Cheryl: It sure seems like a very long time since Tuesday when we last blogged! Today screamed by as we signed on the dotted line for a mobile space at the Circle K Mobile Home Park, Space #10 right next to Jeff Pennington, a good guy who knows all the ins and outs of RVs. Christine, the park manager, gave me the scoop on the tenants of the small park. She’s nice and has three BIG cats! Oscar seems very big, glossy, and black until you see furry black and white Bear! The other one, who shall remain nameless, hides under the bed. One of the reasons I chose this “park” rests with this scrappy lady from Montana. I feel like she’s honest and has a good heart. She has been very helpful to us in our search for a spot to park Ali-the-Gator and about general area information. Tomorrow morning we make the big move. Frank will hang around here with me until Tuesday or so.
Cheryl and Frank: Another reason today seemed to scream past at light speed involves a tour through the Seattle underground. The underground tour shows you some of the original store fronts which are now the basements of some of the oldest buildings in Seattle’s City Center, Pioneer Square. Seattle burned down in 1889 so the city fathers decided here was their chance to solve the perennial flooding problems by raising the height of the whole city 16 feet. In doing so they moved more dirt down from the surrounding hills into the city than was excavated during the construction of the Panama Canal. The whole project took over 20 years! However, the business owners couldn’t wait 20 years to rebuild, so they built new fireproof buildings in full knowledge that the ground floors would be underground eventually. So they simply built their buildings with two ground floors, one above the other. Now the former second story floor is the ground floor! The old ground floors are on the underground tour.
An interesting side effect of building the buildings before raising the level of the land was that for a dozen years the streets were raised 16 feet above the level of the sidewalks. REALLY!!!!! To cross the streets the residents had to climb up ladders to get to street level, cross through heavy traffic and then climb down ladders on the other side to the sidewalk. We’re not making this up! This is true, we swear it!
If your mental image now is of dusty glass-fronted stores filled with antique mercantile items, then it matches what were our expectations. The actual store fronts underground are not that pristine, but the dusty brick, twisted plumbing and generations of reinforcing supports still make the tour both creepy and fascinating. Besides, the guides are excellent storytellers and funny as all get out. They kept us regaled with stories of shady ladies who called themselves seamstresses, mayors who stole the city blind yet were reelected multiple times, and business leaders who would literally do anything to make a buck. Add to that mixture the rudimentary sewer system that was fed by 3000 of Thomas Crapper’s modern sanitary toilets feeding one wooden sewer box down the hill, through the center of town and directly into the bay. The fact that reverse pressure from unexpected high tides backed the whole system up regularly, created a recipe for people being blasted off their toilet seats on a plume of poop. To avoid the back surge, and we’re not making this up, some people put their “Crappers” on pedestals as high as 15 feet above the floor. All and all we had a ball walking through these ghostly corridors from the past, and listening to a bright young man telling us incredible stories.
We topped off the day by taking Otis the elevator to the top of The Smith Tower which is just up the hill from Pioneer Square. The tower was built by Mr. Smith (of Smith-Corona Character Processors) in 1914, and at 42 floors was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River for almost 50 years. The building even included six of the new fangled Otis elevators which are still operated by real live human beings and are still smoothly powered by their original DC motors.
Well, it’s 10 o’clock at night and we’re tired, so good-night.
Drowsy Frank, nodding Cheryl, and already asleep Peanut & Cleo.
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