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It's early evening, and I am driving downtown to see a movie. I take the same old exit I always take when going to Pacific Place or the Cinerama. I pass Gethsemane Lutheran Church, and then the bus depot, and I have the same memories I always have when I pass there.
For some reason that hundred yards of asphalt is my most potent dad-memory place.
Without fail I always have the same rush of images --
...dad is parking the car as I just finish reading Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption. I am breathless from the story I have just finished reading, but it never even occurs to me to describe what I am feeling to my dad...
...we are inside the bus terminal, and dad checks the time for the next bus north, sending me back home to Burlington after a weekend with him in Seattle...
...a different day, me calling home in tears. Dad dropped me off at the station, asked if I had my ticket, and then left. It's not his fault, I really did think that mom had bought me a round trip ticket, and it is only as I am trying to board the bus an hour later that I discover all I have is a carbon copy of the one-way ticket that brought me down here. I have no money, I am stranded in Seattle, and dad is not home. I have to call home and make my mother drive the seventy miles to come get me. It's not my dad's fault, he asked if I had the ticket. Still, what kind of father leaves an eleven year old boy alone in a downtown bus station a full hour before the bus is boarding, instead of personally seeing me get on the bus...
...another day, and this time dad actually asks to see the ticket before leaving me alone in the station two full hours before the bus is due. It's ok, I have a plan for how to pass the time. I am eleven years old. Eleven. I carefully study a map on the wall and plot my course to the Pike Place Market. I know there is a comic shop there, and I am going to check it out. As I am browsing the racks a very nice middle-aged man starts talking to me. After chatting for a while he offers to buy me a comic book and I readily accept. Some more chatting, and then he makes me an offer. "I'll give you twenty bucks," he says, "if you'll come out back with me and let me watch you take a pee and dangle it for me." Twenty three years later and I still remember his question word for word. I can still hear his voice, and the barely concealed anticipation in it. I decline the offer, and fear that he will take away the comic he already bought me. It is only later, on the bus ride home, that I contemplate the more terrifying fate that could have befallen me...
I am past that stretch of asphalt, and the memories recede back into their box.
For some reason that hundred yards of asphalt is my most potent dad-memory place.
Without fail I always have the same rush of images --
...dad is parking the car as I just finish reading Rita Heyworth and the Shawshank Redemption. I am breathless from the story I have just finished reading, but it never even occurs to me to describe what I am feeling to my dad...
...we are inside the bus terminal, and dad checks the time for the next bus north, sending me back home to Burlington after a weekend with him in Seattle...
...a different day, me calling home in tears. Dad dropped me off at the station, asked if I had my ticket, and then left. It's not his fault, I really did think that mom had bought me a round trip ticket, and it is only as I am trying to board the bus an hour later that I discover all I have is a carbon copy of the one-way ticket that brought me down here. I have no money, I am stranded in Seattle, and dad is not home. I have to call home and make my mother drive the seventy miles to come get me. It's not my dad's fault, he asked if I had the ticket. Still, what kind of father leaves an eleven year old boy alone in a downtown bus station a full hour before the bus is boarding, instead of personally seeing me get on the bus...
...another day, and this time dad actually asks to see the ticket before leaving me alone in the station two full hours before the bus is due. It's ok, I have a plan for how to pass the time. I am eleven years old. Eleven. I carefully study a map on the wall and plot my course to the Pike Place Market. I know there is a comic shop there, and I am going to check it out. As I am browsing the racks a very nice middle-aged man starts talking to me. After chatting for a while he offers to buy me a comic book and I readily accept. Some more chatting, and then he makes me an offer. "I'll give you twenty bucks," he says, "if you'll come out back with me and let me watch you take a pee and dangle it for me." Twenty three years later and I still remember his question word for word. I can still hear his voice, and the barely concealed anticipation in it. I decline the offer, and fear that he will take away the comic he already bought me. It is only later, on the bus ride home, that I contemplate the more terrifying fate that could have befallen me...
I am past that stretch of asphalt, and the memories recede back into their box.
