By Seán Malone and John Sweetman
The West Seattle Bridge was closed to thru traffic going east and west. I had allowed 50 minutes to get from the Fauntleroy dock to my appointment at Swedish Hospital. I called the hospital to cancel and request a new appointment.
I had waited three weeks for what I had hoped to be my last eye appointment after three operations that had left me with the inability to focus my right eye at any distance.
After 30 minutes, I was able to exit the freeway and return to the ferry via the First Avenue on-ramp.
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Both my sister, Molly and I, had commuted to high school in Seattle when the ferry ride for a student cost 10 cents. Dad was speeding thru the curves above the Heights hill, driving on both sides of the road.
Molly yelled: “Dad, please slow down.”
“I’m just straightening out the curves,” he replied. We were late for the ferry again. As we neared the bottom of the Heights hill, dad started honking the horn to implore them not to close the gate to the ferry and make us late for school.
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Now, the state tells us that we won’t have a third ferry on the Vashon run for four years. For me, a missed ferry made me late for school at Seattle Prep. If the principal saw me coming down the hall late, he led me downstairs to the boiler room for three spats, a painful reminder that living on an Island had consequences.
The Jesuits quit using corporal punishment many years ago, but that doesn’t erase the painful memory of being led by the principal to the boiler room in the basement. Father W would tell me to grab my ankles while he whacked me three times with a three-foot long wooden paddle.
I remember another time I was threatened by spats. We were late for the ferry again. When Dad parked in the line for the next ferry, I jumped out and ran for the slip with the crew yelling at me to stop. The ferry was pulling away when I reached the lip of the slip and jumped six feet down to the ferry deck. I was scared to death by Father W and remembered the pain of the spats.
I had been causing a ruckus in Mr. A’s algebra class, and he told me to leave the room. You would stand outside the door of the algebra class, praying that the principal had already picked up the attendance slip, which occupied a small receptacle on the wall beside the door. If you were outside the classroom when the principal picked up the attendance slips, it was downstairs for three spats.
We also had corporal punishment in the Vashon grade school. If a teacher sent you to the office for disrupting class or any other reason, our principal Mr. Moore would ask you to explain your bad behavior. All the while you tried, he would be tapping his left hand with a rubber hose. If your explanation was not acceptable, the principal would administer three spats.
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This month’s story turned out to be about commuting instead of Thanksgiving because Seán was stalled in a commute to Seattle, which inspired some memories.
Both our families commuted during the early 40s, and at that time the ferry system was private and owned as the “Black Ball” Line. It was owned by a certain Mr. Peabody, who my grandfather always referred to as … “that crook.”
Ferry service was erratic, and the fares considered to be “extortionate,” at least as far as family lore recalls. The ferry line was taken over by the state in the early 50s.
Virtually everyone on Vashon commuted to Boeing and other places. While the internal public transport system of electric trolleys worked well after one got to Coleman Dock, the “getting to” the ferry was erratic. My dad worked at the Boeing Renton plant and my grandfather had his office in the Securities Building. He also had remodeled some apartment building so he could stay in town if the ferry system failed, which it did.
My first commute was as a passenger, since my mom was supposed to birth me at the Winslow Clinic, but various complications necessitated a trip to Swedish Hospital. So my grandparents drove to the ferry dock, and naturally the boat was late. Normally my dad would be the one driving but he was in Cuba with the Army Air Force, on some top-secret B29 project.
The ferry being late, my mom had begun the birth process and was somewhat advanced as they finally reached Swedish Hospital. I bet the Black Ball line charged for an extra passenger. I would have been born in a different place had the ferry been on time.
Later on, about 2000, I commuted for years to the County Courthouse via those top-heavy old oil platform boats that were converted to the PO fleet. Basically, riding those was just a decade of continuous cribbage games.
