Model Garage

Sal is a voice that rides along as you drive Washington's roads: the road ahead, the pass, the stories of the places you pass.

Cinder blocks are heavy, and nobody picks up a cinder block building and carries it across a lot without a good deal of worry. The Model Garage had gone up in the 1920s, forty feet by sixty, built by a man named Bill Blaisdell for the sum of $3,500. Lud Peterson had bought the old garage and the big house on the corner first, then taken the house down to make room. A canopy out front sheltered three gas pumps. Then the state came to widen the road. Buildings along River Street had two choices, move 50 feet south or come down. A fellow named Slade, from Snoqualmie, took the job and did it without a hitch. Plenty of neighbors weren't so lucky. The old garage's concrete apron stayed in the street for decades, visible until the repaving in 2003. [1]