HISTORY CORNER
The Hills Are Alive, With the Sound of… BETTY LEE Highlands Council Community Engagement Coordinator & Park Drive Resident
Issaquah Highlands certainly has a bit of Sound of Music vibes. You can almost see Julie Andrews at Grand View Park, twirling around and singing in her dress made of curtains. Sound plays a significant part of my memories over the years in Issaquah Highlands.
I’ve had the pleasure of living on Park Drive for 20 years now. Living on the main road into the neighborhood puts you in the middle of all the sights and sounds. The chattering of kids walking to school in the morning, the emergency vehicles rushing up the hill, the showoff for the biggest and loudest muffler at 3 a.m. Not all sounds were pleasant, but they were certainly memorable. In the early years, the sound I heard the most was construction. The never-ending sawing, hammering and big trucks going up and down the hill…it was brutal. But, with so many construction workers around, Park Drive became a magnet for food trucks. A taco truck started parking right in front of my house almost daily. Once they were ready for business, they played a very loud trumpet fanfare to announce their arrival. A long line would quickly form, and you’d hear the lunchtime chatter and laughter.
Sometimes I wish I could hear that trumpet fanfare again and find myself just steps away from delicious tacos. Another sound that was loud yet welcoming came from the Central Park bagpipe player. This was another moment straight out of a movie. Picture Central Park on a summer day—kids playing on the playground, maybe a deer or two nibbling on bushes, and there Andrew was, playing the bagpipes. It’s not every day you see that incredible instrument, let alone hear it played beautifully in your neighborhood park. It made you stop what you were doing and listen in awe. It was surreal and majestic. Central Park bagpipe player, thank you for this memory and please consider coming back to play someday. There’s a sound that still lingers these days, though it was far more prominent years ago: the coyotes howling in the middle of the night. You used to hear many of them at once, sometimes for hours. My dogs were never fans, but I always thought it was a treat to hear the wild so close to home. One of my favorite things about Issaquah Highlands is being just far enough from the city and just close enough to the wilderness. As much as I appreciate the convenience of new shops and restaurants in our community, I hope we continue to protect the nature around us. Those wild voices make our neighborhood unique, and the creatures who live here deserve to keep calling this place home. Blakely Hall was constructed in September 2004.
One day, my very pregnant next-door neighbor knocked on my door and said she really needed quesadillas but didn’t have the courage to stand in line. Truthfully, I was craving tacos as well. We mustered up enough courage to join the line and immediately wondered why we hadn’t done it sooner.
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