Last week, a semi-trailer truck clipped a corner of the historic downtown Pioneer Square pergola in Seattle. Luckily, the pergola wasn\u2019t badly damaged and only needed some paint touchups. It was a far luckier outcome than what happened back in 2001 when a semi-truck driver from Greensburg, Pa., also clipped the pergola and caused the entire structure to collapse in ruin in the wee hours of the morning. Here\u2019s what happened following that one:<\/p>\n
The phone rang and a Greensburg housewife walked across the room and picked it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, honey, it\u2019s me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPete?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. I\u2019m calling from out in Seattle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIs everything okay? \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, pretty much. Except that I had a little accident out here this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the truck?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you hurt?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019m fine. But I knocked over a pergola.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA pergola?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. A pergola.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you mean arugula \u2013 that stuff they put in the salads down at the Greensburg Denny\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. The cops just keep calling it a pergola. All I know is that by the time I climbed out of my truck to take a look, it just looked like a big, twisted heap of metal and glass.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, I think I\u2019ve seen a picture of that thing in a magazine article about Seattle. \u201c<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. Except that in the magazine it was called the Experience Music Project.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that\u2019s what I knocked over. It didn\u2019t look like a project, just a pile of junk.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen what\u2019s the big deal?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really know, except that a whole bunch of cop cars and news crews showed up, all saying that I had knocked down a city landmark.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my God, Pete! You didn\u2019t tip over that Space Needle thing, did you?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think so. I didn\u2019t see any sign of a restaurant. But it was really dark outside, and they\u2019ve got so many lights turned off these days in Seattle, it\u2019s hard to see landmarks until you\u2019re right on top of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I still don\u2019t understand. How did you run into that pergola thing? Was it in the middle of the street?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUh, no. I had to drive up onto the sidewalk to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou drove onto the sidewalk, Pete? What were you thinking?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, this whole thing has been embarrassing enough without you piling on, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSorry. I didn\u2019t mean to hurt your feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s okay. To tell you the truth, it was something one of the cops said that really stung.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said it was too bad I wasn\u2019t driving around that same neighborhood a few years ago. I could have knocked down the Kingdome and saved everybody a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was kind of snotty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what I thought.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo anyway, Pete, when are you driving back home?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust as soon as I sign a few more legal papers here. I\u2019ll call you in a few days.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, Pete. And pick me up some of that yummy salmon that they throw around over at that Pike Place Market.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWill do.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut don\u2019t take the truck over there. We don\u2019t need you knocking that landmark down, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood idea.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few days later, the phone rang again and the housewife answered it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, honey. It\u2019s Pete again. I\u2019m calling from South Dakota.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the state just below North Dakota, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I think so.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, why are you calling?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had another little accident.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened this time?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHave you ever heard of Mount Rushmore?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Pat Cashman is a writer, actor and public speaker. He can be reached at pat@patcashman.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, a semi-trailer truck clipped a corner of the historic downtown Pioneer Square pergola in Seattle. Luckily, the pergola wasn\u2019t badly damaged and only needed some paint touchups. It was a far luckier outcome than what happened back in 2001 when a semi-truck driver from Greensburg, Pa., also clipped the pergola and caused the entire structure to collapse in ruin in the wee hours of the morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":214,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23028"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/214"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23028"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}