the 16 Meridian

Back then, the 16 Meridian was my bus, my lifeline to the world in the Seattle of the early 1970’s. Back then nobody knew where Seattle was on the map. It was a dingy small sea town in most people’s eyes. If they did hear of it, it was because of Boeing. Back when Seattle was a one-horse one-company town. And when the Super Sonic transport was abandoned, people put up a road sign asking if the last person leaving Seattle would turn out the lights. That’s when I moved up there from the star-spangled streets of Southern California. Everyone told me not to do it. Everyone told me I would hate it. But they were wrong. I’d been there earlier. I’d seen Mount Rainier appear out of the clouds on a sunny day over downtown Seattle; I’d seen the Ballard Locks, the forest surrounding the city and I was in love with it.

Back then the 16 Meridian would pick me up at my Green Lake home, wind through Wallingford, into Fremont, and over the Aurora Bridge into Downtown. There it would drop me off and I would walk to Second and Blanchard and wait for the Des Moines Express for twenty minutes. I’d stand in front of a dilapidated old storefront, decorated with glass floats and other memorabilia of the sea and some young down on her luck woman would be dancing in a window in her underwear at 7 in the morning, working to lure folks inside. I’d pad from foot to foot waiting for the Des Moines Express to take me south of Sea-Tac airport for my job driving a hoopy truck.

The 16 would take me downtown on off days to rummage the books at Elliott Bay, to Sample the Music at the J&M, and bring me back home safe and sound by late night. I remember once on the 16 downtown, a young woman got on, followed by a shady young man, and she came over to my seat, sat down, and started talking to me like an old friend. Under her breath, she said: “Make believe I am your girlfriend” and glanced toward the young man in the front of the bus she was trying to avoid. And she was a beautiful woman, so I had no difficulty accommodating her. I remember, in those days, the SROs and the flop houses, the Alaskan Natives battling the bottle on the street, but everyone at least had a place to live. Everyone had a chance. And when the bus was in the downtown corridor, it was free.

It was a town of demonstrations and discourse. It was off the beaten path. It was cheap. Seattle was cheap! Can you believe that? It was. There was no Microsoft, No Costco. No Amazon, and Starbucks was a single store down in Pike Place Market. With a bus transfer I would ride the 6 Stoneway, the 26 Green Lake, the 7 Rainier all over that town, a place where it rained constantly and people never got wet. A place where people never used umbrellas. A place that was not full of itself, where you could take the bus to the ferry terminal and travel to the islands even if you were poor like I was. And when the rain stopped, and the clouds cleared, the Mountain, that’s what we called it: the Mountain would come out and everyone would stop what they were doing and smile. Take a deep breath and smile.

It’s not like that now, Billy, is it? Your mom probably doesn’t allow you take the bus, and she is right. It’s a different town now. It’s been discovered. Only rich people can live there now. And when only rich people can live in a place, it is always time to get out. It is time to find some other shabby place, down on its luck, and open in its heart. Anyway, that’s your Grandpa’s story, Billy. My wish for you is that you find someplace just like Seattle used to be, with busses that can take you anywhere, and stories that come right to your seat and sit down next to you, just like your grandma did on the 16 Meridian, many, many years ago.

— DanielSouthGate