I could have taken my truck, but I just thought it would be hard for her to climb up into the cab. Still, it was a bit odd, getting into her car, she had a kind of straw booster seat on the driver’s side; I guess it was the only way she could see over the steering wheel. I had just about sat down when I hit my head on the inside of the roof, and I had to wiggle myself back out and move that booster seat into the back. Edith looked over and laughed.
“I guess you’re just a little bit bigger than me,” she said.
“Yeah, well, getting a little wider every year, too,” I said.
On the way to the hairdresser’s, Edith and I started talking about how much we liked Ballard. It still says Seattle on the map, but Ballard’s always been a world unto itself. It used to be more of an industrial enclave, although one with a real neighborhood feel; the industry and the residents fit together like a hand and a soft old glove. It had become kind of seedy and run-down over the last couple of years, but it still had the feeling of a community of people who cared about one another. The old Ballard crowd seemed to have known one another for a million years, Edith included. And run-down though the neighborhood might be, they were pretty united against the yuppie paradise that they thought Ballard was becoming, now that the development had begun.
I guess I could see their point, in a way, although I had to admit that the development was helping put food on my table, so I couldn’t complain too much.
We drove under the ramp of the bridge that goes over the ship canal, which connects Puget Sound to Lake Washington. The bridge itself connects Ballard to Seattle proper, and it’s central to everything that happened. At some point, people started realizing what a great place this would be to live – right on the water and, thanks to that bridge, such an easy commute to downtown. Only the folks who already lived here didn’t see it that way. They saw this all as an invasion. Edith and I were driving past a few of the new condos that were going up, the ones that all the Old Ballard folks were all upset about.
For a while, the condos were popping up like popcorn. At one point, in fact, they put a moratorium on residential construction and set aside five thousand acres for industrial use, because all of the industry was getting pushed out and everybody was up in arms about losing the heart and soul of Old Ballard. Most of the condos that had gone up so far were actually a little ways to the south, and I was surprised, at first, that the developers were putting up a shopping mall here on Edith’s block, because I didn’t think there were enough people to warrant it. But when I heard about all the new condos that were planned, the project seemed more like a no-brainer.
On the opposite side of the canal was the spot where they park the boats for the TV show Deadliest Catch. You couldn’t quite see it from where we were driving, but I’d passed it earlier and seen a tour group forming on the dock. I mentioned it to Edith, and commented on how much Ballard had changed since the last time I’d been here, which had been a while ago. I’d come down to go to the locks and walk around, and there was a construction supply place I used to go to every once in a while. We were just down the road from that place now. I asked Edith if all of the change that was coming to Ballard bothered her the way it did some people.
“No, it doesn’t really matter,” Edith said. “Change is change. You know, that building you’re going to build, twenty years from now they’ll tear that down, too. They tore down the Kingdome, just twenty-five years after they built it, you know. They still owed twenty million dollars on it. That’s just progress, Barry. That’s just how things go.”
“Well, that’s pretty philosophical of you, Edith,” I said.
“Not philosophical at all,” she said. “Realistic. World of difference between the two. Things are what they are.”
I wondered what it was in her life that made her so accepting of change, and at the same time so stubborn about it when she wanted to be.
As we drove, I mentioned that I heard they were thinking of tearing down the Denny’s that had been a fixture in the town since the sixties. I’d been driving past that Denny’s every morning on my way to work.
“Well, the plans are all messed up,” Edith said. “Some folks are trying to get historical status for it. You know those big, sweeping beams it has in the front? Some famous architect from Seattle designed it.”
“Can’t believe they’re going to take it down,” I said.
“I don’t know why everyone was so up in arms,” Edith said. “Historical status for a Denny’s? It’s ridiculous. Change is change,” she said again. “It happens. You need to learn to live with it.”
Maybe so. But as we turned right up toward Market Street – the first time I’d been over there since before we started the project – I was kind of shocked at how different it was. Not the buildings themselves, but the businesses in them. I could almost see what all the fuss was about. We passed a fancy tea shop, a place that sold high-end stereo equipment, and some very nicely dressed folks wearing expensive sunglasses were drinking coffee outside the India Bistro. Dads and kids with bicycles that had shock absorbers in the front were riding past Shakti Vinyasa Yoga across the street.
“It sure is different,” I said. “I still like it, though. I’ve always liked how everything’s so close together in Ballard.”
“You can get from anywhere to anywhere in about five minutes,” she said, and as if to prove it, she added, “Here we are.”
It had, indeed, taken all of five minutes to get from Edith’s out-of-the-way house to the hair salon in the middle of Market Street.
Everybody in the salon knew Edith, and she seemed to know everybody. She greeted each of them by name. If anyone seemed surprised to see Edith with an escort, they didn’t say, and she didn’t offer any explanation. She just asked them how long they thought she’d be there, and they told her about forty minutes. She asked me where I was going to go.
“Well, everything’s about four minutes from here, Edith, so wherever I am, you all give me a call when you’re five minutes from being done and I’ll be here.” I handed my card to the woman who ran the shop.
“Well, all right then,” Edith said, and tilted her head to regard me with a clear, direct look. “Thank you, Barry.”
It was a little early for lunch, but as long as I was on Market Street, I figured I’d continue down to the Totem House. That’s one of the places that had been there a long time. It has a big, corny totem pole out front, and they sell a great seafood chowder. I picked up an order, and decided to drive down toward the beachfront.
A train was passing over the railroad trestle about a quarter-mile down the road. Just beyond that were the locks; by the flow of the water, it looked to me like they had just been opened. It’s kind of amazing, when you think about it – down here, just west of downtown, is salt water. It’s actually the other end of the canal from Edith’s house, just five minutes away, and that’s fresh water. The locks are what connects them. If they just opened the locks, I figured, a boat should be showing up here pretty quick. I like the locks – they have a viewing window down there, and when the salmon are running you can go in and watch them.
I drove past the marina, past the hundreds and hundreds of sailboats – that’s one thing about Ballard that hasn’t changed: They do love their boats. Just beyond the marina, there were a good hundred people sitting on benches and lying on blankets all over the beach. Nobody was in bathing suits, because it was still too cold, and besides, the water’s about 54 degrees that early in the season, but a beach day is a beach day and everybody was out there with picnic lunches, only no bathing suits. Shirts and pants and beach balls. Kind of a funny scene.
It was just a few minutes after I got back to the trailer that my cell phone rang. Edith was ready to go home, so I jumped back in her car. She was waiting for me at the door of the salon; as I helped her back into the car, I got a big whiff of hairspray, one of those things that just transports you into another time, another era. I guess