of the aisles, the nearest easily 10 feet away. I’d have left the place but the film was really cheap and would probably cost a fortune on the Space Needle (It did), so I got in line. Never found out why, but I guessed the drug store wanted to transact their drug business as is done on the street corners, with no one near enough to see who’s buying what.
It is easy to find the monorail station – just walk along under the rail until it stops – but not so easy to see how to get up to it. Dad remembered the station was inside a shopping mall. I’m thinking, “No way,” until he recognized the entrance to the mall, and took off across the street from the drugstore where your privacy is assured, still a block from the end of the line. Skeptically, I followed him in, up the escalators, through the mall until we arrived at the monorail ticket booth on the 3rd or 4th floor. We got two round trip tickets. The train was not crowded. On the way to the Needle, I began to understand and appreciate Seattle’s planning. The monorail is predominantly a tourist operation, so on one end you get dumped at the Space Needle to spend some tourist bucks and on the other end you get out in a downtown mega-mall, enticed to spend anything left – they gotcha coming and going.
The monorail stop at the Space Needle Park is only about 100 yards or so from the Needle base, where there was a long line. This time we got preferential waiting, possibly because of Dad’s senior status, though I choose to think it had more to do with the attendant’s mistaking me for Clint Eastwood, and we were taken to the front of the line and went on the very next elevator. The trip up is a trip! The elevator is outside the needle structure and you both see and feel how far and fast you are leaving everything stable and firm. Once on the top you can stay as long as you want, but we had to watch the clock to get back to the Ramada in time for lunch and tour at 1pm, so we were only up for an hour or so. Besides once you’ve walked around and seen the amazing views of the city, harbor, mountains, and Puget Sound from 600 feet high, and shot a few rolls of ultra privately-purchased film, you’ve pretty much done the Needle. We shot the obligatory photo of ourselves in the mirrored windows of the enclosure with the Seattle skyline behind us, after seeing a little kid standing next to his mother do it. I remember thinking, “Dumb kid. He’s too close to the window get anything but a picture of … wait… Hey, COOL!!! We gotta do that, too! And it did turn out pretty neat. Thanks kid.”
We got on the monorail to go back, seated right behind the driver and were treated to great views of the city-scape (now from only 40 ft in the air) and a student driver. The thing really zips along for a mile or 2, and he did a good job of not driving off the track, a clearly impossible feat, until I read that one of them did exactly that about 6 months later (Nov. 2005). They took people off the tilted cars using fire truck ladders. Am betting the student driver on that run failed the final, but our guy did great, even stopping at our station. We walked back to the hotel, had a soup/sandwich lunch and waited for the tour bus. It was less than 10 minutes late.
I wish I could remember our driver’s name. He kept up a running travelogue, threw in some good jokes, also unfortunately forgotten, all the while wheeling us, and about 5 or 6 husband/wife couples, around town in heavy traffic. He was great about stopping anywhere if someone wanted a picture, but our first planned stop was at the Pike Street Market, where they throw the big fish around and shout ethnic fish-monger sounds if you buy one. There was a sizeable crowd standing around the open-air counter, cameras at the ready, waiting for someone else to spring for a 50 lb tuna. I didn’t get a picture, but we did see them toss one around without dropping it and everyone cheered except the fish, who appeared quite blasé about the whole demeaning ordeal. Saw the very first Starbucks Coffee shop in the US on Pike St., where we learned that for the first 9 years of operation they refused to sell a cup of coffee. They only sold bulk coffee beans, but finally and reluctantly relented saying, “alright we’ll sell you coffee by the cup, but you’re going to have to pay, uh, 10 times what its worth,” thus re-proving an American maxim noted earlier by P. T. Barnum.
We also stopped in “Old Seattle” at the Alaskan Gold Rush National Park site and saw a glass blowing operation in one of the restored original Seattle buildings. The Gold Rush Park site is one of the few located in geographically separated States. The “real” one is in Skagway, AK, where the ‘rushers landed to start their assault on the Klondike back in ’97-‘98. But there is an equally legitimate Park site there in Seattle where the vast, vast majority of them started from and returned to, either fabulously wealthy or abjectly broke, but thawed. And I now have the stamped Park maps from both places.
We saw the locks the Navy installed back in WWII but then couldn’t use because their ships turned out to be too big, and the “Sleepless in Seattle” marina and houseboat. We left the locks, drove off up a hill and took a sharp right, where the driver casually mentioned we were “passing the old main entrance to Fort Lawton, now mostly a public park.” Pop and I had been sitting quietly in the back and he shouted, “That’s the place! That’s the place I told you about but couldn’t remember the name. Fort Lawton – that’s where we shipped out from in WWII!” The driver heard him. (Everybody heard him.) He said, “Folks, does anybody mind if we extend the tour awhile, no extra charge. I’m going to take you to a spot that’s not on our tour. Heck, it’s not on anyone’s tour. But we have a veteran with us today and I think you’ll find it will be worthwhile.” With unanimous agreement he drove to a small entrance on the south (city) side of the Park/Fort, pulled into a vacant, gravel/weed parking lot and let us out.
We were the last ones off the bus. The group was waiting for him. One guy took Dad by the arm and said, “I want to shake your hand. Thanks for what you did for us back then.” I cannot begin to describe how proud I was of him then… and now. I swear he was standing a foot taller than anyone else there. We set off across the lot, up a lengthy set of old stone steps overgrown with vines and shrubs, then several hundred yards further up a slight grade across a field with a few buildings to the south, the Post Chapel and some massive old trees. We were definitely off the beaten tourist path. I was worried about how all the walking and climbing would wear on Dad, but he was 84 going on 23, doing OK, and I finally caught up with him at the top of the rise just past the Post Chapel on the narrow road in front of Flag Officers’ housing (still in use by the Navy). He was looking past these big beautiful Victorian-style houses each facing due west, to an incredible view of Puget Sound just beyond a mile-wide open field. Pop recalled the expansive, overgrown parade grounds below us and the rusty reviewing stand, but he didn’t remember having to drill at Fort Lawton. The driver showed him the Post Exchange (PX), an old building north of the parade grounds. Dad told them what it had been like back then, and about the time he and some buddies missed the last City bus from town back to camp. An off-duty bus driver on his way to the barn saw them walking, picked them up and brought them all the way out to the main gate for no charge. Dad talked to and answered questions from our group for quite a while. They were enthralled, and nobody was ready to leave when we had to start back. I got some pictures, but the ones now etched in my mind are the best. You had to be there. For me it was the finest moment of the whole trip. Our 3-hour tour took closer to 5 hours, and now I know there were two Seattle bus drivers who went above and beyond the call of duty.
Tuesday morning started Seattle dreary – cloudy, cool, occasionally misty. We caught the city bus down to the ferry docks and were just in time for a departing ferry. We had a choice of sailing to upscale Bainbridge Island, or to the Navy sub-base at Bremerton. Since the Bainbridge I ferry was leaving first we opted for it and on the way we had a good view of the Seattle skyline behind us to the east and the Fort Lawton grounds in the distance to the north. Since our train was leaving at 4:45 that afternoon, we didn’t try to go anywhere on the island, but waited in the terminal until all the security sweeps were done and the drug/bomb dogs gave our boat the all-clear. Then we re-boarded for the return trip, caught the bus back to the hotel and packed. Checkout was 12 noon, but they weren’t crowded, and let us eat a long lunch. We finally checked out about 2pm and got a taxi back to the station. While we were waiting for the eastbound Empire Builder, flagship of James J. Hill’s Great Northern RR, I wandered all over the place taking pictures of the King St. Station, Union Station, and Talgo Cascades trainset, while Pop watched the bags and probably reminisced about his 1944 Ft Lawton embarkation for duty in Kaneowhe Bay, HI and much later when he and Mom had come through Seattle on their 1976 epic four month driving tour of the whole US (and some of Canada).
Half of the eastbound Empire Builder originates in Seattle and the other half in Portland, OR. Then, in the middle of the night, the two trains merge at Spokane, WA. Our half eased out of the station just a few minutes late, headed north under and through Seattle towards Everett, WA, where it turns east for the next 2000 miles. It got dark far too early while we were climbing through the Cascades. We ate, watched, talked, and played some gin rummy. This time Dad won a few hands. OK, maybe he won several, maybe all of them.
Thanks Dad, for what you did for us back then.”
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Featured subjects this month are Canadian National Railway steam locomotives on Toronto, Ontario’s Spadina & Bathurst St. yard tracks:
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