Dateline August 15, 2019, John's Spokane Roots
The Rockwood house. Saturday morning we checked out and headed downtown to find John's grandparents' old house. We knew the name of the street but not the number; John and his brother Will remembered only that it was a corner lot with a hill on the right. We drove along until John said, that has to be it, and stopped.
The owner was looking out at us through the window, so John went up and knocked, and to make a long story short, he was invited in for a fun conversation about the house. John was maybe six the last time he stood inside it, and he laughed at how much smaller it seemed now. The owner asked whether John remembered a large safe down in the basement, and he did. It had never been opened, and the man was a little afraid of what might be in it; he had lived there fifteen years, but understood a cocaine dealer had owned the place earlier, so he was delighted that John could shed a little light on the old safe.
St. John's Cathedral. Our next stop was the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane. John's grandparents had been members from the day it opened, his parents were married there, and his older brother Peter was baptized at its font. The church was begun in 1929 and not finished until 1967, and it is a beautiful building, with a wonderful feeling about it.
The Desert home and hotel. Driving on around the neighborhood, John caught sight of a handsome house from the road and said that had to be his grandfather's sister's home, on his father's side. We looked it up in the census records, and sure enough it was the old Desert home. The family had been in the hotel business, and ran the old Desert Hotel downtown.
As we drove downtown to turn west toward Wenatchee, John told me to pull over. That, he said, is the old Desert Hotel. He got out to take a few pictures while Janice looked it up, and once again he had it exactly right.
The fun of all this, for John, was that at seventy-two he has not lost his memory yet. Spokane was a special city for his family, and these were memories he had carried a long way.
