Special Guest Post – Seattle Visit Day 4

I thought I might get our trip description finished up in this post, but I have been held up by a real-time “incident” here in the neighborhood.

Sunday morning our renter, who lives in the same section as us, called to say that someone had stolen his little digger from the corner at the end of his driveway.  Since he was busy trying to get the crop in, he asked Eldon to follow the digger tracks down the road and see where it went.  After some stern instructions on not confronting anyone, he headed off in his pickup to track the stolen digger.

Now dragging a digger along a gravel road leaves a nice trail of tine marks behind you. I am thinking of submitting this thief’s crime to the America’s Dumbest Criminals show.

The trail led right passed our house down to the corner.  Then it turned south for a half mile and right into the driveway of our neighbor.  Eldon could see that the digger had been dragged into the yard and around behind the grove.  We do not know this neighbor.  The farm place is owned by someone, but has been rented out to various other people the last 5-6 years.  We would not even recognize the neighbor if we saw him.

Eldon came home and he and the renter called the deputy sheriff who came out.  After hearing what had happened, the deputy followed the trail into the neighbor’s yard.  Yes, there it was behind the grove; the stolen digger attached to an ATV.   Naturally, the deputy and we immediately blamed the man of the house as the guilty party.  The deputy spoke to the Mrs. and she said the man was not home.  The deputy said the men could not go get the digger until he had talked to the man (in hopes of getting some kind of explanation.)

An hour later the deputy called us to say the county attorney had instructed him to go get the digger and return it to the owner.  So the deputy came back and he and Eldon went over, attached the digger to Eldon’s pickup, and Eldon dragged it home.  Eldon hid the digger behind a long, white grain bag in the yard so as not to tempt the guy into stealing it a second time.  Oh, I know.  That sounds silly, but not knowing much about criminal behavior, it could happen.  Whatever possessed the guy to steal it in the first place is probably still possessing him.

That is where the matter stands.  We did see a strange ATV and black pickup drive back and forth in front of the house twice yesterday afternoon so maybe the thief was out looking for his new digger that someone stole from him.  The point is, if you see something on someone else’s property and even though you think it was been abandoned and you know it does not belong to you, do not attach your ATV to it and drag it home.  You are opening yourself up to theft and procession of stolen property charges.

It is rather ironic that just a week ago, as Eldon and I walked from Will/Joni’s to the hotel toward dark, I said to him, “We have two things against us.  We are old(er) and we look like tourists.  Therefore, we are going to have to walk with purpose (meaning walking fast and like we knew exactly what we were doing and where we were going).”  We had to walk by a gang of 5 or 6 teenagers, lots of people outside two bars on the other side of the street, and one of the 2-3 neighborhood homeless guys had come out to sit in a doorway.  And here we are back in our own rural home wondering who are and what are our own neighbors capable of.  At least I have three additional statements to put in my first book, Mary’s Words of Caution; a subject I know a lot about and have had years of experience developing and practicing.

But you did not come to this blog to read the Swift County Police Log.  You came to experience a wonderful trip to Seattle, so let’s go through at least part of Monday before we wear out.

Monday

Monday morning, Will mentioned a couple of times how we just had the Ballard Locks to see today so it would be a shorter day and maybe we wanted to add another Seattle tourist site to the day’s agenda.  He did not need to concern himself on that score.

The day started with breakfast at the Voorhees’ home; gluten free pancakes with blueberries, bacon, and boiled eggs.  The pancakes were delicious.  One would certainly never know they were gluten free or any different from other pancakes we’ve eaten.  We also had frothed milk in our French pressed coffee!

We got on the bus for Ballard, about 2-3 miles northwest of Fremont.  We got off the bus and walked a ways to the locks, but got to see some of the Ballard streets and shops.  The bike path goes all the way up to Ballard too.  This day was the only day of our visit that it showered and drizzled all day.  I can’t even say “rained” because there was never a good raining like in MN –no thunder or lightening.  Occasionally the drizzle would turn to showering for a few minutes.

Actually it is the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks………………..& GARDENS!  Did someone say “gardens”?

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The trees, flowers, and plants were absolutely magnificent!  I saw plants and flowers we have in MN, but the iris blossoms were so big and vibrantly colored.  The leaves on the ivy vines were so much larger than what I’ve seen in MN.  I do not know if the cooler, damp Seattle weather or better seed stock or using fertilizer or what accounts for that.

Here’s Will and Eldon investigating a plant.

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Look at the size of those leaves and the leaves seemed to be WATERPROOF!  The rain droplets just beaded up on the leaves.  The droplets rolled to the center of the leaf, on down the stem, and into the ground to the roots.

Joni and Will took a closer look at these flowering trees.

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Each of those blossoms is made up of about 10 clusters of flowers.  Each cluster had five petals.  In each of the clusters, four petals were exactly the same, but the fifth petal was the same color with something different on it.  The red ones the kids are looking at had four red petals and one red petal with five red dots on it.  The white flowering trees had clusters of four all white petals and one white petal with a yellow stripe down the middle.  Each and every time!  Isn’t it amazing the awesome things nature does??

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We walked on down to the locks.  They were just collecting some big boats into a lock to lower them down.

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They got the boats in and tied up.  Once they started opening the doors, the water would churn and rush out of the lock.  The birds, in their attempt to pick up yummy fish, do not know that they can be easily swept up by the force of the water and drowned.  So the lock people started spraying water from both sides in front of the closed lock doors to scare away the birds.  There were about 4-12’ lengths of 3” galvanized pipe attached together on each side of the closed lock doors.    The pipe had holes down the sides that provided the water spray.  They opened the lock doors, the water went rushing out, and the doors were almost completely open back to the walls.

Then it happened!  The accident!  Two lengths of the pipe fell off the wall and down in between the opening door and the wall.  Naturally, the door could not open completely against the wall.  Well people, it was just like Pam and the ambulance.  The accident happens and those with emergency preparedness training spring into action without standing around asking, “What do you think we should do now?”  The next thing I saw was William high-stepping it back across the metal catwalk to the other side of the lock.  He got the attention of one of the guys directing the ships.  Will explained the situation to which the workguy responded, “Oh crap!”  The workguy went over there, got on the radio and summoned 2-3 other guys over.   After some discussion, one of the guys got down between the door and wall and managed to snag one length of pipe with a rope.  They pulled that one out of there.  Pretty soon a DNR Park ranger arrived.  We could tell who he was by his hat and hunter green uniform.  No doubt, he had the primary responsibility for the wellbeing of the birds.

Had I not been so stunned by the matter, I would have stepped over with a few words of caution like, “Will you guys please be careful!”  But not to worry.   Each and every workman is in harness with a rope attached.  The other end of the rope is attached with a metal hook to a strong metal railing that runs the length of the locks.  They can walk back and forth along the lock in their attached harnesses.  This is the safety procedure so, if a guy falls off the ledge, he will only smash himself against the wall.  His body will be easy to find.  It will be at the end of the rope.  At least his body would not be dragged into the rushing currents, swept downstream out into the ocean, and eaten by a pack of CA sea lions.

I thought it was just unfortunate that we did not have our Joe of Conroy Well Drilling along.  He certainly has had lots of experience getting dropped pipes out of a hole and he would not need 4 other guys “helping”.  Didn’t our brother, John, or our dad invent a tool specifically designed to snag dropped pipe or pumps?  Other well drillers always came over to borrow that thing.  Why hasn’t John sold that idea to the DNR and lock people all over the world?  Then he could go down in history right alongside that trucker with the standardized container idea.  Of course, our John and his antics will go down in history anyway, but it would be nice to have him down in history for something good.

We did not wait around to see how they were going to solve the problem.  I think some of the workpeople were going back to tell the big ships to get out of the lock, since the door was open far enough for them to get out.  And they were starting to line up boats in the other lock to lift them up.  I wish I had taken more pictures of the commotion.

Someone had the bright idea that we should go over to view the fish ladder.  Oh, there was nothing wrong with the idea, but they failed to mention that it involved walking across the open catwalk about 3’ in front of the raging dam. The other three acted like this was perfectly normal.  They stopped in the middle to look at the special round things put up in the Spring to help the little salmon fingerlings survive and not get eaten by birds.  They stopped off and on to hang over the edge and look straight down.  I, on the other hand, made a beeline directly down the center of the catwalk telling myself, “put one foot forward, put the other foot forward, put the other foot forward” until I hit the cement on the other side.   I must say it was well worth it though.

We went into a building that had windows so we could see under the dam.  We saw the fish making their way up the “ladder”.  I saw two big fish and lots of little fish like minnows.  I don’t know if they were salmon, but I think the salmon run was just beginning. The ladder is really a cement stairway designed to help the fish swim upstream against the current to spawn.

We made our way back over the catwalk, walked along the lock and over to the visitor’s center.  As we walked along, we saw these two trying to hold a tree limb up.

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…………………………ok, maybe that part didn’t happen……………….at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks anyway.

There were two greeters in the visitor’s center and they were talking back and forth.  Eldon heard one of them mention Fargo, ND so he went over to speak to them.  Turned out the one guy grew up at Herman, MN so he knew Appleton and Hancock well.  His name was Ron Neighbor but spelled differently than N-e-i-g-h-b-o-r.  He was about Eldon’s age and had gone to Seattle right after he got out of the service, liked it so stayed. He worked in retail all his life and was now retired.   His brother still lives 5 miles out of Herman.  I think he really enjoyed talking to someone from “home” and Eldon enjoyed visiting with him.

As we were leaving the Ballard Locks, it was getting on to 3pm.  Even though it is not naptime, I think we should take a break because this is getting too long.  Come back tomorrow and we’ll finish up with Monday.

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