could establish a new city. They boarded a ship, the schooner Exact, and sailed north along the coast. (I have no idea why that shard of memory—the ship’s name—has stuck with me through all the decades between now and the time I took the required Washington Constitution class in eighth grade!)
At any rate, Denny’s group came ashore at Alki Point in Duwamish Bay in the midst of a cold November only to discover that someone had screwed up. The cabin they’d planned to use for shelter during the winter months was not yet completed. They finished building it and moved in, but the months they spent there were cold, wet, and miserable. Not only did they have to deal with constant rain, they were also at the mercy of unpredictable tides and currents. When spring finally arrived the next year, they went looking for greener pastures, leaving Alki Point in the dust and settling on a site near Elliott Bay, which is where downtown Seattle is now located. Over time West Seattle developed into a mostly residential area filled with relatively inexpensive bungalows that provided affordable housing for the families of people who worked in the industrial areas that eventually grew up to the south of what is now downtown Seattle.
With the GPS guiding the way to 10100 SW 24th Avenue SW, Lucy and I crossed the West Seattle Bridge onto Fauntleroy and then south on 35th Avenue SW. The only big surprise along the way was my learning, by motoring past the location, that there’s now an outpost of my favorite local barbecue joint—Pecos Pit Bar-B-Que—in West Seattle.
The drive down 35th seemed to take forever, but I have to say traffic there moved a hell of a lot better than it does on Second Avenue in downtown Seattle. I turned left onto Roxbury and then right on 24th. As soon as the GPS announced that we had arrived at our destination, I could see the problem. On the house in question, the windows and doors were all boarded up, with colorful bits of graffiti covering every available surface. An official-looking sign of some sort had been affixed to the chunk of plywood that stood in for a front door. Examining the derelict, I realized Scotty was right. This might have been Naomi Dale’s address once, but that was no longer the case. The place was completely deserted.
Driving past, I noticed an oversize billboard in the weed-choked yard next door. The sign claimed that a subdivision called Mayfield Glen, a development containing eight homes with prices starting in the mid-$900,000s, would be coming soon to this location, compliments of Highline Development. The billboard was up, but there was no accompanying Environmental Impact Statement sign anywhere in sight. That meant that construction on this little McMansion project, all its houses with close to zero lot lines, wouldn’t be starting anytime soon.
I parked at the base of the billboard. Then, with Lucy on a leash, the two of us set out on an exploratory stroll around the neighborhood. I had driven in rain coming south from Bellingham. Things had dried out somewhat during my wait at the Silver Cloud, but now as we exited the car, the drizzle started up again. To begin with, it was more of a cold mist than a real downpour—not enough to warrant bringing along either the umbrella or the rainproof jacket that I generally keep in the trunk.
The Mayfield Glen project’s outer perimeter was fenced off with a cordon of orange netting. Inside I spotted four houses, which had at one time been small but identical wood-frame bungalows. Now all four were in various stages of decay. Three of them were boarded up and decked out with layers of competing graffiti. There was a gaping hole in the roof of one. On another the front porch had collapsed and fallen away from the remainder of the building. Two of the four, including the one where Naomi had lived and the one next door, seemed close to being habitable. At least their mossy roofs were still intact, and the front porches were still attached. It made me sad to realize that these humble little places had once been homes filled with proud working families, their lives and laughter. Now they were forlorn, abandoned ruins, awaiting the inevitable arrival of bulldozers and wrecking balls.
“Well,” I said aloud to Lucy, “it looks to me like whoever runs Highline Development came here bargain shopping and is about to make a