When this 1974 brochure cover appeared in Seattle's Muni Archives on Flickr, I commented that my memory of the era was so vivid that I could smell 1974.It's true; Seattle smelled different back then. Fewer vegetarian foods and more greasy burgers. Fewer bicycles and more car exhaust. I remember distinctly the smell of sea air and unburned gasoline, the latter puffing from LTDs and Oldsmobiles of monumental proportions all around "The Jet City." This was a blue-collar town, known more for boats, Ballard, and Boeing than it was for anything technical or tasty. Homes were affordable, because nobody wanted to live here. People had the ability to make fun of themselves. Garbage went in the garbage can.
And there was no such thing as "MetroNatural."
Oh sure, we had our brushes with fame. John Wayne had just finished McQ, which was supposed to bring us epic notoriety from its vision of a working city on the water and its geographically-challenged Trans-Am chase scenes that pre-dated Smokey and The Bandit by 3 years. But instead we got the Kingdome and Dixie Lee Ray, two equally rotund figureheads of the region who hated each other long after the decade ended (Kingdome outlived Ray by 6 years). My memories from that time are funny and conflicting. So much of what I recall from being 10-years old in the mid 1970s centers around the smell of hot pavement in the summertime and the feeling of a city that seemed bigger than its attitude. Notice I didn't say "Fresh Sea Air" earlier; the smell of the Ocean was ruined in the 1990s by a well-meaning friend, a story for another day...
Forward Thrust was a push in 1968 to advance many different projects in the Seattle area to improve everything from work to play. In a sense we only benefited from half of the FT vision, because the other half got voted down as being too costly. Short-sited? Maybe on some things. But the stuff it did create brought some happiness in the form of parks and recreation. Granted, it was the era of the all-metal playgrounds and big psychedelic murals, but it made us kids all feel like we were living in a primary-color fantasy world of steel and wood splinters. King County's Metro Transit can also point to Forward Thrust for seed funding.
The brochure you see above outlines FT at its halfway point, hence the colored sections set alongside the "paint-by-numbers" sections. "A work in progress." Contemporary Impressionist art highlights the activities brought on by Forward Thrust projects; Dad breaks out the grill on the picnic table, and Mom rides her Raleigh 3-speed in helmet-less freedom. Others till the soil through stewardship projects, return a ball over the net, or embrace the soothing activity of petting sheep. But wait...there's one element that is not so soothing. One they never considered when creating this cover. Or maybe they did, but intentionally hid their agenda from Seattlites. What they didn't suspect was that their evil plan would be outed in 2010 when detailed study was done of its work-in-progress artwork.
They're Zombies!
Yes, through progressive taxation Forward Thrust summoned the armies of destruction; slow-moving foot soldiers on a quest for world domination...and brains. In the graphic above, take a look at the kid on the slide - to the right and under the knee. All is well as he slides down the metal chute on the way to a concrete playground surface. Now look closely below, because you'll see that through enlargement the kid clearly appears as a card-carrying member of the hive-minded undead.
"...brains...Nnnnnggghhh..."That's right, as citizens in the 70s we were clearly shielded from the dark nefarious goal of Forward Thrust, that they were introducing Zombies to our ranks - ones that would eventually become full-fledged arm-dropping Adult Zombies by the time that MJ's Thriller video was released. Coincidence?
I think not...
So shame on you Forward Thrust, for introducing legions of juvenile undead minions to our region 36 years ago. My parents' tax dollars, contributing to the nightmares of children. I will never look at "Work-In-Progress" Impressionistic art the same, ever again.
The Horror...The Horror...
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Photo Credit: Seattle Municipal Archives
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