Friday, August 7: Bandersnatches
MYSTERY TOUR
by Steve Steinbock
I don’t know if I ever mentioned it to the Criminal Brief community at large, but I’ve been on the road all summer with my two teen-age sons. We’re in Seattle right now, doing family catch-up time with my sisters and their families.
Last week the boys were getting bored. I decided to liven things up with a Surprise Mystery Tour. I entered a bunch of addresses into the GPS receiver and placed 16 year-old Nate at the helm. The first address was my sister’s house, where we picked up my 16 year-old niece, Samantha.
The kids, I should point out, had no idea as to any of our destinations. Throughout the journey, all they knew was the next turn in the road.
I should also add that my GPS device talks like C-3PO, the protocol droid from Star Wars. With a voice like Anthony Daniels’s, the Tom-Tom addresses us as “Master” and directs us with instructions like “Keep right and go straight on to the motorway.” Whenever we make a wrong turn it says, “Oh dear!”
The first destination was 350 Monroe Ave NE, in Renton, Washington.
The car traveled west on NE 4th Street until C-3PO said, “Take the next left and you have reached your destination, Master.” The kids looked out the car window.
“Oh, boy,” said Sam as the car turned on to Monroe Avenue. “We’re going to McDonalds for lunch.”
“No,” I said. “Look out the left side.”
“Greenwood Memorial Park,” Nate read off the sign. “We’re going to a cemetery?”
“Just park the car and walk south.”
Nate figured it out first. The marble pagoda had three walls, each one bearing the image of a gypsy-attired guitarist. Nate quickened his pace. “It’s Jimi Hendrix. He’s buried here.”
He was, indeed, along with his father and several other relations.
It’s a beautiful memorial located a few hundred yards from another lovely spot, the Asian section of the cemetery, symmetrically designed and landscaped, with a blue fountain and twin uniform headstones throughout.
The next stop was another cemetery. But the kids didn’t know that until we got there. Lakeview Cemetery is located on 15th Avenue East, atop the northern stretch of Seattle’s Capitol Hill. True to the name, there was a nice view of Lake Washington. Finding the relevant gravesite was a bigger challenge, but after driving around for a bit, we found it in the shade of a large rhododendron. There were two graves: one for father, the other for son. Bruce Lee’s stone was in red granite and on its base, covered with flowers, notes, and photos, was a black stone book bearing an inscription in Chinese and English. Brandon Lee’s stone was a flowing obelisk in polished black granite. Two lives tragically cut short.
The third stop was Pagliacci Pizzaria for lunch and gelato. There were several other stops, including Temple De Hirsch Sinai, the synagogue of my youth where Jimi Hendrix played his very first gig while a student at Garfield High School.
The kids enjoyed and appreciated the entire journey, despite – or possibly because of – not knowing their hour-by-hour destinies. If I had to draw a connection between the Mystery Tour and the theme of Criminal Brief, I suppose the short lives of Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee, and Brandon Lee remind us that a lot of story can be packed into a brief period of time. It’s also a reminder of how mystery writers need to plan their stories and have clear destinies in mind in order to keep their readers in suspense.
See you next trip.
Oh, more non-fiction out of you Steve, at last.
I spent a long time in Seattle, but long before GPS. 1961, if you believe it. The wheel had just been invented.
JFK was president, the bus fare was 10¢, and burgers at Herfy’s were 19¢. State college tuition was $135 a year and my first job paid $1.00 per hour. It rained at least three times a day in Seattle, and when it wasn’t raining, it was cold and windy. Mr. Wind loved to invert umbrellas.
The school mascot was a seagull named Spencer, who targeted umbrellas. His high-altitude, fecal releases were reported in the student paper, the THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DAILY.
The World’s Fair opened in Seattle that year. The Monorail began running from downtown to the fairgrounds and there was a burlesque show staring Vaudeville’s most famous stripper, Lili St. Sere. At about 80 she wore nothing but two huge feather fans, and never showed anything we college students wanted to see – a talent lost to time.
However, there’s not enough Prozac in the world to make we want to go back, except in my memories.
what a great idea, Steve. Thanks for sharing.
Any chance your GPS will take you 2 hours up the road to Bellingham?
Man, that’s cool.
I’ve done something like this. I was homeschooling my son in Pittsburgh, and trying to educate him in American History, and getting the usual dull stare, so we went for a hike.
We stopped at a BP gas station not that far from our house. “Remember how I told you about Colonel Bouquet fighting his way through the forest to the headwaters of the Ohio, only to find that the French Marines and Canadian militia had abandoned Fort Duquesne? And how Bouquet went on to found what is today the city of Pittsburgh on its ashes?”
(shrug) “Yeah.”
“Well,” I said, pointing, “this is where Colonel Bouquet’s troops camped the night before they marched on the French fort. Our house is that way, over the hill. From our front door you could likely hear his outlying scouts moving through the trees.”
He grew silent, and looked around.
“You talk about wanting to go out west and see the old frontier,” I said. “But what you’re missing is the fact that *this* was the frontier in the 1700s. Trappers and scouts and Indians all roamed the land, and French Marines and Canadian militia came through here and fought British redcoats and American militia, and all of it happened close enough to our front door that we can walk to the places where the battles took place. Look at the dirt here; some of the people in those battles actually walked through our yard.”
It was an object lesson to him: even in the quietest, most boring places, incredible stories have taken place.
Magical! My summers as a kid were spent visiting family near Kansas City and Albuquerque. (My Grandfather’s idea of a shortcut was to go from Kansas to New Mexico by way of Mt. Rushmore or Yellowstone Park in the pre-GPS days. Oh, and we went to Albuquerque the back way, through Arizona!) To borrow a line: “Every life is a story.” When I visit my Brother in Missouri I’m well aware that I’m in a town that was a Civil War battlefield. And that the kids growing up there largely don’t care. Steve, you and your family are as lucky as anything to be able to do this! AND speaking of stories, have you visited Washington D.C.? Check out Congressional Cemetery, not just a burying place for those who have lived history, but a place that has experienced history: In April 1865 one of the Lincoln Conspirators hid there!
Wow! I’m gushing and rambling!
Thanks!
The only thing worse than growing up somewhere and not caring about its history, is growing up somewhere–and never being told that your town has a history at all.
Wheeling, West Virginia has the singular distinction of having been a city in Virgina (pre-1863)…
…being the de facto capitol of Virginia, as the seat of the “Restored Government of Virginia” pro-Union government (June 1861 through June 1863)…
…of being the capitol of the state of West Virginia (1863 – 1870)…
…of a major city in West Virginia when the capitol moved to Charleston (1870 – 1875)…
…of being the capitol of West Virginia AGAIN (1875 – 1885)…
…and of going back to being just a city after the capitol moved to Charleston–also AGAIN (1885 — present).
[And all of the above skips the fact that Wheeling is built on the site of Fort Henry, site of the last battle of the Revolutionary War. It’s really got a long and storied history.]
So, how much of this was I taught when I went to school in Wheeling? NONE OF IT.
Sometimes, it is not a case of not caring, so much as the fact that no one bothers to teach the local history that helped build a nation, and within sight of your front door.