On the road to Renton.

Olympia, WA Sunday, April 10, 2011 8 pm

After a break and respite from the unseasonable cold and harsh weather yesterday, it actually reached 60 degrees according to one electronic message board in a mall, the rain and cold returned today.

No matter, I needed a break to wash some laundry, replenish food stocks, and get some rest on a real bed inside the walls of a stationary structure. In this case it was inside a motor home of an old friend from Kennewick, Mike B. He lives in a trailer park 5 miles south of the city of Olympia (capital of Washington State). There are countless jokes about trailer parks in America. The main thrust is that they are where the lower economic white class collects and that is material for cruel jokes.

I suppose Mike fits the description. He is badly overweight, he shaves his head, he sports a goatee and mustache that has turned white and because he also has a huge paunch to match that of any woman 8 months pregnant has the appearance of a kind of Buda. (He said today that he has actually lost weight from 300 and 275 pounds recently. We are the same height.) What made us friends was the fact Mike has a wide ranging knowledge of the world and a healthy curiosity that makes talking to him always stimulating. He has not long ago come back from living a year in the Philippine Islands and when he came back instead of returning to live in Kennewick bought an old motor home to live in Olympia where his daughter lives.

It would be hard to describe the clutter and chaos inside his small space he lives in. It is not merely the clutter that is unsettling but the filth hard as enamel on the counters and small stove and inside the microwave oven. There is also the smell: it has a yeasty, musty, odor that although not overpowering reminds one there is something potentially unhealthy fermenting like a fungus. He lives with a small dog called Mimmie. He also had a small TV perched on a table. There are two couches connected to a wall for sleeping. One use one.

Yet I am not complaining. In this weather so bone sapping dreary both from the mental side and the physical side, I needed a break and especially the sleep inside the protection of some walls. It is not just that this stretch of bad weather is unusual for the last 55 years or that it has postponed the arrival of spring, but it has driven down the temperature too in a fashion extended winter. If it was just wet and sloppy and dull but with normal temperatures that would be one thing, mostly tolerable. But to be wet and sloppy and dull with winter temperatures depresses the mood.

So I'm not complaining about the port in the storm I found refuge in for the weekend. On the road, in good weather or bad, one must take it as it comes. All rules one lives by at home are suspended on the road. So on to Tacoma in the morning, after making a few calls in Olympia. Then the towns of Auburn, Kent, Renton, and maybe even a call in Seattle if a certain person is available at the University Book Store. Then up and over the mountain pass to Cle Elum and Ellensburg. I saw on the TV news tonightKennewick is supposed to be 61 degrees tomorrow, the warmest place in the state. That is no doubt far below the normal temperature for this time of year for Kennewick, but it seems from here to be almost a heat wave.

If I am unable to wrap up my business early enough tomorrow then I'll lay over in North Bend, that small town outside of Seattle on the way up into the mountains, and cross over in the daylight.
Always,
Roger

P.S. I might add while in Bremerton I tried to find the house we lived in when I was born there. But I couldn't dredge up from memory the street name on my birth certificate. I did, however, recall the name of one Henry Bilderberger, a soldier from Bremerton I knew in Camp King, near Oberursel, West Germany. I found two Bilderbergers in the phone directly. Called both, No luck. I knew, of course, it was a useless exercise. I remember him, but of course he would never remember me. And had no reason to. Writers only remember others because their minds like a sponge must soak up everything about them and only later decide what to discard and save. So one Henry Bilderberger became enmeshed in my memory. Just as did the soldier I knew in Ft. Ore California who was from Anacortes. He too would have been dumbfounded that I had remembered him. Both were so unremarkable specimens that it seems absurd to have remembered either for any length of time. Both were forgettable.

I can only explain it with the explanation both were a part of something much larger: the unconscious understanding while living among a group of men that the group itself was what was worth remembering and to understand the group one must at the same time remember the individual pieces. So writers scoop up in the process great swaths of people just as an anthropologist who digs among ancient ruins probably by instinct scoops up far more than he needs to find his jewels that explain an ancient civilization.

We are always hoping that one of the individual pieces will unlock the greater mystery of man himself. So perhaps I am always hoping if I find one of these men who I share my past with, however slight, they will tell me a story about their own life that will make sense out of the whole.

Hey there! The factor of fatigue has to be accounted for. What is it the "scientific method" does but take in all the facts, gather them, and then come to a general consensus when viewing them; checking and re checking until we come up with a thesis. I encourage you, even Queen Elizabeth told her son when he was young - "when someone puts their hand out to shake, shake it, when the occasion arises to relieve yourself, do it, and when you must rest, take the opportunity. It may not come again." Did you know that as a teen-ager, princess Elizabeth was always "getting under the car" to see what made it tick? Curiousity about our creation and how it works, what it is, how awesome it is, is part of "being a traveler." Know that wherever you are, I am praying for you, and this lady in Cle Elum knows there is a Loving Father in spite of all the hurt and turmoil all around the world. I encourage you D.J and Steve, and all you avid "pilgrims" to remember that where there is difficulty there is always opportunity to "punch holes in the darkness." As best you can, do what you can, for as long as you can, for whomever you can, and remember you must be good to yourself also. Try to remember that nothing is unnoticed by the one who took care of the Israelites those forty years in the wilderness. Their clothes did not wear out, their feet did not swell, the manna came from heaven for food every day except on the Sabbath, and they had water to drink. The pillar of cloud led by day and the pillar of fire by night. 40 years.
For you travelers, even when you have little faith, remember this lady Junebug is thinking of you on the road.
Won't write you much, but I wanted D.J. to know my address I had was wrong, so I am asking for it again.

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