Summer: Same as It Ever Was

The Weekly's ninth issue (May 26, 1976) ran two long features suggesting there might soon be breakthroughs on two big and controversial issues. Writer Pat Douglas crossed his fingers and bet that a transit tunnel would soon be under way through downtown, just the first link in a quadrangular system running from the north city line to Georgetown and from downtown across the lake via Mercer Island, then north to Bellevue. Also looking on the bright side, Dick Lilly saw solar energy as a solution for the region's growing shortage of juice.

On the upside of getting things dead wrong, the paper's pseudonymous "Dr. Browne" predicted the University of Washington Medical School would soon be on the financial rocks. Since then, of course, despite frequent corruption and animal-treatment uproars, the med school has climbed to the top of the teaching hospital charts and looks likely to stay there another decade or so.

But most of the issue was devoted to the same subject we've devoted every late May issue to for the last 30 years: Summer, the possibility of one, and what to do should one occur. Most of the tips we offered for getaways are as viable today as then, so there's no point in reciting them; besides, you'll find them all in the latest edition of Sunset, just like every other year.

rdowney@seattleweekly.com