| |
Beginning in 1968, when I was 20 and had completed 2 years of college, I lived for 5 years in Seattle, Washington, a great city and definitely one of the most scenic cities in the world. I had grown up and gone to high school and college in Idaho, but my grandparents had lived in
Seattle so I had been there many times. Initially when I moved to Seattle I lived in the University District
("U-District") because the few people I knew in Seattle were students at the University of Washington. I always assumed I would become a student at the U but I didn't go back to school until I
came to Boston in 1973.
After college I have stayed in Boston, gotten married, raised a family, had a career, and now I'm retired.
Seattle panoramas
|
Mt. Rainer
|
Seattle is a beautiful city, bordered on the West by Puget Sound, a salt-water inlet from the Pacific, and on the East by Lake Washington, a
fresh-water lake (see map). There are many smaller bodies of water
throughout the city and it is known for its boating. I once read that Seattle has the most miles of shoreline of any city its size in the world.
There are many bridges and ferries that bring visitors and commuters into the city. To the east of Lake Washington is the Cascade mountain range
which includes Mt. Rainier and to the west of Puget Sound
is the Olympic Peninsula, which contains the Olympic Mountains.
From the city you can look to the East or West and see mountains. As you will notice most photos of Seattle show the Space Needle, that was built for the 1962 World's Fair, which I attended.
Here is a view of Lake Union showing quite a lot of the city.
During my Seattle years I lived in many areas including the U-District, Wallingford, Cascade (South of Lake Union), and
Eastlake (Capitol Hill, East of Lake Union). I lived in several houses with groups of friends and had several apartments, usually with a roommate and
sometimes alone (see my Seattle dwellings for some Google Street View photos). You might
call those my "hippie" years, when I had long hair and lived a lifestyle emulating the values of that culture (and did lots of drugs!). I went to many antiwar rallies and marches (see
Where I stand), rock concerts and rock festivals (see 60s music). In 1969 (this was during the Vietnam war), because I wasn't going
to college I lost my 2-S student-deferment and got drafted and because of my anti-war views,
I refused induction into the Army (things were a little hectic for awhile but that is ancient history now). Please don't associate me with Donald Trump, who was NOT a
resister but only had a fake bone-spurs deferment.) In summer 1969 my friend Rainmar and I were
house-sitting a house in the View Ridge neighborhood that had a color TV and we watched Apollo 11 land on the moon while we were tripping on acid.
Eagles
|
Like many people of my generation I went regularly to rock concerts by the top West Coast groups of the day at the
Eagles Auditorium. My roommate Bill was friends
with the Retina Circus who put on the light shows (Andy Neddermeyer, another roommate,
joined them, went back to San Francisco with them, and is in the video) and since everybody in Seattle knew they would be at Eagles every
Saturday night and their house would be vacant, for security reasons Bill and I volunteered to "baby-sit" their house. They had a great stereo
and Voice of the Theater
speakers so we enjoyed these evenings (and of course we got very high). One night the Retina Circus hired Bill and me to do the stage
lighting for a Byrds concert at Eagles. The next night we drove to Spokane to repeat it. When we were setting up the lighting on the microphones
on stage people would assume we were roadies and ask us what it was like to travel with the Byrds. We sucked it up and didn't deny it.The Eagles concerts regularly played
Ike & Tina Turner doing "River Deep, Mountain High" between sets when the bands were changing.
(That's a concert video, Eagles had a sound recording.)'
Original REI store
|
First Eddie Bauer
|
REI and Eddie Bauer, two national outdoor gear chains, had their original stores in Seattle and only those single stores existed
when I lived there. REI, which stands for Recreational Equipment Inc. and called "the Rec" by my friends and I, was sort
of a warehouse type store
on Capitol Hill where many items were put on shelves still in their shipping boxes, and as I recall you had to put the price on individual items yourself. The Eddie Bauer store on 2nd Ave.
was more like a department store, much classier. We bought camping (backpacking) equipment at REI and outdoor clothing (parkas and sweaters) at
Eddie Bauer. At that time you had to join REI to shop there, and decades later I shopped at an REI store in the Boston area (where I live now) and
because I had joined REI in the 60s the sales clerk told me I had the lowest membership number she had ever seen.
Starting in 1969, after my draft resistance experience, I lived in a house with a bunch of guys on a street named
Naomi Place in the U District (given the name "Naomi House" by roommate Pat Stanton, who was my roommate when I came to Boston in 1973 and currently lives in California with his wife and kids). We also
had roommates Bill Schaefer, Andy Neddermeyer (who joined the Retina Circus light show group and moved
with them to the San Francisco Bay area), and Russ Taylor, whom I have also kept in touch with. We all later moved to another house in the U District on 12th Ave NE. (named "Excellent House" by Pat) and we had women
living with us at this time. I went to Mexico with 3 Seattle friends in 1972. I had other apartments in Seattle in the U District, Wallingford (with Ben), Cascade (in a
complex we called "Minor Manner" that is no longer there), and Capitol Hill (with Bill).
See Places I've Lived for descriptions and photos of all my Seattle dwellings.
Childhood memories
When I was growing up in Idaho my grandparents lived in Seattle, where they managed and lived in a family owned hotel, the Calhoun Hotel, which was located downtown on Second Avenue. On
regular visits we stayed in that hotel (maybe I should insert my Seth Thomas clock story here) and
had Seattle excursions. By the 60s they lived in a house on Queen Anne Hill, and in 1962, when the
World's Fair was hosted in Seattle (that's when the Space Needle was built) we
visited them there and attended the fair. We actually ran into someone from our hometown, Payette, at the fair. I remember once we took
a ferry from Seattle up to Victoria, BC, Canada, on Vancouver
Island. One thing that stuck in my memory of this trip is that my younger brother, Ed, was put in a harness and perhaps on a leash to control him
on the ferry. That was the 50s when people did crazy stuff like that.
Rainy Seattle?
Seattle has gotten a bad label as a rainy city but that is not the way I remember it. I had a bicycle in Seattle and rode it all over and rain
was never a problem. Seattle gets 38 inches of rainfall annually, but in Seattle Doesn't Get That Much Rain you'll
read that major U.S. cities that get more are Mobile, AL (65), New Orleans (60), Miami (58), Memphis (52), Houston (48), Nashville (48),
New York (43), Philadelphia (41), and Boston (44) where I live now. Perhaps the rainy impression of Seattle comes from it
being cloudy a lot.
Seattle neighborhoods I've lived in
See Seattle under Places I've Lived for photos and descriptions of places.
- U-District - When I came to town my friends were students at the University of Washington
- I lived in the U-District in 1969 when I received my draft notice
- Wallingford - foliage now hides the outside entrance to our apartment and the little cottage that was occupied by a nice young hippie couple
- Cascade - I lived here a short time in a grungy place we called "Minor Manor" (it was on Minor Ave)
- Eastlake - Nice place on Capitol Hill with a view
My jobs
GRANDMA'S COOKIES
|
When I came to Seattle in 1968 after 2 years of college I needed a job. I applied to Boeing, the largest employer in town, and was hired
at a position several levels above entry-leval because I could read blueprints (I had majored in Engineering in college). I worked there off
and on for several years at the Developmental Center and Plant 2, both South of Seattle.
Near the end of my time in Seattle I was looking for another job and since I could see the big, red, neon GRANDMA'S COOKIES sign on a
building in Wallingford across
Lake Union from my apartment on Capitol Hill. I decided to apply there. It turned out that the building still had the sign but was occupied by a
machine shop, and because of my Boeing skills I was hired. Unfortunately the current shop was manned by a religious-cult who had prayer
meetings at lunch and I didn't fit in or last long.
Former roomates...
I had many roomates in the years I lived in Seattle. Some are still my friends.
| |
Pat Stanton
|
I lived with Pat in several houses with others. He had a job working in IT. He was living and working in Boston when I came here for college. We lived together in an apartment
before he left town. We live in different cities and have both gotten married and raised families, but we have stayed in touch.
He lives in the California Bay Area now.
|
Some who have died
I have many fond memories of my years in Seattle, where I
made few commitments and pretty much focused on the here and now, living a lifestyle of hedonism. I did my share of drugs including primarily marijuana (which we
called "grass" or "dope" but it is mostly referred to as "pot" these days) and LSD (acid).
It's sad when I think of how many of my Seattle friends have died from various causes (some violent). Weren't we all supposed to live forever?
| |
 Bill Schaefer (1/15/2006 - liver
cancer) was my best friend and frequent roommate when I lived in Seattle. Bill was a student at University of Washington when we met. After college he had relocated to Eugene, OR, and was married with one
grown daughter. After I moved to the East Coast in 1973 I saw Bill only once on a return trip to Seattle when he still lived there, and our only contact since then was by phone or email. I learned of his death from Russ Taylor, another Seattle friend and roommate. Bill died Janunary 15, 2006 from liver cancer. He was 58 (we were the same age), Bill's
father was in the military and he was raised all over the world. He went to high school in England.
|
|
| |
Ben Lindekugel (6/21/2019 - died unexpectedly) and I lived in the same apartment building
when I first moved to
Seattle in 1968. Ben was a student at University of Washington when we met. He became my good friend and roommate and I was living with him when I received my draft
notice in 1969. We kept in touch and I have seen him several times on Seattle trips after I came East. Ben was quite accomplished in his career that spanned over four decades of community service as an exemplary
healthcare leader and public policy advocate. He was Executive Director of Association of Washington Public Hospital Districts.
He was 69 (2 years younger than me) when he died. Ben was born and raised in Lead, South Dakota (we humorously referred to this as "LSD"). (obituary, remembrance from colleague)
|
|
| |
I had a couple of other Seattle friends who had freaky, violent deaths after I was living in Boston.
- Tom Sheimo - a former roommate, who many years later was shot to death by a crazed gunman when he drove down a street where a man with a gun was holed up in a house that was surrounded by police.
- Mike Schwabe - who was later incarcerated and deported from a European country for drug dealing and came to stay with Pat and me in Boston for a short time, and later moved back to Seattle and was hit and killed
by a logging truck on the Olympic Peninsula.
Coincidently, Mike and Tom are both in the cab in this photo.
|
My music
One thing I did a lot in those days (the 60s) was collect vinyl records. Being a musician my taste in music tended to be somewhat esoteric so I
didn't just go to the standard commercial record stores like Discount Records (one of the big chain stores that has since disappeared),
but sought out harder to find records, many times at used record stores. One of my favorites was a store on the "Ave"
(University Way) in Seattle named "Puss 'n' Books", which sold used books and records, and had cats roaming
around. They bought records from you for $1 and sold them for $1.50. I sold them many records (purging my record collection of albums I no longer
wanted to own), and I was pretty good at taking the platter out of the jacket and eyeing it for scratches before buying it. I created a record
collection of hundreds of albums which I kept for decades and in 1968 I started a component stereo system
that I had for years, upgrading many times (read more here). Now my music is entirely digital and I listen on
my smartphone. My vinyl record collection was regularly updated ("cleaned out") because I removed albums I no longer liked and didn't want friends playing or requesting those albums.
I played guitar when I was in Seattle, and since my style was fairly experimental my musical tastes evolved into jazz, so when I decided to go
back to school to study music, I chose Berklee College of Music in Boston,
where I switched to upright bass (see more on my Music page). So, in 1973, I came to Boston
(and never left).
Some Seattle links . . .
|
 REI store at 11th & Pine on Capitol Hill in Seattle&comment=Where I use to shop in the 60s, before it was a chain)
