January 14, 2001
I live in a town built by toilets.
It's true: Seattle owes its current shape to the invention of Sir Thomas Crapper. Without the installation of dozens of crapper-devices, there would have been no need for a sewer. Without a sewer, there would have been no backing up of the sewer at high tide and without the sewer backing up, no one would have considered raising the streets up out of the mud, thus ending the days of a life-preserver on every corner for rescuing small children from drowning in mud puddles. (Hey, I'm not making this stuff up, you know!)
I am grateful to modern plumbing, though I don't have any on my boat. I still pump water by hand and have to walk up the dock to take a shower (more about that another time). But I often envision the city when it was on the mud flats, flush toilets proudly standing on the tops of towers 12 or more feet high, to avoid the... shall we say "fallout"?... of flushing at high tide.
Late at night, how the residents must have wondered if it was all worth it, as they climbed up to the tops of the towers on their rickety ladders for a midnight "contemplation." And what of the ones who fell off? Were they taken gingerly to the doctor with the explanation "another Crapper incident, doc"? Oh, the embarrassment....
The tide tables used to be printed on the front page of the daily paper with the admonition to post them in your "convenience" to avoid a sort of reverse flush if you forgot. Many must have been the housewife who pitched a bitch over the state of the water closet. Putting down the seat was the least of their worries. Pulling the chain at high tide would have rendered a bit of an unpleasant surprise, however. Instant justice for lack of forethought.
It must have been a strange place, in those days (regardless of the 100+ "seamstresses" who didn't own a sewing machine between the lot of them and the disappearance of a wagon and team into the largest sink hole in the state, which is known as Yesler Avenue, today. And still a sink hole, of another kind.) And then it burned to the ground.
The fire chief was away at the time and the fire hydrants, much like the toilets, had problems with the tide, only theirs went the other way. When the tide was out, there wasn't much pressure.
Of course, the tide was out and the place went up like the torch it was. Somewhat inconsiderate, when you think that someone must have been in the toilet at the time. After all, the tide was out....
So, they decided to rebuild of brick and stone (though the reason wasn't fireproofing but the fact that a member of the City Council owned the only brick works in town) and to raise the streets to a sufficient level that the sewer could empty into Elliot Bay at something above the high tide line.
And thus: modern Seattle, with its weird underground streets beneath the historic district and a serious preoccupation with plumbing.
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