A Postcard From Goodwill Games

Postcard from the Puget Sound:

A week in this city teaches you one thing: You didn’t bring enough warm clothes.

Oh well, break out that souvenir sweatshirt and pick up something at the airport on the way out.

Whoever coined the line, “I spent a winter in San Francisco one summer,” could have been talking about the Emerald City.

The lyrics to the song goes, “The prettiest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle.” Yeah, if varying shades of gray are your idea of splendor.

Hope does not spring eternal in Seattle, spring does. Cold, damp, overcast, drizzly. But with optimistic forecasts on the TV every night, yes sir.

Oh, there’s Ted (Turner) and Jane (Fonda), wave.

As opposed to a legendary city-trasher like, say, Jimmy Cannon -- remember the number he did on Baltimore during the 1966 World Series? -- I get out and move around the city streets.

After four hours of walking tours, in all sections of town, these observations:

No one looks you in the eye and very few nod or speak. Obviously, they do not know that the Goodwill Games are in town.

No one has a tan, or much color for that matter, which, considering that the sun is often a rumor, comes as no surprise.

There have to be more moochers working the streets than in any other city in this hemisphere. Thursday, during a 70-minute hike through the business and market districts, 23 gentlemen requested aid. One was leaning against a help-wanted sign at the time. I gave out dimes to one and all; you should have seen the looks.

There was a lengthy story in the Seattle Times Thursday detailing how retail sales have not lived up to expectations. Games organizers said that visitors would be spending $160 million.

“Sports fans are not regular tourists,” grumbled one merchant. “They came here to watch sports, not buy gifts and mementos.”

A gentleman selling leather goods and copper jewelry said, “I don’t think there’s a lot of tourists here, really. ... I did better, much better, when the Alcoholics Anonymous convention was here earlier this month.”

Conversely, the bartender at Tex’s Tavern, a real bucket of blood in the shadow of the space needle, said that times were tough during the AA confab.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the organizing committee said, “Years from now we’ll be thanking the Goodwill Games for the international awareness they brought to Seattle.”

Thing is, folks in these parts are paranoid about people moving into the area. To discourage an influx, an editorial writer suggested that a big campaign be mounted to advertise the fact that Seattle set a record for rainfall during the month of June.

The cabdriver on the way in from the airport, situated in Idaho somewhere, said that one more warm day and he would seriously consider taking his longjohns off.

A native told a college chum here covering the Games, “Don’t you go writing anything too good about us. We don’t want a whole lot of people finding out how great this place is and moving up here.”

In other words, come and bring your wallet, then get the hell out.

There’s Ted and Jane again, wave.

St. James Cathedral, a spectacular building up by Seattle University and Swedish Hospital overlooking the city and a valley heading south toward Tacoma, Wash.: A reporter and TV crew from the Soviet Union set up in a side aisle and tape the Mass. Afterward, a guy who looks like David Soul asks people what they prayed for as they leave. Talk about a snappy interviewer.

“I pray for job as TV anchorman,” I answer in a deep, rumbling “Fiddler on The Roof” voice. Bet that didn’t make it on “Evening Magazine” back in Minsk.

Actually, Soviet media have been all over the place, seeking out weaknesses in the American culture. One told columnist Rick Anderson, “Russians are tired of the American homeless story. It is boring to them. That is the problem. It is all they have been shown for years.”

Then he heads for a park, affectionately dubbed “Muscatel Meadows” and talks to the “typical” Seattleite -- stretched out on the grass at 2:30 in the afternoon? The guy, just incoherently enough for the Soviet to understand, complains.

“No homeless in Russia,” says Leningrad’s answer to Dan Rather, proudly. “If you are hungry, relatives must feed you. If you do not have job, you are given one. But if you don’t take it, or don’t like it, and you go out on the street and live, you are arrested and put away. We have people whose homes are jail.”

After a slow start, Turner Broadcasting’s ratings have picked up, to half what it promised advertisers, but it has hurt the gate. Of course, expecting thousands to show up at 10:30 in the morning to watch Czechoslovakia and Korea play team handball is pushing it a tad.

Oh, the Games have pushed news of the Seattle Seahawks in training camp off the front page. Still, there’s about 10,000 words to digest daily if you don’t mind exploring deeper into the sports sections.

With the weekend upon us, the schedule picks up from the skimpy offerings of midweek and the traffic jams will be in full standstill again. Unless the sun comes out. Then, probably, everybody around here will stay indoors.

One more thing: someone tell Ted and Jane to sit down, I can’t see if those two lacquered ladies in the swimming pool are synchronized.