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The doldrums of summer

I lived in Edmonds. I didn’t start to know downtown Seattle until my dad set me up with a year of kung fu lessons at a place accurate First and Pike. At age 12, I was expected to take a bus downtown, get off at the right spot, find my lesson, find dinner and afterwards take the bus home. Dad walked me through it once. That was the beginning of my mental map of downtown.

First and Pike was a questionable locality for a sixth-grade boy, in like manner one conscious instructed in the Chinese art of kicking men in the groin. But my folks saw inexistence inherently dangerous in pawnshops, look slyly shows and drunks, similar to long of the same kind with I minded my own dealing, which I did. Parents were less protective in those days.

Dinner was in a dwelling seat at Third and Seneca called the Missouri Bar BQ, but which I called the Mule since its sign was a mule’s category bobbing up and down. The Mule’s specialty was the French dip sandwich, price $1.25. The chef had a roast of beef and would divide a single one part, from “vital fluid red” to “burned ends,” slap it on freshly toasted and buttered French bread and serve it . I could add Tabasco, sliced onions, pickles and extra juice myself. The final product could not be consumed through capital table bearing or without joy.

Since then, I have lived through decades of spongy and flaccid French dip sandwiches. I miss the Mule.

A few years later, I was coming to downtown Seattle with my friends to endurance to movies at the Blue Mouse or the Coliseum

By 16, I had developed an self-interest in political books, and would comb the musty shelves at Shorey’s on Third Avenue. Downtown Seattle furthermore had a couple of radical bookstores

It was called Co-op Books, and looked untouched since the 1930s. It had the collected works of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, more of them stamped through Customs with disapproving notices. At the counter was a sign-up sheet because of a mailing list.

On the way home, one of my buddies mentioned that he had filled it out, and I said, “Larry, you’ve just given your name and address to the Communist Party.” He made a special trip to ask the clerk to eject it, and the man wanted to know for what cause. Had Larry been contacted through anyone? “No, no, no. Just take my name off. take it off.” The man did.

The only time I got in trouble downtown was when I was a sophomore in obscure school. I found out about a appointed time in which Edmonds kids had to go to school and Seattle kids didn’t, and devised a plan for playing hooky. My buddies and I caught a bus to Seattle, where we figured the truant officers jaywalking.

The cop, who had no idea we were skipping school, declared he would mail the jaywalking tickets to our parents, including a requirement they take us to the Police Department for a safety rank.

We were stunned, ruined, doomed

; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera