Super Seattle

The Seattle Seahawks finally made it to the Super Bowl, and now Seattle, the team and the city, are being disrespected. Practically everybody, except in Seattle, picks Pittsburgh to win, despite the fact the Seahawks have the league MVP, the highest scoring offense in the league, the most sacks of any team and many other indicators of excellence to back up their record.

Hearing folks in the Seattle area complain about the Eastern bias of the media might make people think we are a “red State”, but in fact we are the opposite. Seattle is a very liberal town, heavily Democratic. Because we are tucked away in the far northwest, “right next to Alaska” in the ignorance of those who also disregard the vastness of British Columbia, many Americans have never visited our neck of the woods and have adopted some not always consistent and often misguided assumptions about Seattle.

These ignorant ones know it is always cold and rainy in Seattle, which crawls with geeks in parkas [or worse], either sipping lattes while reading books on computer programming, or munching trail mix while hiking through a fern grotto in the Cascades. I think every computer football simulation game I have played as a Seattle team, Seahawks or University of Washington Huskies, always makes it rainy weather for the game, even the preseason games played during our annual summer drought.

This morning I have been thinking of Seattle’s history in general and my history with Seattle in particular. As in the rest of America, the first people in Seattle were the native people, the Indians. The city is named after a local Indian leader. It is such a unique name both in sound and in spelling, that it jumps out of sound bites and off the pages, and in my youth local ears and eyes were always on the alert for its mention in the national media.

White settlers first came to this area about 150 years ago. Logging and then coal and fishing provided the industrial base. The coming of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads about 30 years later provided a little growth, but it was the Klondike gold rush around 1900 that made the real population spurt, as Seattle became the portal to Alaska. It was around that time that my European immigrant ancestors started coming to the Pacific Northwest. On the paternal side, a Danish great grandfather had drifted from Arkansas across the Southwest to California and then up to Seattle about 1901, and a German grandfather relocated from his 1885 homestead in central Washington, unsuccessfully trying his hand in a later Alaska gold venture before moving here around 1910. The Italians on the maternal side made it to Spokane in eastern Washington just before WWI, and my mom was able to leave the Italian nest and relocate to Seattle for better job prospects a few years before the start of WWII.

Seattle sort of slept through the roaring twenties and the early depression years, but as WWII began, the area [and me] came to life, with shipyards and Boeing providing many defense industry jobs. The wartime shipyards brought ethnic diversity to Seattle, drawing upon experienced workers from Louisiana with African American roots. Sadly, though these workers played a vital part in the war effort, de facto discrimination prevailed in the post war years until the coming of civil rights laws in the mid 60s began to make improvements. Seattle had its ghetto, which expanded in the 40s and early 50s, as “white flight” and “blockbusting” concentrated African Americans in the central area of the city.

Seattle saw lots of Army and Navy people pass through during the War. Some of them stayed and one became my step-father. He and my mom bought a newly constructed two bedroom house right after the war ended. The price was right and the location convenient, in the handy central area. As new neighbors began moving into the neighborhood, they proved to be friendly, especially the childless couple who moved next door, the Lewises. Mrs. Lewis became one of mom’s best friends and Mr. Lewis was a mentor to my brother and me.

As a hardworking, entrepreneurial city on the edge of the map, Seattle was destined to be a little different. We are proud of our big shots like Bill Boeing and Bill Gates, but we also respect the little guys who do the grunt work. We have a history of unionism and liberal attitudes with the Depression solidifying the Democratic Party here, especially in Congress. Senators Magnuson and Jackson were two of the most powerful members of the Senate for many years. “Maggie” was a quietly effective protector of the little guy against the rich and powerful. “Scoop” Jackson was a liberal Hawk, known as “the Senator from Boeing” at a time when that company and the unions worked in unison on many political issues.

Organized religion has never fit comfortably into Seattle’s style of individualism. We are not big church goers - not like we are with coffee, books and boats. Friendly help for a single wartime mother from the nearby nuns at the Immaculate Conception Church, got my brother and me into the Catholic schools which we attended through O’Dea High. I continued the Catholic experience through one year at Seattle U, then transferred to the U of W, where the Huskies, after years with no Rose Bowl participation, were in the process of winning back to back.

All my roots are in the central area of Seattle, where I was born and raised, attended grade and high school and the first year of college. I was first mentored as a lawyer there by Mr. Greenlee, and my four children were born in a hospital about two blocks from the one where I was born. The UW, where I completed my formal education, is just through the Arboretum and across the Ship Canal from the central area.

When lists of standards, even though subjective, are applied to cities, Seattle is almost always ranked among the “best places” . With the notable exception of Mark Twain’s variously quoted remark about having spent a mild winter in Seattle one summer, most people who come here for a visit are enchanted with the natural beauty, the friendliness of the people, the weather as it really is and the overall appeal of the area. This enchantment makes the residents fearful that too many people will learn what we know about Seattle and move here in droves and despoil what we love. In a move appropriate to the uniqueness of the city, Seattle writer Emmett Watson started “Lesser Seattle” to protect us from boosterism.

I admit to ambivalence when Husky football games are on national TV and the announcers have not been here before. Agreeing with Emmett, I want to see terrible weather and hear the announcers quote Twain. But my honest side wants to see the one of those beautifully crisp fall days I experienced at Husky Stadium during my five years as a student, with all the grandeur of the Cascades looming over the lush multi-hued greenery of the foothills, the few white clouds in the wondrous blue sky far outnumbered by the boats of all descriptions floating on the deeply enchanting waters of Lake Washington as flocks of seagulls fly overhead, mercifully sparing the Stadium crowd from bombardment. Often in such circumstances, verbose announcers who are first time visitors are awestruck and made speechless by the realization of what they have been missing through the years.

Today, in Detroit, I want announcers to be awestruck by the Seattle Seahawks they have disrespected. I expect Seattle to win, 24-17, but I would like to see them win by a blowout worthy of the respect the team and the city deserve.