A child in Space

I wonder what it was like. Seattle today, 50 years ago. That thing up in the air making its first trip March 24 1962. A futuristic train soaring way up, on a concrete foundation. People on the ground, dressed up in spring coats and hats. Watching, stretched necks, big eyes. The nation’s first full scale monorail system, The Seattle Center Monorail!

It must have been absolutely spectacular!! The world moving in to Space Age, and Seattle taking the lead! Still today, 50 years later, the Monorail feels like an ahead of its time transportation on its safe, solid and eternal route between Seattle Center and Downtown Westlake Center. Adding the element of the ride passing inside the Frank Gehry-designed Experience Music Project Museum in the year of 2000 makes the space dreams still alive.

Personally, I love it! I love the idea of it, I love the sound of it, I love the convenience of it, and I love all the beautiful pictures it makes! From every angle: combined with the Space Needle, the greenery, the arches of the Science center, the EMP Museum, the mountains and the downtown high rises.

My first ride with the Monorail was pretty much exactly 19 years ago. I arrived in Seattle the first time March 23 1993, and the 25th we hopped on the bus in Kirkland where we had landed, and paid our first visit to the heart of Seattle. One little son held tight in each hand in this unfamiliar and quite intimidating new place. Trouble & Trouble 4 and 6 years old in brightly striped handmade Swedish pants, trusting their parents knowing the world. Well, the parents needed hands to hold too, and they grabbed Annie and Harold’s who became Trouble & Trouble’s American grandparents and our benefactors and Seattle guides: “You got to ride the Monorail, the boys will love it!” And so we did. And of course they loved it! The note in my journal that day says: “We went with the railway above the ground”. It was my second day in Seattle and I hadn’t quite caught the name yet. For a grown up there is something very special experiencing the world through a child’s open, innocent and unprejudiced eyes, and reading my journal I feel like I was a child myself that day.

And, I’m thinking, maybe that was what this day was like 50 years ago today. Seattle watching the city’s entrance in Space Age 1962. Like a child.