Content in the Basement

When I was six, my family moved to a house in Ferguson, Missouri about 20 miles north of St. Louis. It was closer to where my dad worked as a machinist at a match factory. The new house, a one story red brick rambler, was slightly larger than the previous one. My older sister Karen and I were excited, we would each have our own bedroom. Every house in the neighborhood had a basement, the family’s refuge from tornadoes, oppressive summer humidity and nuclear bombs, an important consideration in the 1950s. Our basement had a “fixed up” side and a “dirty side”. In the “fixed up’ side was a large recreation room, a smaller area next to the descending staircase and a bathroom with a sink and toilet. The floor was cream colored linoleum and the walls some sort of wood with deep grooves. At the far end of the rec room was a large toy box, but I don’t remember ever putting any toys in there. The smaller area next to the descending staircase was set up as an alternate TV room. In the summers dad would haul the cabinet TV from the living room down the stairs. Mom furnished the room with an old wood framed couch and matching chair with flower print overstuffed cushions. A large circular braided rug covered the floor and a coffee table sat in front of the couch. The family could escape to the cool damp basement on oppressive muggy mid-west nights to watch TV. I was allowed to decorate the walls of this room with my brightly colored State Pennants, souvenirs from our summer vacation travels. I thought my pennant collection added brightness and color to the otherwise dark room. When my parents bought a second TV, a portable one, they put it in the basement permanently. On Saturday mornings, I looked forward to getting up early and slipping downstairs to watch the morning children’s shows. I don’t remember the exact line up, but I do recall some of the shows, Howdy Doody, The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Sky King, Fury and The Andy Devine Show. Sometimes I watched a Tarzan movie starring Johnny Weissmuller. When my friend, Paul, came over to spend the night, we would often retreat to the basement, pull the cushions off the furniture and beat each other half to death with them. Laughing the whole time, we had to force ourselves to take breaks in order to insure that neither of us would pass out from exhaustion. The cushion off the chair had a piece of plywood sewn in the bottom and it became, for one of us, a secret deadly weapon. That baby could do some serious damage. The “dirty side” of the basement had the washer and dryer on one end and dad’s workbench and table saw on the other. There were certain activities restricted to the dirty side, such as any sort of shooting activity. When I was about eight, I acquired a pump action BB rifle and a Colt 45 cartridge powered pistol with an authentic western holster. It’s a wonder I never shot my eye out. I practiced my quick draw, standing, running, jumping and tumbling, attempting to shoot my plastic army figures off of dad’s workbench where I had carefully lined them up. The BBs ricocheted off the floor and walls in a matrix pattern eventually rolling into the corners of the basement or becoming embedded in the overhead floor joists and support beams. My dad was an artist in his spare time and his “art studio” for some reason was relegated to the “dirty side” of the basement as well. He didn’t seem to mind though. He set up a desk and easel and surrounded himself with his most recent paintings. He spent hours down there in the evenings after work, painting, whistling and smoking his pipe. As a young teenager I decided that maybe the girls would notice me if I built up my scrawny physique. So dad put up a chinning bar across from his art studio and I bought a set of weights. I enjoyed the activity of lifting weights in the basement listening to the local rock ‘n’ roll radio station. After several weeks of pumping iron, I felt I was making real progress. Checking myself out in the mirror, I was certain I was looking quite muscular, but I needed to be sure, so I called up the stairs to Dad who was sitting at the kitchen table, “Dad, do you have a picture of me when I was skinny?” His immediate reply was “No, but I’ll take one.” He was quite the card. When Paul and I returned to Ferguson in our 60s to see how it had changed, to my surprise the people who currently lived in the house let us come in and look around. The elderly man took us down into the basement and showed us how they had fixed it up. It didn’t look the same. There was no more “fixed up side” and “dirty side”. It was now all just a “fixed-up side” and looked like a Las Vegas lounge. The walls were covered over with cheap paneling. A pool table sat in the center of the room with an imitation tiffany lamp hanging over it. There was no trace of Dad’s art studio, the ceiling was covered with those acoustic panels and no signs of Dad’s workbench or my chinning bar. There was no TV room and no colorful pennants on the wall. We lied and told him how nice we thought it looked. True to our Midwest heritage, we didn’t want to hurt his feelings. When the basement tour was over and we began to ascend the stairs, a slight glint of light caught my eye. I stopped and looked more closely. There lodged in the wood beam of the stairwell was a copper BB. A mixed feeling of joy and sadness came over me. Somehow this BB had managed to travel all the way from the “dirty side” to the “fixed-up” side. I’m glad my mom never saw it.

The Floating Hotel

The saying “the journey is the destination” is doubly true when traveling on a large cruise ship. You’re floating around in a giant luxury hotel, spending way more time on the ship doing ship stuff, than on land doing tourist stuff. On our recent one week Alaskan cruise, I figure we were on land for about 8 hours and floating around for the other 160. If you have extra money to spend, which we didn’t, you can maximize your time off the ship by taking various sea, air or land excursions. Upon returning to the ship after a day of wandering around the local town, we often overheard passengers talking about the amazing times they had flying over glaciers or kayaking in the midst of a bunch of whales. We weren’t envious though, for we were very happy with our more relaxed and simpler style of cruising.

One can participate in all sorts of activities aboard ship like arts & crafts, trivia games, computer and dance classes. There are even more activities if you pay extra such as having someone massage and beautify all your various body parts. There were wine tasting parties and art auctions (the cheap motel artwork was not my taste) and jewelry sales. In fact there was so much going I can’t tell you all of it nor can I remember much of it. My wife, sister and I participated in very little. We did arrange for my sister Karen to have her feet massaged for a birthday present. She said the experience was extremely relaxing and her feet did look happy and silky smooth. The primary activity we participated in that didn’t cost extra money was eating. There were tons of food available at just about any time of the day. On deck number nine, the “Lido Deck”, was a food court, similar to the ones in the mall. 

Everything was prepared on ship and served cafeteria style. You could eat as much of anything as you wanted. There were so many choices, one could easily became frozen in indecision. For breakfast I got into a rut. Three days straight I ate French toast, scrambled eggs and potatoes. It tasted so good the first time, I felt I had to stick with it. On day four I discovered a guy making killer eggs Benedict and next to the salad bar, fresh croissants. I stayed with that combination for several days. My sister feared I wasn’t getting enough vegetables, so each morning she brought me a V-8 juice to add to my morning fare. In addition to the Lido Deck which served Italian, Mexican, Asian and American food with an ever present salad bar and desert/pasty counter, there was the dining room, which also served almost three meals a day. The dining room had a dress code called “smart casual”. For men it meant no jeans, shorts, tee-shirts or caps. For women, slacks or skirt with a blouse or a dress of some kind. We noticed right away this rule was not enforced. We let the staff know it was my sister’s birthday and the wait staff came to our dining table and presented her with a small cake and sang an Indonesian birthday song.  On two evenings it was dress up night in the dining room. It was like a prom for old people. The women wore formal gowns and the men suits or sport jackets and ties. I had to wear a tie everyday at my private high school, so to me dressing up is not fun. Just prior to going up to eat on the Lido on those nights dressed in our not so smart casual outfits, we sat outside the dining room and watched the dressed up people parade by. Some of them cleaned up pretty well, but far too many looked like tired old out of shape bodies draped in fancy clothes. They all seemed to be enjoying themselves though, hum-bug. Each evening offered a variety of entertainment. 

We watched a couple movies in the small theater and attended three of the shows at the main stage in the bow of the ship. These were musical variety shows with a live band, dancers and singers. For the most part, the performers were quite good. There were four lead singers, two men and two women. One of the men was short and stocky and had a great voice, the other man’s voice was weak but he looked good in all the costumes. One of the women could sing well, but the timbre of her voice was high pitched and irritating. The other woman could almost sing well. She sang all the big numbers “The Wind Beneath My Wings” and “Over the Rainbow” and other Julie Andrews type songs. She was attractive, wore beautiful gowns, but had trouble zeroing in on the big notes. It made me very squirmy in my seat and Katie tried to leave during one of her numbers, but I persuaded her to sit back down and suffer through it. At all the official functions and galas on ship, one of the ship’s staff would parade out a little old white haired lady and introduce her to the audience. I forgot her name, but we were told she had been aboard ship for over 6,000 days. That’s over 16 years. Can you imagine being on board a cruise ship for that long? I don’t know why she doesn’t weigh over 500 pounds, but she was small and thin. We wondered what her story was. There were many musical venues aboard ship, a jazz band, a rock band and classical musicians. Usually they started playing around 9 or 10, just when we were feeling like turning in for the evening, tired from all the intense wandering around and eating. Katie and I popped into the piano bar one night to have a listen. The piano man was sitting behind a grand piano surrounded by a bar where 6 or 7 people sat facing him on bar stools drinking and shouting out requests as soon as he finished a number. He was a fairly good musician in a sleazy sort of way. I couldn’t help thinking of Bill Murray’s version of a lounge singer from Saturday Night Live. We didn’t stay too long. Most of the ship’s staff were either from the Philippines or Indonesia. They were gracious, helpful and diligent workers.  They straightened and cleaned our rooms several times a day and when we returned to the room each evening, we were greeted by a cute little animal made out of towels. The passengers seemed to appreciate the staff, but I witnessed a few who were rude to them and behaved in a demanding way. The workers involved took the obnoxious behavior in stride and remained friendly. I don’t know how they did it, but I admired them for it. I wouldn’t have been able to remain nice and friendly to these entitled assholes. If you want an easy way to travel to and witness the beauty of Alaska, I would recommend a cruise. You need to start training weeks in advance though. I recommend going to all you can eat buffets to start stretching out your stomach.

Alaskan Cruise

For her 70^th birthday, my sister graciously invited my wife and me to accompany her on a week long cruise to Alaska. Ten years ago for her 60^th, we hiked down into the Grand Canyon and spent several nights in a rustic motel run by local Native Americans whose ancestors lived in the area for centuries. It was a memorable experience, the highlight being swimming in the aqua blue pool directly under Havasu Falls. I can’t wait to see what she will conjure up for her 80^th birthday. I’m hoping that in ten years wheel chairs or walkers won’t have to be part of the adventure.

I never thought I was the cruise type of person. In fact I still don’t. I’m not interested in the on- board planned activities or purchasing items from the shops like the cheesy art work or over priced glitzy jewelry. I don’t gamble or drink much alcohol and I don’t enjoy making small talk with a bunch of people I don’t know. But I discovered that being stuck on a ship with complete room service, very friendly and efficient service people attending to my every need and delicious and varied food available at almost every hour of the day, wasn’t so bad.

I found numerous quiet places on the ship to sit and read and watch the beautiful scenery pass by and I was able to work out every day. The exercise machines In the ship’s fitness center face huge windows looking over the bow of the ship. On the promenade deck, you can walk or run around the entire perimeter of the ship. Also, there is an outside basketball court that is rarely used and perfect for practicing Tai Chi and Kung Fu.
This was my second cruise. The first one was to Mexico. I discovered then that I liked being on a ship out on the open sea. In October of 1967, I sailed on a Merchant Marine Ship with my Army unit to Vietnam. I remember gazing out over the beautiful, expansive Pacific Ocean and thinking, I would love to be doing this under different circumstances. On our cruise to Alaska, we had stops in Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan and a briefly in Victoria, BC before returning to Seattle. The Inside Passage was stunningly beautiful. Prior to our first scheduled stop in Juneau, the ship sailed into Tracy Arm to view Sawyer Glacier. As we slowly wound our way through the sheer rock cliffs of the fjord, passing large chunks of crystal blue ice, hundreds of passengers, including the three of us, scurried around the ship from one side to the other and from the lower to upper decks, in an attempt to get a better view. 

We crowded around on the bow of the ship in the cold, drizzly air trying to see everything that passed by. It took hours for the ship to reach the glacier and when it did we were exhausted from standing in the cold and running around. The Captain held the ship in front of the glacier for such a long time, that looking at it became boring. The ship slowly turned around n place before heading out of Tracy Arm and back to sea. 

As we trudged back down to the cafeteria area, tired, cold and wet and ready for dinner we passed through the hot tub/pool area. In one corner was a small bar. My sister noticed that the same people that she had seen hours before starting the exhausting quest for the perfect view were still sitting there drinking. There they sat on bar stools facing out huge windows on the side of the ship. We instantly realized that sitting in one place with absolutely no physical exertion necessary, except of course getting one’s alcoholic beverage up to one’s lips, was the best possible strategy. 

The Captain skillfully maneuvered the ship through the fjords and in front of the glacier which presented a panoramic view of it all. They saw the right side of the fiord on the way in, the glacier as he turned around and the left side on the way out. Never in my life did I think I would admire people who began drinking at 10 in the morning, but there you have it. When we sailed into the Juneau harbor, three cruise ships were already docked there. These huge vessels lined up in front of the small town, completely blocked the towns people’s view of the harbor. I’m not sure what the population of Juneau is, but it probably doubled in a matter of hours when the ships sailed in. The souvenir shops that faced the docks were already teeming with tourists eagerly purchasing Alaskan jewelry, tee shirts and trinkets. The cruise industry must significantly boost the local economy, but at what cost. The quaintness and charm of these small Island towns is almost totally lost because of it. 

Of the three Alaskan towns we visited, Sitka was the most beautiful. Small islands dot the waters surrounding it and the town is configured in such a way, that the tourist shops can’t dominate the waterfront like Ketchikan and Juneau. 

The ship docked in the harbor and passengers were shuttled to shore in tenders. I expected to see more Russian architecture. It seems that the Russian Orthodox Church was the only building from that period. The Russians took possession of Alaska by force from local Native American tribes. At the time they were interested in harvesting sea otter pelts. They killed thousands and thousands of these cute little guys and traded the pelts to China for tea. After feeling the soft silky pelts I can understand why the Chinese wanted to wear them. The Chinese had a way of turning tea leaves into hard blocks which preserved it longer than in leaf form. At the time the Russian people were into drinking a lot of tea. When the political and economic atmosphere changed, the Russians unloaded Alaska to the US for a ridiculously small sum of money. Seward OK’d the purchase and at the time it was thought of as a foolish investment and referred to as “Seward’s Folly”. (To be continued, next blog)

Fat Robin Farm

This blog entry was written by my grandson, Owen, who visited Katie and me while we were staying in Sequim, Wa. at the home of our friend, Sally.
 

I’m here at the Fat Robin Farm with my grandparents. I came from Edmonds on the Kingston ferry, and from there, my grandparents drove me to Sequim. 

I’m staying at their friend Sally’s house, which has a huge back yard, complete with a cherry tree, a few raspberry bushes, and black berry brambles, around the edges. 

Sally’s house is divided into two sections by an art studio. Sally lives on one side and we live on the other side. We keep the door of the art studio closed because Sally has three cats and I’m allergic to cat dander. My favorite of the three cats is Meow. 

She’s the boldest, so she doesn’t run away from me. She’s a grey cat with dark grey stripes. She really likes me and will come slowly after I call her. She also really likes to roll around on the grass, which makes her really dirty. Her owner, Angie, is in Seattle. Angie is Sally’s daughter, and she is going to get Meow and take her to Seattle within the next year. Meow was next to the driveway when I came here, and she let me pet her.

George is a nervous kitty. He runs away from me whenever I come within three feet of him. 

He’s dark brown with black stripes, and pretty big, not like Meow. He lies on Sally’s bed all day, but he can run really fast when he wants to. His owner is Sally. George really likes Grandpa and will come if Grandpa calls him. I first met George when I went exploring the house.

The last cat is a Tonkinese named Blue.

 Blue has a dark tail, face, ears, and a brown back, but he’s white everywhere else. Blue likes me enough, but he hides anyway and scratched me after I rubbed his tummy too long. Blue is the largest of all three cats. Blue really likes Grandpa too. I first met Blue when Grandpa called him.
Sally is super, super nice. She waves to me whenever I see her. She includes me in conversations. She lets us use her enormous wide screen TV whenever we want to. She tries to get her cats to like me. She lets me roam around her house whenever she’s awake or not home. She lets five people share her house with her all at the same time. She is AWESOME!

On my third day here, we went to Grandma and Grandpa’s friend Pamela’s house for dinner. She gave us some of the best Mac’n’cheese I’ve ever had. It had mushrooms, smoked mozzarella cheese, stilton cheese, possibly some other cheese that I forget, with vegetable rotini. 

Pamela is a GREAT artist, and she even did a painting of my grandma which will be part of Pamela’s one-woman show at the Sequim Museum and Art Center. She was really nice too and gave me a bunch of lemonade!

On my fourth day, Grandma’s friend Ann came over. Ann is super nice too. She goes walking with Grandma every day! 

She and Sally come over and eat with us sometimes. The Lavender Festival is going on right now, and Grandma, Sally, and Ann went to two or three farms together and ate lunch out, while Grandpa and I went out to Subway. It was fun because I got a bag of Doritos with my sandwich and then we went to Starbucks for a Cheesecake Brownie.
While we were talking to Ann shortly after she arrived, a deer came really close to the apple tree in the backyard to eat the apples.

Today, we all went to the Lavender Festival. Grandma and I made

lavender wands and I made a sachet. Both are pretty and smell strongly of lavender. I had a very good time, but I almost froze my toes off.

I’m going home tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to swinging on my swing. My brother has been at a backpacking camp, but he’ll be home when I get back. I’ve had a great time at the Fat Robin Farm.

The 21st Annual Greenwood Car Show

Advertised as “a mile and a half of classic rides,” the Greenwood Car Show is the largest one-day classic car show in the state of Washington. Hundreds of cars are lined up on both sides of Greenwood Avenue, the main street in Greenwood, a neighborhood in north central Seattle. This is the third time I’ve attended with my friends, Jim and Nick. It has become somewhat of a tradition for us, if three times makes a tradition. It’s only a ten-minute walk from my sister Karen’s house where Katie and I were staying. Nick showed up early in his Mini Cooper on the Saturday morning of the show. We walked together up to Greenwood, leaving in plenty of time to get to the show 1/2 an hour before the official start. We planned to meet Jim, who also lives close by, in front of the chiropractic office on Greenwood and 79th. We knew that we would still be looking at cars five or six hours from the time we started, so knowing that a chiropractor was nearby was not a bad thing. When we arrived Jim hadn’t arrived yet, but there were already plenty of people milling around. Nick commented that many of them resembled Jim. In fact, upon further inspection, they resembled Nick and me as well, a bunch of older white guys in t-shirts, jeans and baseball caps. The demographics did change somewhat as the day progressed, to include non-whites, younger folks, women and families. Did I mention that the guys who owned the cars also looked remarkably like us as well?

The number of restored minis seems to get bigger every year. Comparing Nick’s modern retro Mini to these older ones, is like comparing a Pit Bull to a Chihuahua

Seeing all these restored cars in one place is close to a religious experience--happiness, gratefulness and awe. And the car owners are the high priests who openly share the secrets of their cars with the masses. The three of us tended to get most excited about the cars we grew up liking. Even though many of the older cars of the 30s and 40s demonstrate superior craftsmanship and a refined elegance, it’s the cars of the 50s and 60s that really turned us on and as usual there was an abundance of them. 

My family had a 1955 Mercury, light blue with a dark blue roof. This 54 was a beauty and well restored.

Jim is probably telling this woman how good she would look behind the wheel of this Chevy Bel Air.

 Jim is an authority and connoisseur of classic cars. He has loved cars his entire life and knows subtle things about them that sometimes the owners don’t even know. For Nick and me, attending the show with Jim is like having our own personal tour guide. He misses few opportunities to question an owner about a car he’s particularly interested in and they are always happy to share their knowledge.

In the late 50s and early 60s cars had huge rear ends.

And the designers’ imaginations went wild. This Cadillac looks like it’s ready for take-off. But you’ve got to love ‘em.

The three of us agreed that this Studebaker was one of sweetest cars of the show. Studebakers were unlike any other cars of their time.

Every year we each pick our personal favorite car of the show. The cars we choose are never the older classics or even the best restoration jobs, but the ones we would most like to immediately climb into and drive away. Nick and Jim are both passionate about Thunderbirds, so I wasn’t surprised when each chose a T-Bird as their favorite.

This ‘57 T-Bird that Nick chose was actually up for sale for a measly $70,000. We didn’t have to try to convince him that he’d look good behind the wheel. But for that price, he was concerned that he couldn’t convince his wife, Suzanne.

I couldn’t get a good shot of Jim’s favorite car because of all the people getting in the way, but I did manage to get a piece of it.

Jim mentioned that back in the day, you were either a Ford guy or a Chevy guy and never the twain shall meet. For some of the formative years of my life, my dad only bought Chevys, so I was a Chevy guy. My choice of the show was this red 1962 Corvette. In the early 60s TV show, Route 66, Buzz and Todd drove around in one of these.  Damn, I’d really look good behind the wheel of this one. 

The paint job on this car was luscious. 

Nick spent an inordinate amount of time lurking around this little 195? Aston Martin DB Mark III.

On family vacations, the kids could really bounce around in the back seat of this 1952 Buick Eight, Super Woody Estate.

The three of us agreed that the cars that are restored to their original state are the ones we love most. There were many examples at this year’s show.

By mid-afternoon, the 22-block show was so over-crowded with people, it became a challenge to even get close to the cars. When we still had 4 or 5 blocks to go, we ran out of steam and decided to bail. Maybe next year we can begin training a few weeks in advance in order to complete it. but the show keeps getting bigger and we keep getting older.

Getting Back Into Balance

     We spent the first two weeks of our three-month long escape from the Arizona heat, in Seattle. Summer had not quite begun in the northwest. We stayed at my sister Karen’s house, and she referred to June in Seattle as “Juneuary”. It was cloudy and rainy almost every day, but then late in the afternoon, the clouds blew away and the sun spread its warm, drying rays around giving rise to the smell of green plants and moldy wooden houses. Our last few days were hot, in the 70s and 80s with high humidity. The day we left for the Olympic Peninsula, it soared into the 90s, a little too much summer for the locals. As one Seattleite put it, "I wait all year to complain about the heat." 

Seattle is a progressive, liberal city. It is most apparent coming from Arizona, a conservative State. At the grocery store, the clerk, seeing that we hadn’t brought any bags of our own, asked us how many bags we wanted to purchase to put our groceries in. We bought two paper bags at 5 cents apiece.
     Recycling is not the exception in Seattle, it’s the rule. Every house has three containers for waste pick up, the smallest one for garbage and the two big containers for recycled material and yard/compost material. I read that Seattle leads the nation in recycling. I think it’s commendable that the people of the city choose to recycle so much, but at times it can be frustrating. At the co-op, after eating lunch, I got so confused trying to decipher into which of the many containers I was to put my plate, napkin, cookie bag, plastic fork, paper cup and plastic lid, that one of the employees took pity on me and came over to help me sort it all out. In my frustration I said, “Down in Arizona, we just haul ass up the highway and throw our garbage out the window.” She laughed, I’m glad she knew I was joking.
     The Fremont area of Seattle seems like the epicenter of liberalism. One morning Katie and I wandered over to Fremont to witness the Solstice Festival and parade. Immediately upon entering the area, we felt transported back to the 1960s.                           
     As one enters Fremont, you are greeted by a giant statue of Lenin, not John “Lennon”, but Vladimir. I read that this statue is dressed up for a variety of different Fremont occasions throughout the year. As we walked by I noticed that Vladimir’s left hand was painted red. This subtle addition to the statue’s revolutionary pose, helped put it into the right perspective for me. There are at least two other notable icons in Fremont. 

A huge cold-war rocket fuselage adorns the front of a local store. I have no idea what the significance of this is. And then there is the giant Troll under the highway bridge. “The community pays tribute to the troll every October 31st with a mobile ‘Trollaween’ party, starting under the bridge and wandering to other funky art sites and events in Fremont.”
     The Solstice Festival proclaims the arrival of the sunny season and this year the sun cooperated. As the day progressed, the temperature rose into the 80s. We arrived early, about 11am, and people were already lining the streets to watch the parade, which didn’t start until 3pm. The festival celebrates and highlights all things environmentally friendly. It is also an opportunity for people to paint their bodies and ride totally naked on bicycles in front of hundreds of people. Not something I would recommend or be inclined to do, especially at my age.
     I stopped and talked to a young woman who had a giant shrimp on her head.

 She was very nice and wanted me to make sure that when I ordered shrimp in a restaurant, it was the right kind of shrimp. It was very important to her that I do not eat shrimp from certain countries. I can’t remember which ones, but she said these countries do bad things which to me seemed totally unrelated to my shrimp eating. She was very nice and very earnest about the cause. I trusted that she knew what she was talking about and I told her that I would do my best.       

     We walked past a man standing in front of a truck with green crosses and giant marijuana leaves painted on the side. He tried to give Katie a brochure, which she rejected, but I took and he seemed extremely pleased. These green crosses are all over Seattle on buildings and trucks. It is the symbol for medical marijuana. I’ve always been in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. It should not be lumped in with the harder and more addictive and dangerous drugs. But the movement to push marijuana as a medical remedy seems deceptive to me. I’m sure it helps people with certain ailments, but I suspect that the people behind it are not solely motivated by remedying other people’s health concerns. My friend, Erran, told me that there is a way to heat up marijuana and take out the chemical part that makes you high. The process leaves in all the medicinal elements, which means it would become more like Tylenol or Ibuprofen. I wonder, if all of the pot these people are pushing underwent this process, would the movement still have such a robust following.
     After wandering around Fremont for several hours, I began to feel a little more balanced. It was just the remedy I needed to counteract the effects of all the Tea Party rallies in Green Valley, AZ. over the past few years.

Fleeing the Southwest Heat for the Beautiful (damp, cold) Northwest

Our decision to escape southern Arizona for the summer was a no-brainer. The temperature hit triple digits on June 1^st and there’s no looking back until sometime in September. Waiting for the cooling monsoons is always a frustrating business. Often, you can see the rain over there and over there and over there, but it won’t come over here. Meanwhile the humidity cranks the heat up until you’d swear you were in southern Louisiana. The bugs love the hot weather--the gnats, mosquitoes and cockroaches. A few nights before we left, a spider the size of a compact car decided to spin his web across my closet. I got the broom and unceremoniously sent him to spider heaven. When the rains do come to our area, it is wonderful and refreshing, but then they are gone and the waiting and the sweating begin all over again. So on June 14^th, we headed for the northwest and the cool moist air. The drive up to Washington was uneventful. We spent the first night in a cheap little motel in Las Vegas. It was on a street filled with small wedding chapels and various kinds of adult merchandise shops. Did I mention it was cheap. The chapel right next to it did a brisk business. As we pulled into the motel parking lot, a lesbian couple excitedly exited the chapel door and locked lips for what seemed like an eternity. This chapel had a steady stream of couples tying the knot Vegas style and then being whisked away in cabs or stretch limos. We located the Chinatown of Las Vegas, which was within walking distance of our motel. It wasn’t like Chinatowns of other cities, but was a bunch of restaurants and Asian stores in several adjacent strip malls. We entered a small crowded noodle house, where we stood by the door, while a young Chinese woman cleared the dishes and cleaned off the only available table. She put away her cleaning rag, led us to the table and then promptly forgot we were there. We sat waiting to order and watched as several tables of people who came in after us, were served their food. In my hungry, tired and grumpy state, I stood up and told Katie we were leaving. But then the waitress spotted me standing and realized her mistake. She came over and apologized and asked to take our order. I was still locked into my angry “let’s get the hell out of here” mode, intent on leaving. But Katie told me to sit down and we ordered. The noodle soup was delicious and I forgot all about being angry at the waitress. She didn’t get much of a tip though. The Las Vegas temperature was actually cooler than Green Valley by a few degrees, still hot as a sauna though. I always feel a little sad when I pass by people wandering the streets of Las Vegas. Many of them have this look as if life didn’t quite work out the way they’d planned. And the ones around our motel never learned that in the middle of the night you need to use your after hours quiet voices, because there are some older folks in the rooms right above you who are very tired and trying to get some needed and precious sleep before the next day’s grueling drive. Somewhere in northern Nevada, while filling the car with gas, I noticed the Southwest heat was gone, replaced by cool mountain air filled with the scent of pine trees. The motel in Twin Falls, Idaho was much nicer and quieter and had a huge comfortable bed. On our way from Twin Falls to Yakima, we listened to a story on the radio about a 7-11 in Kennewick, Washington that held the record for selling more Slurpees than anywhere else in the world. The radio announcer said that one whole side of the store was devoted to nothing but machines dispensing Slurpees of all flavors. They called it “the wall of Slurpee”. I really wanted see this famous wall and sample some of the unusual flavors, but by the time we got close to Kennewick, we were so tired of riding and it was just enough miles out of our way, that we decided that Slurpee Heaven would have to wait for another day. We pushed on to Yakima. When we arrived and got out of the air-conditioned car, we felt as if we had reentered the southwest. The temperature might not have been as high, but the oppressive humidity made up the difference. Western Washington is like a slice of Alaska in the lower 48. It is the exact opposite of the southern Arizona desert. The trees are thick, tall and green and the air cool and moist. There was still snow on the tops of Cascade Mountains. As we descended Snoqualmie Pass, the sun shone brightly and big friendly clouds drifted in the sky. Katie and I both felt like we were heading home. We’ve been here only a few days, but already I’m reminded of why we moved to the desert. The damp cold seeps right into the old bones. June in Seattle can sometimes feel more like November, especially to someone who just came out of the dry, hot desert. I’m hoping to get used to it in week or two. People around here don’t seem to notice it, but I’m wondering if they notice this odd fellow wandering around in several layers of clothing, while they’re all in T-shirts and shorts.