Macrame Memories

Here is my "Rockin' A Hard Place" blog-rant for March, which I performed on Sunday March 27 at Coupeville High School's Performing Arts Center. 

So here we sit on a Big Rock.  A bunch of dudes and dudettes, many of us looking a bit gray around the edges, trying to squeeze our aging behinds into high school auditorium seats designed for much narrower teenage butts.  And feeling all warm and fuzzy about that peace, love and flower power stuff we had back in the 60s.

Well, before we go on, let me remind you of what a wise person once said:  If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t there. My friends, I was there. So you will kindly disregard everything I’m about to say.

It was pretty amazing and it happened so quick. In less than five years, I switched from reading Time magazine hoping I’d be smart . . . to reading Rolling Stone hoping I’d be cool. I careened from the sweetness of Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music” to the grunge of Dennis Hopper in “Easy Rider.” I went from Lesley Gore’s “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” on AM radio and to a well-worn vinyl track of Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane’s “One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all . . . Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall.”

Wow, man. What a trip. I gotta lay back.

 I was a University of Washington student in the 1960s. I started out as a fresh-faced kid wearing neatly pressed corduroy slacks and white shirts. By 1968, I was heavy into raggedy jeans and army jackets. I confess I wasn’t much of a hippie. Way too Scandinavian for that. But I did consider myself a hippie wannabe. Cool but careful.

I grew my hair pretty long on campus . . . ah yes, I do remember my hair! But I always got it trimmed before going home to Tacoma. My mom would yell at me if I walked through her door looking like a beatnik. I tried to tell her she was a generation behind and maybe she meant hippie. She never understood the difference. As far as she was concerned, they all needed a bath.

We really thought we could change the world in the 60s, and maybe we did . . . but not quite the way we hoped. We held Gentle Thursdays outside the Husky Union Building and drew pictures with colored chalk on the sidewalk. It was all about liberating ourselves from racism and materialism and the military-industrial complex. Not too successful, were we?

We protested pretty much everything: the war in Vietnam, anybody over 30, the draft, the midnight curfew at the girls’ dorm, racial segregation, the buck-a-day that U-Dub charged to park in the landfill lot by Lake Washington where you needed an umbrella to dodge the deadly seagull bombs, and -- worst of all -- the U-Dub tuition that cost us a hundred and forty five bucks a quarter. Outrageous!

I visited Whidbey Island a couple times during those years. It was like traveling to a strange, exotic land lost in time. Let me tell you about one particular time. Three of us piled into my friend Charlie’s ‘55 Chevy one Saturday. We grabbed a burger at Dick’s on 45th and headed up Highway 99 through far distant Edmonds to the ferry dock in Mukilteo. Ferries didn’t run as often then and there was no Internet to check when they did. But there was a place to eat at the dock called Taylor's Landing, if you had the munchies while you waited. Now they call it Ivar's. 

We had no idea what we’d do on Whidbey. We’d heard that some mellow people lived there. In the 60s, mellow usually meant glassy-eyed college dropouts in tie-dyed tee-shirts who said “wow” a lot.

Imagine our disappointment when we got off the ferry to find mostly bait shops and beer joints. And old dudes who looked like our dads and spent their weekends on Whidbey fishing and playing cribbage. Bummer.

Today, I realize those old dudes were just like hippies, though they’d ferociously deny that. Every weekend they turned on, tuned in and dropped out. Now, of course, their turn-on was strictly beer. And their tune-in was the tide, weather and fishing report. And their drop-out was from their wives’ list of planned weekend chores. But see what I mean? They did everything but say “wow.”

On that particular visit to Whidbey we found a hippie guy selling tie-dye shirts and macramé by the side of the road somewhere near Langley. He said there were quite a few mellow folks on the island but most of them lived in the woods so they could do whatever they wanted. He told us to drive up the island to a little ghost town called Coupeville. It had a lot of cool old buildings.

Old dudes and hippies got along just fine in Coupeville, he said, not like in Seattle. And the brand new state highway on the island would get us there in only half an hour. So off we went in that two-toned Chevy, racing up Highway 525 that at some point turned into Highway 20 for no good reason. Wow, man. That was weird then and it still is.

I don’t have much recollection of our visit to Coupeville that day, except I think we had a good time. That was years before the tourist hordes started swarming the place to enjoy a quaint shopping and dining experience. Front Street was mostly a slow-paced hangout for locals. It even had lots of places to park.

 I asked my good friend Judy Lynn, who’s writing a book about Front Street, to help me picture what it must have been like when I was there. Judy said it’s very true. Old dudes and hippies did get along fine in Coupeville. They always have, she said, and they still do.

 She told me that in the 60s there was even a head shop in Mariners Court. Well, actually, it was an import shop called the Asian Moon. But it sold a few items that . . . well, let’s just say they were designed to enhance your smoking pleasure.

In Mariners Court there also was Knots and Bolts, a shop that sold macramé of all kinds. Macrame was so cool in the 60s! Those hippies did find some intriguing uses for hemp, didn’t they? I can just hear an old Coupeville fisher-dude back then telling the hippie at Knots and Bolts that he thought hemp was only good for making rope. But, right there in front of him, it was twisted into everything from shoulder bags to bookshelves!

 All in all, it’s easy to see why Whidbey has become so popular as a place to retire for those of us who survived the 60s. The old dudes and the hippies still get along just fine. And people still do pretty much whatever they want in the woods.

 Anyway. It was really cool to visit the Rock as a hippie wannabe in the 60s . . . even though I don’t remember much. But I’ll tell you a secret. Forty years later, it’s WAY more cool to live here as an old dude!

Peace, love and arthritic brotherhood, everybody!

Love Without The Folderol

[Here is my latest "Rockin' a Hard Place" blogtalk delivered last weekend (Feb. 19-20) at the "Postcards From Whidbey Island" variety show performed at the Rec Hall in Coupeville.]

The theme of the “Postcards” show this month is everything to do with love and sex and romance, and I’m supposed to blog about how all that applies to us on Whidbey Island. Well now. That shouldn’t take very long, should it?

I think I can sum up this whole subject by repeating something I heard a guy say to his female companion in line at the Red Apple the other day: “I love ya and all that . . . but do I have to keep sayin’ it?”

Here on the Rock, we’re just not the gushy, sweetie-pie type. We don’t go in much for moon and June and swoon and croon. As my Tacoma-born mother used to say, “For heaven sake! This ain’t New York!” No, indeed, it’s not. We’ve got too many fish to fry . . . or mussels to steam . . . to waste much time on that gushy stuff.

Now, for instance, you take the conversation I overheard a week or so ago at a restaurant down on Front Street. Picture this with me. There sits a long-married couple, having lunch. Let’s call them Kat and Bill. I know this couple is long-married because they are dressed alike: all denim, flannel, fleece and New Balance. Her hair is short, gray and curly-permed, and his is gone. She wears no makeup and neither does he.

She’s eating a plate of Penn Cove mussels, nicely steamed in white wine, garlic and butter. He’s having some broiled salmon on a bed of Ebey’s Prairie vegetables. I’d call them locavaores, except I imagine these folks were eating mussels and salmon with veggies before most of today’s trendy locavores were born.

Like most long-married couples at lunch, they aren’t saying much to each other. When they speak, it’s in a sort of Neanderthal code. He leans over and examines her plate of mussels.

“Your mussels any good?” he asks. “May want to try one.” She says nothing but grabs a mussel with her fork and spoon and puts it on his plate. Obviously, this is a ritual being repeated for the umpteenth time. He eats it and smiles.

“Salmon’s good too,” he says. He takes piece from his plate and sets it on hers. She eats it and smiles. “Good,” she nods and then says, “But way too much food. We can’t eat it all. Get a box.”

He knows the routine and signals the waiter to bring them a takeout container. “Looks like it finally stopped rainin’. Glad we got out of the house,” he says, helping her on with her fleece jacket. “Um hum. But just look at those clouds. Let’s get home before it starts again,” she says.

As they walk out the restaurant door, one of his hands gently rests on her shoulder and the other carries the leftover mussels and salmon.

Ah, yes. That’s what I call romance on the Rock. True love without all the folderol. Almost makes you want to cry, doesn’t it? And right now, who knows? Maybe Kat and Bill are sitting here in the audience. If you recognized yourselves, please raise your hands!

We do enjoy a healthy romantic life here, even if it doesn’t always show. It’s just that our words of love don’t sound like Shakespeare and Keats. Actually, more like Bert and Ernie.

There’s another kind of romance that goes on here on the Rock, and it’s very different from sharing a Penn Cove mussel with the one you’ve lived with forever. This kind is flaunted right out there in public. It happens between men and women, or men and men, or women and women, or even kids and kids.

I call it co-mance because it happens in places where our community gathers. . . like the Post Office, the Rec Hall or, even more spectacularly, at the recycling center. Now I already mentioned our general aversion to folderol in romance here on the Rock. But all those rules are tossed out the window when it comes to co-mance.

Have you ever seen more hugging or shoulder fondling or cheek-pecking than at the Post Office? The other day I saw a woman squeeze another woman so hard she dropped her roll of stamps. And a man gave his neighbor such a warm hug that she got all flush and forgot to check her P-O Box.

And then there’s what happens right here at the Rec Hall. Take a free glass of wine here and the next thing you know you’ve volunteered for the Water Festival or the Lions Club or the noxious weed cleanup at the Town Park. And, believe me, there’s no morning-after pill for what happens at the Rec Hall!

Say hello to a friend at a gathering here and they shake your hand so hard with their big, garden-calloused paw that you feel bruised. Or head for your car in the parking lot and end up in a conversation with a friend for an hour in 30-degree weather, and wake up with a lousy cold the next day.

But the best place by far for co-mance is at our recycling center. Have you ever seen such love and affection as when two strangers toss their empty wine bottles into the dumpster together at the recycling center? Don’t you enjoy those goo-goo eyes they make as the glass shatters and they ask each other how they enjoyed a particular variety?

Well, I should amend that. It’s co-mance when they toss their clear bottles in the correct dumpster and their green ones in the other. If they should happen to co-mingle their bottles, the recycling cop will put a quick end to their co-mance.

Tossing your junk mail into the appropriate dumpster at the recycling center together can also lead to a lovely co-mantic experience. “Can you believe how many Pottery Barn catalogues we get?” somebody will ask. “I know what you mean,” the other will say. “And here we are turning them into packaging for more Pottery Barn merchandise from China,” the other will say. They chuckle. Sparks fly. Ah, sweet mystery of life!

And finally there’s the co-mance that begins while stuffing cardboard boxes – carefully flattened, of course – into the designated recycling container. “Oh, I see from the box that you must’ve bought a new computer,” the boy will say. “Yeah,” the girl will answer demurely, “and I still don’t know how to set it up.” “It’s not too difficult,” he’ll say. “I’d be glad to help if you want.”

Ah . . . Can’t you just hear Cupid’s arrow flying through the air? Before you know it, they’ll be googling. And isn’t it co-mantic?

Any way. I’d like to tell all you folks that I love you. But for heaven sake, this ain’t New York! And besides I’ve got some mussels to steam. So I’ll just say, see ya!