If you live in the greater Seattle area, then you all know about Big Bertha. No, she’s not that hooker you see walking up Aurora Avenue. I’m not sure what her name is.
Instead, I’m talking about that giant drill bit that is supposed to tunnel its way under the waterfront and magically emerge near the Seattle Center. Things are going fine with building the above ground approaches, but that drilling bit, well, it’s not going well at all.
It seems Bertha keeps running into things. Things we love to explore, examine and ponder, at the cost of millions of dollars in cost overruns. Most recently, a pile of shells caused the Bertha rescue effort to come to a grinding halt.
Workers had to be evacuated, archeologists from the state were called in, much excitement was made about the pile of oyster shells and when all was said and done, what they found was that it was just a pile of garbage left there by white settlers.
Well there’s a big freaking whoop! I really don’t care if it had been left there by Native American tribes. If you live in Florida, shell middens are everywhere. It seems that Native Americans there had the same taste for seafood they have up here. The only difference is we have everything come to a screeching halt while we consider its significance.
People, it’s garbage. Geesh, if you want an archeological dig, head to the cliff behind the house I grew up in. You’ll find all sorts of things back there, much of it hazardous material. We just thought of it as garbage back in the 1960s, but go ahead and dig it up if you want to. Maybe you’ll find that Tonka toy my brother threw off the cliff to piss me off when I was a child.
We seem to have a strange obsession about garbage. It’s not really something our forefathers gave much thought to, perhaps because they were too busy trying to survive. I’m pretty sure the whole field of archeology came about because we don’t have to really try that hard to survive these days, what with modern homes, supermarkets and Amazon. With so much time on our hands we had to do something, so why not study the garbage our ancestors left behind.
I still fondly recall a book someone wrote many years ago. It was about a bunch of archeologists who uncovered a mound and found an ancient dwelling. It took place long into the future, so they were very curious about how we lived in our time.
The book had hilarious illustrations, but was written in a fairly serious tone with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
The first thing they uncovered was an ancient throne. It had a piece of paper still wrapped around it that said “Sanitized for Your Protection.” They pondered at length about its meaning, then figured that it must have been used as a ceremonial sash for whoever sat on the throne.
The book continued to wind its way through the ecological dig. Eventually they found a sign that said Holiday Inn. There was another illustration of them re-enacting an ancient ritual, praying to the sign. “Holiday Inn,” they chanted, “Holiday Inn.”
It still cracks me up to this day, the drawing of the one archeologist with the Sanitized for Your Protection sash wrapped around his forehead.
I think this whole nonsense about a shell midden on the Seattle waterfront is right up there with this book. I actually laughed out loud when the head archeologist said that they had to excavate carefully in case they came upon Native American remains in the pile of shells.
I can just see how that happened. One night, the tribe when on a bender and somewhere along the way, they forgot Uncle T’wwakiakum down at the beach. Obviously he was not a favorite uncle because he rotted there long enough to become bone fragments among the oyster and clam shells.
Do we really think Native Americans were as careless as we white people are about where we leave our relatives? Even we don’t leave our uncle in a midden (fancy name for garbage pile), so why would be think that old Uncle T would have been left there after he expired?
The dollars spent on this boondoggle continue to rise. So far, after 18 months, Bertha has made it just 1,000 feet. She has 8,270 feet to go and who knows how many pipes, middens, refuse piles and beer bottles she’s going to need to stop for along the way.
In the meantime, archeologists are jumping with glee every time she stops, hoping to find a stunning new discovery that they can write papers about and end up on the Smithsonian Channel, the subject of some blockheaded recreation of a drunken trollop at the turn of the 20th century, who dropped her locket as she hiked up her skirt to serve one of the many sailors in port for the day.
I really think it’s time for me to do another book like the one they did on the Holiday Inn. I could chronicle every time Bertha ground to a halt because of something in her way. It would make great reading, though I find it sad that it would have to be placed in the non-fiction part of the Seattle Library, not fiction.
Someday, Bertha may find her way out to the other end. I am beginning to have my doubts. I think if we were smart we would simply bury her where she lies, write off the $80 million that machine cost, and admit that our transportation officials really can’t manage a project as simple as digging a hole in the ground, something we all did as kids.
Hey, that’s it! Let’s tell all the kids in Seattle that they could dig their way to China and put them to work. The tunnel would be done in no time at all, and probably for the cost of some Ivar’s or Dick’s. I think I’m on to something here…
In the Emerald City, digging up the dirt on Bertha,
– Robb