Intangible Exchanges: One Small-Stepping in South King County

Judie had asked me to accompany her on one of her conversations ‘tween urban and not-so urban, her one-woman campaign to listen and lessen gulfs of misunderstanding separating Americans, one from another.

Judie and I headed southeast-ward but my navigation was woeful. I missed 169, the highway we planned to take from I-405, then missed the left exit to 167 south to Kent, finally blundered down I-5 to east-bound 516. By now, Judie was having second thoughts about having invited me. We also missed turns off 516, passing through new residential developments, some town-house and multi-family, relatively “affordable” housing aimed at service workers and lower middle income families being priced out of the Seattle metro area. Others were clusters of single-family houses, not exactly McMansions but roomy dwellings on roomy lots. Clearly this part of King County, Washington’s largest, home to 2.3 millions and core of greater Seattle’s metro area, was undergoing its own rapid change.

Finally, 516 dumped us out onto the western fringe of our target: Black Diamond, Washington, a town up 46% from one census to the last. Here and from Newcastle to its north had been dug out the coal that gave the two towns their names and had fueled the steam-driven mills Yessler and others had built on the shore of Elliot Bay, nuclei of a village named Seattle after Chief Sea-ahth, or siʔaɬ in his Lushootseed language, he Chief of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples.

We found Black Diamond Bakery, 123 years-old now and just as Ann and I had left it on our last foray to Mt. Rainier (no, not quite that long ago.) We bought coffee and awesome sweet rolls and settled into the lunch room of the ramshackle building where were gathered clusters of locals whom we conspired to chat up. But, we were politely told, these tables were for lunch-eaters only. We decamped to the bakery side of the house, where one other patron nursed a coffee while guarding his purchased breads. We had encountered him at the coffee counter – a grizzled, seventies-something, cap-wearing rustic who had mumbled greetings as we ordered. One might reasonably judge him to be of limited means, limited education, limited experience, limited intelligence, limited imagination.

We settled into a table adjacent to this proto-MAGA type and Judi opened with a “you live 'round here?”

“Nope. Port Orchard.”

“You drove all the way over here this morning?” (That’d be nearly an hour drive.)

“Yup.”

“To the bakery.”

“Nope. To see how my wife was doing.”

 Sufficiently befuddled, I now played my “what do you do there?” card.

“Work on tugboats.” Nothing more offered.

“Has Port Orchard changed much?”

“Nope, not much.”

Somehow we wormed out of him that he had never worked in Black Diamond but had worked for a coal company in Newport, once worked farms in the area, was a diver, had served in the Marines, where he was taught to dive, was stationed near Yosemite along with a sister Seabee unit, that they looked out for each other like “you have to”, that his “tug” company, in fact, drove pilings for docks and piers, that another marine construction company was buying out his employer’s business but he didn’t know much about them or what might happen to his job, that this area was also historic for brick kilns and he once worked with the Irish brick-makers who helped establish the brick industry here in the 19thC. All mumbled and jumbled and in no rush.

Some subsequent, post-Bakery digging via Co-Pilot yields that coal and clay were found here together; that brick-works were a major east-side industry supplying bricks both for rebuilding Seattle after our fire of 1889 and San Francisco after its of 1906, and for making the pavers which are still to be found on some of Seattle’s steep hillside streets. The Denny-Renton Coal and Clay company was a major employer at the turn of the century.

Now began a reflective, rambling, common-sense monologue that blew our preconception of proto-MAGA to smithereens, paraphrased as best I can:

“Our boss at the brick factory was what a boss should be. He knew the work, how to do it. He shared with his employees how we and the business were doin’,what our problems were, and all. And, of course, the men knew their jobs, had learned it generations, back to Ireland. It’s important to keep people who know the job. Not like some of these bosses who hide-out in the boardroom and don’t share and let go men who really know what they’re doin’.

“That’s what our government is doin’: letting go people who know how to do their job, some with 50 years’ experience. And they don’t tell the truth about it. You can’t trust these guys. You can’t believe what you hear or read. It makes me furious.” And so on.

This guy didn’t know who or what we were, didn’t ask what we were doing in Black Diamond, but in the end he went out to find his wife knowing that he had been listened to. And we learned, again, that people are unpredictably complex: you can’t judge a book by its cover.

Not much more to be found in Black Diamond; let’s try Enumclaw. 

Bingo! Two elderly women stood on a street corner holding home-made signs painted on corrugated board: Tax the Billionaires.

Enumclaw was preparing for its First Friday of the Month Car Show and Cruise. Hot-rods and restored classics were staking out prime curb-side parking spaces, folding lawn chairs being set up ito hold sidewalk spots from which to watch the passing parade later that evening. Judie and I accosted Mark and Russ sitting in the shade watching over Mark’s meticulously restored ’38 Chevy Sedan and Russ’ gleaming, candy-apple red ’38 Chevy rumble seat roadster with a huge, chromed air scoop atop 4-barrel Hollys, with Edelbrock headers, four-link rear suspension, and all the stuff. “Don’t drive it much. Only get’s 8 ½ miles per gallon” Russ proudly complained.

“You’ve had a lot of change ‘round here” I ventured. Duh.

Mark sniffed us out for the townies we are and tested how much heat we could stand:

"Yeah, those liberal assholes from Seattle are flooding the place.” We didn’t blanche. I guess we passed his test. 

He went on to bitch about the eleven families which had moved into his cul de sac neighborhood. The gist of it: “they don’t know how to behave. Their dogs shit on my lawn, they park on my grass, they don’t know how this community works and don’t care to learn. One of ‘em called the cops on me for spraying a noxious, invasive weed the State wants to have eradicated. Assholes.” Red meat for Judie.

She acknowledged that we were liberals from Seattle, joked that her horns were tucked up under her ball cap; we're down here to learn and listen; that more listening was a requisite for newcomers moving into an established community, that somethings here needed fixing, -- And we talked and talked: horses, small towns, McMansions, cars, health (long-COVID and gout are real issues for Mark.) Mark encouraged us to come see the car show. Judie left him with possibles about maybe getting back for a First-Friday. (I was more circumspect; a Friday evening hot-rod show and cruise-by ain’t Ann’s thing.)

Mark the MAGA undoubtedly is not convertible, unlike some of the shiny rods tooling into town looking for likely spots for the night’s parade. But Mark had now met a couple of city liberals who listened, who were empathetic and interested, who were curious about what makes a small town enmeshed in gentrification tick.

Judie passionately believes these encounters, these exchanges of intangibles will ultimately make a difference: each one, one small step toward healing America. 

This one made a difference for me.