Andrew and I (and Stella, the dog) traveled to Walla Walla last week. You might be forgiven for thinking we were going for the wineries but we were not. Neither of us are drinkers. We were there for the Walla Walla sweets and Ancestor Worship, as Andrew says. My father was born and grew up in Walla Walla. My family visited when I was a child and I went to college there. (That would be Whitman College, not The One in Spokane, Whitworth.)

There was so much I wanted Andrew to see beginning with the pilgrimage there. He likes the dramatic terrain of I-90 which takes you across the Columbia River at Vantage but I argued for the highway through Yakima which is prettier and because I have avoided the Vantage route ever since I got a speeding ticket in the Hanford nuclear site.

The Yakima route was not prettier because the roads have changed. I used to wind through Selah, Zillah, Sunnyside, Grandview and Prosser. The new 82 speeds past sagebrush and gasoline exits, which gets old pretty fast. Past the Tri-cities, I couldn’t find the old road that used to be the only road to Walla Walla.  I felt a bit bereft and with pressure (all my own making) to see that Andrew had a good time. But how could he when we hadn’t gone past the Whitman mission at Waiilatpu and through little old Lowden and Touchet? Andrew couldn’t know what he was missing!

“I thought you said you had been to Walla Walla a thousand times.”

“I said about 75 times but I meant 1075 times.”

We had made a detour in Yakima to find a place Andrew had seen on Evening Magazine, Los Hernandez, best tamales in the valley, on the road to Naches. We ate tamales that didn’t seem all that special and Andrew said the storefront wasn’t the one from Evening Magazine. That mystery as well as The Mystery of the Missing Waiilatpu hung in the air until the drive home.

Our Airbnb, Silver Maples Estate was four miles outside of town on a highway looking suspiciously like the old one I thought I had lost. We had a charming little cabin next to the house where the hosts, Amy and John, lived with two dogs and three Havanese puppies. Stella could run around leash free on soft grass and poke around a pond with lily pads and a fountain built from the pink bricks of the old Walla Walla post office.

We got Stella moved in—she travels in style– and ate an early dinner. I took her outside after dark and stood listening to the crickets that chirped away in the grape vine festooned with colored lights that shielded our cabin from Amy and John’s house.

Andrew came out and smiled. “Those aren’t real crickets,” he said. Do you hear how rhythmic they are? Crickets aren’t in rhythm like that. The sound is probably connected to the lights.”

Back inside he showed me lights that chirped liked crickets on Amazon.

We created the tundra-like sleeping conditions that Andrew likes with help from a ceiling fan and two open windows. The sound of fake crickets poured in. The next morning, Stella let out a volley of barks and I heard little yippy noises from the yard next door.

“Oooh, puppies!” I threw on my robe and we were out the door.

Murphy, a Parti Yorkie and Maple, the Havanese mother of the three puppies and Stella barked fit to lose their heads until we got Murphy and Stella calmed down and Amy took Maple inside. I went for the puppies, three little brown balls of squirming fur—Marley, MacKenzie and Maverick, 12 weeks old. The youngest, MacKenzie weighed three pounds and was the color of milk chocolate. They call him Big Mac.

I wish to comment here that Andrew’s preferred method of introducing dogs is to pick Stella up and hold her anus to the nose of the new dog. He says it saves time.

As we stood out in the fresh morning air with the puppies and our hosts, we asked about the crickets. They both assured us the crickets were real.

John said, “I used to have a bunch of frogs in the pond. They ate all the crickets over there so now they hang out in the grapevine. But the frogs are gone now, too.”

“They sound too rhythmic for crickets,” Andrew said.

“No, they’re real,” they both assured us. “Did you hear the owls last night, too?”

Back inside, I said, “They both had pretty straight faces.”

“They sure did. Do you think they’re messing with us city people? I bet the owls are fake, too.”

We spent all of the first day visiting campus and my old haunts. We parked in front of Sherwood Center and made the first of many trips into the student union building, which we used to call the Sub but which is now called the Pete Reid center. It’s built on the site of the old White Temple Baptist church, which my great grandfather helped build and where I occasionally played the piano for services when I was at school.

The point of the many visits to the Sub was for one or the other of us to use the toilet, the other to stay outside with Stella. I am used to sitting with Stella while Andrew goes into a toilet or convenience store. She sits like a pointer trained at the door, whines a little and cannot be distracted by anything. Andrew sat with her while I went into the bookstore to see if there was any interesting new college merch and we discovered that she does the same thing when I am missing. Apparently, she wants us together as much as we want to be together.

Stella waiting for Elena outside SUB. Photo by AJB

While in the bookstore where there were no interesting tchotchkes, I asked the young man at the counter where I could find a drug store. Thrifty Drugs on the corner of Main and Palouse is long gone and the young man who was sweet and looked about 14 years old, wasn’t the least bit interested in hearing how much we had liked Thrifty Drugs in the 70s. He didn’t know of any drug stores except Tallman on Main Street.

“But it’s really old,” he seemed apologetic, embarrassed to be suggesting that a human being would go into such a place.

Tallman is one of few stores left from the 1970s and it was exactly where an old person could find knee supports; I had forgotten mine at home.

We toured the campus beginning with what used to be the Music Building but is now used for various humanities classrooms. I stood in the doorway with Stella and suggested Andrew peek into MacDowell Hall, where I had sung in recitals. It was locked. I wanted to belly up to someone and demand to see the hall on the grounds that I was an alumna but Andrew suggested I not make a scene. The building is charming inside even without the hall.

We walked along the wooded path that used to be Lakem Duckum until they stretched it out into a stream that meanders through the parts of the campus that flank Boyer Avenue.

(used to be) Lakem Duckum, Whitman campus

The path took us to the amphitheater where my graduation ceremonies took place, back to Ankeny Field, looking green and luscious and alongside Lyman House, which is no longer the funky old building that went co-ed the year I matriculated as did Jewett Hall where I spent my freshman year and was next on the tour. We carried on past Olin Hall, the Science building and Penrose library, always coming back to the old Memorial Building, the first building on campus in 1859.

Memorial Building, Whitman College

The day was pleasant and the campus was calm with very few students walking around. I said rush hour would start when classes changed. But when classes changed, there was an influx about half a dozen more students. Whitman is a small school. The population when I was there was 1000 students. I seem to remember walking to the Sub every day for my mail (how quaint) and practically running into everyone on the entire campus either coming or going.

Finally, we circled back around to a few of my family’s homes. My grandparents and their four children lived one house down from the corner of Park and Alder next to a house that was a fire station and then a Red Cross station. I can’t quite figure out what it is now but it’s still there and always seems to be closed. My dad tells the story –something that became family lore– of something catching fire in their house and he running next door to yell, “Our house is on fire, our house is on fire!”

“Where do you live?”

Wildy excited, eyes spinning around in his head, he repeated “Our house is on fire, our house is on fire!”

Old firehouse, Park and Alder (photo by AJB)

My father lost both his parents early. My grandmother Louise died in 1918 of the flu when my father was eight. My grandfather died during a gall bladder surgery seven years later. Louise’s sister Ann, took the four boys, ages 4,6,8 and 10 to live with her at 623 Alder in a house that is still there.  Much later Ann moved to a home on Marcus Street where my family came when I was a child.

When we tried to get to the Marcus Street home, it was gone and the whole block was a construction site. The street has slowly been encroached upon and taken over by the college. We approached from the other side because I wanted Andrew to see the tiny footbridge across the canal that contains Mill Creek and that used to take you right to my Aunt Ann’s property at 325 Marcus.  By this time of the year, Mill Creek is a gentle trickle down the middle of the canal; at flood stage it can be terrifying, especially to a child.

We had a picnic lunch in Pioneer Park up the road a bit from campus by the bandstand where my father attended Sunday afternoon band concerts.  We walked a few blocks to 728 Whitman St. where my great grandfather, James Knott, built the family home in the late 1800s. My grandmother grew up in the house and my father spent a lot of time there. It’s been re-modeled to within an inch of its life but it’s still there.

My dad at 623 Alder,
c. 1925

Elena on Marcus St footbridge over Mill Creek (photo by AJB)

(used to be) 325 Marcus St, Walla Walla

The gazebo and my favorite tree, Pioneer Park, Walla Walla (photo by AJB)

We had a nap, then made dinner at the Airbnb while talking about where we might go out for dinner the next night. I said that Foraging i.e. talking about what and where one is going to eat is, like Ancestor Worship, integral to the traveling experience.  We had a number of recommendations and spent an inordinate amount of time looking at menus online.

Back into town in the evening, we walked up and down Main St. to see what we were missing what with not being drinkers and with having a dog on a leash. Main St used to be small-town funky. The money brought in by the wineries has changed it completely. But for the angle parking, it could be Kirkland. The last straw for me was the Marcus Whitman hotel, a venerable old western style hotel with high ceiling fans, cantilever lamps and plush chairs in the comfortable lobby. I’ve stayed there a few times and for all it’s dignity, it was a fun place to stay.

Marcus Whitman at sunset from Alder St
(photo by AJB)

Once I had my bicycle with me and they let me keep it in a room off the office. When I came back after tooling around town, I could ride right into the lobby and up to the front desk to smiles and applause. The lobby has now been expanded and tables for drinking, eating and playing cards have replaced the plush chairs. When I pushed open the door, I didn’t recognize the space. I wanted to show Andrew the gorgeous old lobby and it wasn’t there.

We had a number of conversations about expectations on this trip. It’s only been eight years since I was last in Walla Walla and the changes left me alternately sad, annoyed and reflective. Andrew said that for him, my reminiscences were all part of the show.

The first day ended with the genuineness of the crickets and owls as well the next evening’s restaurant still undetermined.