So I said, I’m in.
The project was to build a shopping mall. A developer, the Bridge Group, had purchased most of a city block in Ballard, a nice, sleepy waterfront neighborhood just over a short bridge from downtown Seattle. But the project got stalled off just as I came on board, so they had me working on another project in the meantime. That Christmas, while I was still waiting to get started down in Ballard, a columnist for The Seattle Times apparently wrote about an odd phenomenon that went on down near the site. I didn’t read about it at the time, but I heard about it later: At night, after the bars closed, lots of people with no place else to go would park their cars on the side streets, and kind of live in them. The columnist, a guy named Danny Westneat, wrote that one night he counted forty-one live-in vehicles parked in a couple-block area – right in the neighborhood where I was going to be building the mall.
In the article he quoted Edith, saying she thought that maybe two hundred or three hundred of these itinerants camped out in this rolling car colony on the weekends. You’d think the locals would be pretty furious that the cops were letting this go on, but her attitude was “What can you do? They don’t have any money, so where can they go? The way I see it, if they don’t bother me, I don’t bother them.” Seemed like a pretty philosophical approach. I didn’t see that article until much later, but when somebody did show it to me, I was kind of surprised – you don’t expect someone with a reputation for being so ornery and crotchety to be so accepting of stuff like that.
Sometimes people aren’t who you think they are.
It was spring of 2006 when most of the permits cleared and we could finally get rolling. I got down there early that first day, to do what I always do when I start a job. I began by going around to all the neighbors on the surrounding streets, introducing myself to people, making sure they had my cell phone number in case there were any problems. I always feel like it’s good to get that up front first. You can’t pretend to do a big job like this right down the block from someone and not have them notice, or act like you’re never gonna cause them a problem. But you can let them know you care enough to hear about what you’re doing that’s annoying folks, and you’re willing to meet them halfway. I feel like it’s my responsibility. If someone was doing that to me, I’d expect the same.
The first day of breaking ground still gets to me after all these years of working construction. It’s that sense of anticipation you feel on the first day of school – excited and nervous all at the same time. Especially when you break ground in springtime. There’s something about that fresh spring air that gets in your blood, and it was getting to me as I walked the streets of Ballard that morning, although, to be honest, Edith’s block was no bed of roses. Her street still had a lot of those transients living in cars, and you could see a few of them sleeping in their dilapidated old vehicles that morning. They had a tendency to clean out the nearby Dumpsters and then toss whatever garbage they had right outside the cars, and use the weeds for their Porta-Potty, so it wasn’t the most savory atmosphere you could imagine. Pretty disgusting, actually.
But as I approached Edith’s house, I got a strong whiff of fresh-mown grass, and it took me back to when I was a kid, mowing lawns for quarters. Same thing happens to me in the fall, the smell of leaves and the snap in the air. It takes me back to when I’d go hunting with my dad. Those smells bring you back to happy times, and they kind of bring the happiness back with them. It’s a good feeling.
In the springtime I always think I’m smelling the bubble gum that came with baseball cards. I was probably imagining things, but that’s what it felt like as I approached Edith’s front gate. For just a moment, you feel like a man and a child all at the same time.
Most of the sidewalk on Edith’s block is overgrown with blackberry bushes, but they stop at her property line. Her yard is like a little clearing in that jungle. Within that clearing, Edith’s house looks like something out of a storybook. A compact building, two floors, plus a basement that peeks up out of the ground, the whole thing maybe twenty feet wide. It’s set about ten feet back from the sidewalk and the ground slopes down toward the house so the foundation is a good three feet lower than the street in front of it, making the house seem even smaller than it is. Or as if the house is crouching a few feet from the street, tired from too many years of trying to stand up straight.
There’s a tiny entranceway in front, with an arched opening. It looks like the miniature house on the front of a Swiss cuckoo clock, and you half expect a little wooden soldier to come sliding out of it every hour on the hour. There’s a small patch of grass, which Edith kept neat and tidy. It’s somewhat overgrown with dandelions now, but when I first walked past the house, it was one of the first things I noticed: how tidy the lawn was. It brightened up the neighborhood: a beautiful oasis in that ugly place, with irises planted all around it. It felt welcoming, and drew your eye away from all that urban decay. It made me feel good to see someone who, from outside appearances anyway, was happy with how she had things, especially when what she had wasn’t much. Most people complain about what they don’t have; here was someone making the most of what she did have.
Edith was tending her garden that morning. Kneeling down like that, it looked like she was praying, or looking for something she’d lost. My first reaction was one of relief. She reminded me of my great-grandma, a small, sweet, meek-looking lady, like someone in a storybook who would have a mouse for a pet. I was still a little leery, though, because I didn’t know how she was handling the news about the construction, and because of what the guys had told me about her.
“Hi, I’m Barry Martin,” I said. “I’m going to be building this project around you.” I braced for the worst.
“Well, I’m pleased to meet you,” she said, rising slowly, like she was unfolding her limbs one by one. “I’m Edith Wilson Macefield.”
A concrete truck from the Salmon Bay Concrete Plant a half-block down from her house roared past us, keeping us from talking for a moment. We sized each other up in silence, waiting for the truck to pass. Even standing up, Edith was a little stooped over, with a hunch to her back, and hazel-blue eyes that didn’t quite both look at you at the same time. She had to pick one eye to fix on you, but she made up for it by looking at you straight and hard, and not letting go of your gaze once she had it. She was a thin woman with white hair and a wide face, and looked like the kind of person who cared more about her appearance than you might expect of someone that age, especially someone seemingly so isolated. She was wearing a blue knit sweater and a pair of slacks and some garden gloves, and she pulled off one glove, walked over, and shook my hand. Even though she was small and frail, her handshake seemed strong and confident. I was relieved – the anger I’d expected from her hadn’t materialized. But I felt a little sad, too, to see this old woman, apparently living so alone.
“Well, nice to meet you, Miss Macefield,” I said. The concrete truck had passed, and the rumble of cars coming over the bridge had stopped for the moment; all of a sudden the air was still and silent, the way it gets on a warm spring day. You could hear someone mowing a lawn a few blocks away, it was that quiet.
I had introduced myself to just about everybody who would be affected by the project, but as much as I knew this was all just part of the job, this particular introduction seemed different – I mean, we were going to build a shopping mall all around this lady’s house. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Or actually, I could. A hell of a lot of noise and dirt and debris and destruction. I had the urge to sugarcoat it a bit, to try to make it seem less disturbing than it was likely to be; but one look at Edith and you knew: this was not a lady who took her medicine with a spoonful of sugar.
“Miss Macefield, I just want to let you know we’re going to be making a whole lot of noise and creating a big mess. There’s no way around that. But if you ever need anything, or have any problems, here’s my number. Don’t hesitate to call.”
“Well, that’s very nice of you,” she said, taking my card, holding it up close to one eye, then tucking it into a front pocket of her slacks.