The Grand Old Dame-The Carlton Rises Again.

My heart is always torn when a grand old building, especially a grand old hotel, is torn down, and all that remains are the memories of what once was. As I told you earlier in my blog,The Carlton had once been the show piece of Tacoma. She had marble staircases, a gilded elevator, a front desk made out of marble, and you could see and envision what once was a work of art.By the time I arrived, She had turned from am elegant lady of refined taste to being a bag lady of the streets. I would let my imagination go wild when I was working there, and just like when I walk though Burke today and see what was once a booming mining town, and I can see the people, hear the crowded streets, and hear the voice of children playing in the streets, so it was like that for me at the Carlton.

I did not see the beat up old lobby, or the derelicts who resided there. No, I saw an image of days of yore when men in suits and hats, and ladies decked out in their costly dresses, entering the lobby and enjoying the ambiance of the splendor that was the Carlton. Maybe it is a fault of mine to see things as they were instead of how things are today, but I have always been a history buff, and like to live in days of old in my mind.

Well, I have good news to share with you. I would like to introduce you to CH, a new reader of my blog, and who amazingly works in the Carlton today. CH works on the 6th floor of the Grand Old Lady, and we have exchanged several email the past few days on the Carlton as I knew it, and the Carlton that she knows. The big news is that the Carlton is still standing. I had assumed when I first started posting about Her that she had gone the way of so many old, elegant hotels, and was nothing but a memory of what once was. I was wrong, for I have found out through CH that not only does the Carlton still stand, but that She is once again a work of stately beauty.

No, She is no longer a hotel, but She has been redone into office spaces and a very upscale Japanese restaurant! Thank God, She is still alive and thriving. CH and I are planning to exchange more information. CH wants to know what was because she has a passion for history and old buildings, and I want to know more about what is today, I will keep you posted as we exchange notes on the Grand Old Dame. God bless the Internet!

OK, next, I will get back to letting you meet more of Uncle Chuck's Funny Farm guests and employees, Until then, thanks for reading, and have a great day.

Welcome aboard, CH.


(c)2008-ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

How A Scrap of Paper Changed World History

How many times have you seen a scrap of paper on the ground with writing or a drawing on it? So, maybe you are a little curious about what is on the paper. Perhaps it is a note between two teenagers expressing their eternal love or lust. Perhaps it is just a grocery list that fell out of Mrs. Smith's coat pocket.Maybe it someones telephone number, and when some person gets home they search and search for the missing number of that business contact, or that cute blond that they met at the bar last night. Perhaps is is just some meaningless doodling(I doodle all of the time.) Most of the time it is nothing, and most most of the time, although we may be curious,being the nosey creatures that we are, the scrap of parer remains on the ground, soon to be blown away by a gust of wind, or picked up and thrown in a garbage can.

You are riding down in a hotel elevator. You are in town for your usual business, and the last thing on your mind is that you might be the one to change world history. You are running late for the dinner appointment and your presentation to your prospective client is first and foremost on your mind. Out of the corner of your eye you spot a folded up piece of parer in the corner of the elevator. It is probably nothing. Someone had just got out of the elevator as you were getting on , so maybe it belonged to him. For some strange reason your eye keep roving over to the paper resting innocently in the corner. Why the attraction ? An invisible force draws your eyes again and again to that paper. Pick it up, pick it up.

Unable to resist any longer, you reach over and pick it up and unfold it. Your eyes dart quickly at the drawing on the paper. What exactly are you looking at. Slowly it dawns on you that you are looking at a hand drawn street map of the city that you are in. Must be directions. No, wait a minute, this is strange . The map starts at the Air Force base located right outside of town and goes down the freeway to the core of the city. What is this? And then the answer, born only at first by a small idea, and then growing into a full force realization. You are looking at the parade route that the President of the United States is going to be taking when he visits your town tomorrow. Something is wrong here. Why is the President's motorcade route drawn out in such precise form crumpled up in a hotel elevator?

Alarms began to ring in your head, and you know that you must act quickly. Your elevator has reach the hotel lobby, and you step out and rush up to the Front Desk where a young clerk is on duty. You tell him what you have in your hand, and insist that he notify some authority. The clerk calls the local police department. They take the call very seriously, and within minutes, a full regiment of law enforcement spring into action. The Secret Service is called, and within the next fifteen minutes, the hotel is crawling with policemen, and men in blue suites and ties questioning and combing through every nook and cranny of the hotel. You are questioned by the men in suites about what you found in the elevator, and asked to give a description of who you saw in the elevator when you stepped in.

Things move rapidly now, and it is quickly ascertained who the mystery rider was whom you saw step out of the elevator before you got in. His room number is obtained, and stormed by Secret Service Agents and FBI agents. No one is in the room, but they find more maps of the President's motorcade route, a letter stating the intentions of the person occupying the room, and then they find the chilling site of several handguns and rifles . The agents wait secretly in his room, and when he returns, he is arrested and charged with plotting to kill the President of the United States.

Because one guest followed his inner voice, a President's life was saved, and the history of the world was written in a different way then it would have been if the paper had never been picked up.
When I arrive for my shift, I was questioned by the Suits, and my background quickly checked out, as was anyone who was a guest or an employee of that hotel.

If you ever see a scrap of paper in the corner, and you feel drawn to it, pick it up, You might be saving a life, maybe even the President of the United States.

Most Wanted-A Real Live Cop Story.

When I was a kid, I loved to go the the Wallace Post Office and look at the walls. Why? Because on those walls were some of the most exciting pictures that spoke of big time things. Things that we kids in Wallace would never see. The pictures spoke of dangers, excitement, exotic places, and things that movies were made from. I am talking, of course, about the lists that use to grace every Post Office wall,the FBI Ten Most Wanted List, complete with pictures and descriptions of these shady characters.

Back in the old days, all hotels received the FBI posters once a month. We were to, by law, post these lists where all desk clerks could read them and study the pictures. I am not sure that many clerks took it seriously. After all, what were the chances of one of these modern day version of Jesse James, by the way, a distant relative of mine, would come waltzing though the door and sign up fro a room. I can just see it happening now."Hi, I am Jessee James, the notorious bank robber, you may have seen my poster, and I would like a room, please". It just was not going to happen that way.

However, at the Carlton, I was brand new to the hotel business, and to me it was exciting to get the posters, post them , and study the faces of these dangerous characters. It was January, and I had just received the new batch list. I looked them over, and posted them as required. I had been especially drawn to one of the faces on the posters, and for some unexplained reason, I read all of the information about this guy. To this day, I can't explain to you why I picked this one out and memorized the face.

It was about five PM when he walked through the front door.No, it couldn't be! My imagination must be working overtime. I needed to quit reading those darn posters. But, wait, there was such an uncanny resemblance. And as he got closer to the desk, my heart started beating faster and faster, for there, right in front of me stood the guy whose face I had just memorized not one hour earlier. Keeping my voice calm, and my hands as steady as possible, I had him fill out the registration card. I glanced down quickly, and sure enough, the name was the same as the one on the poster.

I took the man's money, gave him a key, and told him to have a nice evening. After he left for his room, I played with some ideas on what to do for about five minutes. It was then that I decided to call the Tacoma PD and tell them who I had as a guest. Surely they would be jubilant to have the arrest of a genuine, FBI most wanted criminal. Hands shaking, I picked up the phone and dialed. Before I could even say who the criminal was, the dispatcher cut me off and said"that is not our department, call Pierce County. WTF? I then called Pierce County. Same thing here."You will have to call the FBI, it is not our case".

This was not what I expected. Didn't all police departments work together? I guess not. No one seemed to actually want to come and get this guy. I almost didn't care by then, Maybe I would not say anything and let the guy have a good's night sleep. If the police didn't care, why should I?
The fear of having this guy right up above me fianlly won out, and I called the FBI. Finally, we got some action.Within fifteen minutes, FBI agents came in the door. Now, the fun began. They wanted me to go with them to the guy's room. I was to knock on the door, and if he answered, I was to make up some bull story of why he needed to open the door.If he did not answer my knock, I was to take the key, open the door, and step back quickly as the Agents went in.
Wow, this was just like the movies. But wait minute! Whoa! I would be right in front of the door!
Oh well, it might be fun.

So, up we went. I knocked on the door. No Answer. I knocked again, Still no answer. The FBI agent in charge nodded at me. OK, here we go, I thought to myself. I inserted the key in the door, and as a I did the FBI kicked at the door, and they all rushed in shouting "FBI" with their guns drawn. Well, guess what. The room was empty, and the FBI missed out on getting one of the most wanted men in the country.

To me, it was almost poetic justice. If the Tacoma PD or the Pierce County cops had done their part, they would have had the guy cold. No wonder a 9/11 could happen. The agencies don't communicate with each other. I lost a lot of respect for the PD of Tacoma., and now I know how dangerous criminals run so freely throughout the country.

Tacoma Vice-Pits Carlton Continued

One of the funniest things in this great nation are the myriads of laws that make no sense at all. Most of them were written to satisfy the puritan lust in our collective religious conscious.
We have so many laws still on the books that try to regulate and dictate acceptable actions in the most secret places, our bedrooms. I am sure Go Figure knows far more about archaic laws than I do, but some of the ones that I saw in the hotel business were just plain ludicrous.


In the early seventies in the great state of Washington, there were laws in place to save us from that dastardly crime of carnal lust called prostitution. OK, coming from Wallace, I might have a slightly different view of the world's oldest profession than someone from say, Lincoln Nebraska.
To me is was no big deal. Of course, I had never been exposed to those ladies of the evening called"street walkers". The big deal at that time in Pierce County was that desk clerks seemed to be setting up a little side business as pimps. Now these desk clerk pimps didn't drive around in pink caddies, nor did they walk around with fur coats and ostrich hats. They simply turned their heads when a hooker showed up to do business. They then sometimes received a handsome tip from the lady for being a party to the act.

There were two things here that need some explanation. First of all, a clerk was also in danger of being arrested for pimping by innocently no getting the right registration data from a guest. How could this happen", you may be asking. Well, back in those days guests had to register as husband and wife. You could not in theory check into a hotel with a person of the opposite sex that you were not married to. All registrations of couples had to read "Mr. and Mrs". If it did not, and the lady happened to be a hooker, the desk clerk could be charged with pimping. I kid you not!

Stupid law? Yes, but it gets even more absurd. It matters not if the couple was actually married or not, it only mattered that they both sign the registration as Mr. and Mrs. -----. If that was done, the desk clerk had done his or her obligation to the law, and they could not be charged with pimping. How is that for absurd?

I was well versed on this law by my new employer at the Carlton Hotel. Whenever a couple came in I had both parties sign the registration card, and then I dutifully checked the signatures to make sure they read "Mr. and Mrs."One day I got my first test on this law.

Enter one female black lady and a large, very white guy. They told me that they wanted a room, and so I had them fill out the card. I told them they both must sign it. The guy signed it first, and then the lady sigend it. I picked up the form to look at it and at once I noticed that the lady had signed a different name than the the guy. He had signed in as John Henry(just kidding about the name), and she had signed in with something like "Fifi Smith". OK, l was no dummy. I told then that I could not rent to them because they had different last names. No fool, this lady of the night. She looked at me, smiled and said"Oh, you want my married name" She then looked at the man's name on the card, and then wrote Mrs. John Henry. OK, I was now clear, and had done my legal duty, I gave them the key to the room and bade them a good evening.

Thirty minutes or so after the couple had gone upstairs, four very large guys dressed in leather coats and jeans came bursting through the lobby door, walked up to the desk and flashed badges and announced themselves as "Tacoma Vice " They then demanded to know if a black lady and white guy had just checked in, and what room were they in. They took the elevator up the floor that I had indicated. About fifteen minutes later they came back down, only now they had the lady handcuffed, and the large white guy that had checked in with her was talking jovially with the vice officers. The poor hooker still had not totally caught on yet, She turned to the officers and pointed to her cohort and said"what about him, why are you not arresting him" The officer started laughing and said "we don't usually arrest our own".

Now, I was glad that I had followed protocol in checking in this couple, or I could have been charged with pimping. I can see the headline-"Ministerial student charged with pimping". Hm, probably would not have looked on my resume.

However, the thing that really got me was the entrapment used on this lady, and the question of the day, and I still think about , is this, what did the first cop do in the room for the thirty minutes before his buddies showed up to do the arrest. Hm, I wonder----

Saving Captain Bill

As you know by now, I was going to save the world. We all were those students at this expensive, private school of theology. We guys were going to go forth and pastor mega churches and do great things in the name of God. The girls who attended here were going to go forth and marry the guys who were going to save the world. We all came from religious backgrounds, we were all well indoctrinated in our faith, and we all thought that we, and we alone had the answer for all of the ills and sins of the world. The bad part of that is that we were also all hopelessly naive! Heck, we even all looked somewhat alike.



By the time that I started work at the Carlton, Chuck, the owner, had evidently told all of his guests and employees that I was a student of the such and such university. They all made mention of it on my first shift. Actually, it was kind of funny because since I was a theology student they were all very careful to not use profanity around me. When one of them would slip, they would immediately turn and say they were sorry, like I was some kind of divine being.

Enter Bill, the man who would change my life's path. Captain Bill was our maintenance man at the Carlton and had just recently returned from several tours of duty in Vietnam. Bill had been an army captain and had quite a few years in the service. He seemed like one of the sanest guys at the Carlton, and I had enjoyed talking to him on a casual basis for several weeks after I started working at the hotel.

One January evening Bill came into the lobby, and I noticed right away that there was something different about him. His demeanor was dark, and his words were slurred. Bill wanted me to take him up in the elevator to the floor of his room. It started routinely enough. I got in the elevator, closed the iron gate, and pushed the up button that would take us to his floor.
About half way up, everything changed. It was one of those moments that was life defining.

Bill reached over and hit the stop button that brought the elevator to a halt between floors. Now, the alarm bells were starting to go off in my head. He had a crazed look in his eyes, and the usual friendly smile had been replaced with a sneer. Was I going to get murdered? What on earth was going on?

Bill set down on the floor of the cage, pulled a whiskey bottle out of his coat, and gave me the once over. He then began to speak."So, you are a ministerial student, huh?" Yes, I answered, trying to edge away from him a little. He continued" You must really think that you are hot shit, don't you?" " You think that you know everything and that you have the answers to all of life's problems" Where was this going, I wondered.

"Well, said Bill, let me ask you some questions". "Have you ever seen a leper colony where hands and feet and faces are rotting away?" "Have you ever been in a combat zone, and had the person standing next to you have their head blown off by a land mine"?" He then went on to question me about just where had I been in my life, and just what had I ever seen that was tragic. He then started demanding answers from me about the meaning of life, and why would a merciful God allow any of this to happen. He then turned to me, and with utter contempt uttered the words that would change my direction." You don't know jack shit. How are you ever going to lead people and help them?"

I was silent before these words of truth. I did not know anything. How could I help anyone when I had no answers. My personal faith did not change, but my direction of seeking did. The beautiful part of knowledge comes when you realize that you know nothing. And now, the older that I get, I realize more and more that I know nothing, Guess what, I am happy with the knowledge that I know nothing, for by knowing nothing, I gain everything.

So, right then, I decided that I needed a lot more life experience to ever think about being a spiritual leader of any sort. I am still learning, and I am still seeking., and through this, I am learning to find my own answers, and somehow in my blunderings, maybe I will help someone see the light in their path. Thank you, Captain Bill, wherever you are, for you taught me more in those few moments than I ever learned in college.