That's the Seattle Art Museum at Volunteer Park in the background there.
Listening to these fans blowing
yesterday, drowsing by my desk, brought a memory to mind of the only time in my
life I lived alone.
I was done with the community college here in Everett, and had moved to Seattle for the summer. I lived in a brick three story building by Volunteer Park, on Capitol Hill. I was working in a factory south of town sewing mostly what we call puffer jackets now. I worked in several of these places when I was a big kid. I still dream about the machines and the big noisy rooms and working just as fast as I could manage to.
I have no idea what I ate, or cooked. I know I didn’t have much money.
I took the Metro bus to work every day and then back home. I saw mostly the same characters on the bus every day. We never spoke.
Just being there in the city fascinated me. I knew Seattle of course, but the last time I had lived there I was 6 years old. Then we moved out to the woods, but I’ve told that whole story before.
It was a hot summer. I remember evenings with my window open, elbows on the ledge, just watching the light go down, and the city street, with strangers walking by. There were big old trees along the street. There was a scent to it, and a sound, so foreign to home. Distant traffic makes a kind of song.
I was mostly listening to jazz at that point. It must have been on the radio. I didn’t have a record player, though I did possess a couple of albums. Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, and others.
There was a crosswalk on my corner. To help blind people cross I guess, it had a beep. I heard that beep until it got into my jazzy head. I remember a scrap of verse from those nights alone in the dark watching the city.
Why, when fan sings, do birds buy night’s phony beep-cheep?”
It has to have been the summer of 1968, quite a year, in all.
Then I moved back home, went to the UW for a few quarters, and the rest of my life happened.
But for one breathless hot summer, man, I was cool!
I was done with the community college here in Everett, and had moved to Seattle for the summer. I lived in a brick three story building by Volunteer Park, on Capitol Hill. I was working in a factory south of town sewing mostly what we call puffer jackets now. I worked in several of these places when I was a big kid. I still dream about the machines and the big noisy rooms and working just as fast as I could manage to.
I have no idea what I ate, or cooked. I know I didn’t have much money.
I took the Metro bus to work every day and then back home. I saw mostly the same characters on the bus every day. We never spoke.
Just being there in the city fascinated me. I knew Seattle of course, but the last time I had lived there I was 6 years old. Then we moved out to the woods, but I’ve told that whole story before.
It was a hot summer. I remember evenings with my window open, elbows on the ledge, just watching the light go down, and the city street, with strangers walking by. There were big old trees along the street. There was a scent to it, and a sound, so foreign to home. Distant traffic makes a kind of song.
I was mostly listening to jazz at that point. It must have been on the radio. I didn’t have a record player, though I did possess a couple of albums. Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis, and others.
There was a crosswalk on my corner. To help blind people cross I guess, it had a beep. I heard that beep until it got into my jazzy head. I remember a scrap of verse from those nights alone in the dark watching the city.
Why, when fan sings, do birds buy night’s phony beep-cheep?”
It has to have been the summer of 1968, quite a year, in all.
Then I moved back home, went to the UW for a few quarters, and the rest of my life happened.
But for one breathless hot summer, man, I was cool!
🏙️
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