I was late getting out of the office tonight. Almost everyone had left, including the office manager, and the receptionist didn't know how to switch the phone system over to the holiday-closure message. We fiddled with it, couldn't figure it out, and then called the office manager on her cell phone. We were told that she'd deal with it later, presumably Friday. So we fiddled with it a little bit more, unsuccessfully, and then left.
One of my all time favorite albums is Neil Young's Time Fades Away (1973), the first salvo in his ditch trilogy. One would be hard-pressed to find a finer example of the cultural power of the Watergate era.
As a newlywed I drove across the country for the first time in a 1971 VW bus with my wife and my cat and a Toshiba boom box blasting Time Fades Away. Nothing can top that experience of driving through Nevada and Utah and Colorado -- the Rocky Mountain West. From our wedding in Reno to a night's lodging in Golden, the home of Coors, everything was close to perfect. Once we hit the plains of Eastern Colorado and on into Kansas, the trip became not so pleasant.
The train back into Seattle was full of people going to the Sounders game. I walked up the hill to Elliott Bay Books. It was like a journey through the past, passing places I used to haunt but haven't in a long time.
After picking up a few cards, I walked home through Cal Anderson Park. The young people were out. It is a perfect sunny Friday evening. Young men were playing ultimate Frisbee on the grass. Young women, showing lots of leg, walked dogs. A few lonely guys read books on benches.
Me? I am free. I don't long for companionship; I don't want to get drunk. And I have the next four days off.
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