Reminiscence

Dear Hearts, I am getting ready to leave the home where I have lived since 1977.

I am leaving the island for the mainland and assisted living. At 78 my health has been going downhill. Bummer, huh? Oh, I’m feeling all right now. They have me on meds that are keeping me stroke and heart attack free, so far.

That’s the main reason I’m moving off – to have ready access to medical assistance.

Another reason I am moving off is that I wish to avoid riding in ambulances on Vashon Island. Riding in an ambulance on Vashon is a bone-rattling experience, and even strapped to the gurney I felt I was about to fall on the floor every time we went around a curve.

It would be silly to say that it is not the same island I first came to in 1972. Well, duh.

Of course we always knew we were living in paradise, those of us who were comfortable with using ferries and knowing it would take an hour and a half at least to go, well, anywhere.

In 1972, if you saw a freak (that's what we called hippies in those days) walking down the side of the road, you waved and smiled, maybe even flashed a peace sign, because we were a rarity, and it was always cheering to see a fellow member of the freak family.

Those people were the thin end of the wedge. The hippie arts and crafts culture arrived like something a king tide had washed up on these shores and there were kids who grew up here who became part of it. There were lots of potters, candlemakers, jewelers, midwives, musicians, back-to-the-(is)landers, and artists and writers and cartoonists and spinners and weavers. Oh, and at least one of the first ten Microsoft employees (number 9).

It cost a nickel to make a call from a pay phone here, and you only had to dial five numbers, like 3-0123, and that was a modern innovation – not long before that you only had to dial four numbers.

On your home phone, you might be on a party line. You had to listen when the phone rang to see if it was your ring, like two longs and one short, for example.

When you picked up your phone to call someone, there might already be someone on the line. So you hung up right away and waited for the line to be clear. That was party line etiquette. That’s what you were supposed to do. It was considered bad manners to listen in on someone else’s call. It might have happened. I would not know. I of course never did it.

If you got a wrong number call, you could direct the caller to the correct number because you knew the person they were calling. 

Now we carry our phones with us, and we do not dial anymore. We tap screens.  I have been told that today’s 20-somethings don’t know how to dial a phone, can’t read or write cursive, don’t know how to tell time on a clock, and don’t know how to sign their signature because they don’t write checks.

The island went from being a small town of commuters and farmers to including people of the alternate lifestyle persuasion. Women in long skirts and guys with long hair became common sights around the island.

In those days, a lot of young mothers, and I was one of them, gave birth at home rather than going to a hospital.

Michael Meade opened Minglement, where you could get organic foods and local pottery, and eco-friendly products, among other things.

Once he got a shipment of raw honey in a barrel. It had set up as a hard, ivory- colored mass, and it had pieces of bees in it. You had to dig chunks out of it, take it home, and heat it up to make it into honey as we think of honey, amber and flowing. Then you would have to pick out the bee bits.

The Blue Heron Art Center was started in an old former church on Bank Road. The organization soon moved down the highway to the Odd Fellows Hall, and the church building became The Children’s Center, a daycare. That’s long gone now.

Drama Dock was founded. Before the opening of the first play, they threw a party at the castle on Maury Island. That house is at the end of a narrow driveway, and you had to park on Dockton Road and walk in. Rick and I were invited to sing.

Ray Aspiri drove his relatives down the driveway and dropped them off and came back down the driveway to pick them up at the end of the party. Ray had a vanity license plate that read BASQUE, because he was proud of his Basque heritage. When he picked people up, his car was blocking the driveway and we were all having to squeeze and wriggle around it. I saw that license plate and said, “That’s what happens when you put all your Basques in one exit.”

I have written that story before, but honestly – how many times in one life do you get an opportunity like that? Sorry for repeating. I do amuse myself.

It was a more innocent time in some ways, I suppose. Or maybe I was more innocent. I am not saying it was better, only that it was different. There were no cell phones, no personal computers, no internet.

There was a lot of drinking, and some drugs, and occasionally someone would drive off the road and get killed, following which a little shrine was built at the site of the wreck. Some of those shrines are still around. I am not nostalgic about that. I hated seeing kids growing up and then getting erased before they reached adulthood.

I heard that there were 26 churches on the island then, and there was a cadre of Jesus freaks, and something called Unity. Hallelujah!

I was young and I was gigging around the Sound, and in Oregon and California, me and my guitar and my original songs. It was fun. I cleaned houses for money. Not so much fun, but one of the best-paying jobs on the island at the time.

I remember seeing Kat Eggleston, then a high school student, sitting in an audience and I could see the wheels turning in her mind: “I could do that.” And boy, did she, and she still does, better than I ever could. Hats off to Kat. You rock.

I wanted to get married and have children, and boy, did I. It didn’t leave much time or energy for pursuing the singer/songwriter career, but I only aspired to a little life, on a beautiful little island, and that’s what I have had.

Now it’s time to move on. I have lived longer than I expected to live, and while my health is wonky now, apparently I am not ready to drop dead yet. I mean, you never know, do you? But now I wake up in the morning and say, wow, I’m still here. Thank you, Jesus. Help me to be as much of a blessing as I can be to as many people as I can.

I’m hoping to make up for some of the times I have exasperated people. There are some people who have been waiting a long time for that.

 My messy little life