Inheritance

It stopped there today in the street

A lifetime of work, a legacy

piercing my heart with pain

a lump welled up in my throat

My knees weak, hands and limbs shaking

The thought of pure evil triumphing over

Pure love.

 

Like a pile of burning tires

The thick black smoke, unbearable

Heat rising, your face hot, you turn away

And there in the picture

In the street

The angel waves and hails your sensibility

In the chasm beyond logic resides faith

It just takes one leap

And they will be there to catch you

Easy Love by Tim Lawrence

 

Easy Love

It was careless of me

Believing that it was easy

If I would only hold open the door

Love would rush to me

It was a simple idea

Born of childish innocence

If we all need love

What was wrong with mine?

Perhaps I tried too hard

The walls were stronger than I knew

You didn’t have to hurt me

I would have stayed anyway

Maybe I set myself up

For the lessons to be learned

You were just the cover of the book

I already knew how the story would end

Lost and alone

A child stranded in a grown body

I only wanted someone to care

Love shouldn’t be too much to ask

I had to stop demanding love

And let it come of it’s own accord

Welcome it

Not capture it

Love is not a hostage

It is not the payday at the end of the grind

It is freely given to all who breathe

Breathe deep

Tim Lawrence 4/15/2016

Paul McCartney

I’ve been struggling trying to come up with a way to start this review. In my Bruce Springsteen review I went on and on about what an inspiration he should be to us all. What I witnessed last night was like looking through the looking glass of history. It was both a look forward and a look back. In January 1964 I was a six year old kid when I watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The next day me and my brother M.L walked over to the record store at Bellevue Square. I had a couple of dollars and I was determined to buy a Beatles record. They were all sold out so I went home the proud owner of the German version of “ She Loves You”. I drove my mom crazy as I ran around the house singing “ she leeb deetch yah yah yah”. If I live to be 106 I will continue to drive people nuts with my German Beatle record story. Sometimes when you’re on the cutting edge of a revolution and you’re six you don’t necessarily recognize it.  Looking back through the looking glass last night made me feel good to have been a part of that revolution. I tried to keep a set list at last nights show. I lost track after a while. Listening to Paul sing I thought about the Beatles playing in the Cavern. Here was Paul almost sixty years later still rocking and entertaining his fans. He sounded a little ragged in spots. But so did the Beatles in the Cavern. It was part of their magnetism. It was why my parents hated them. It was why we loved them. When the history rock is looked back upon by futurists hundreds of years from now they will stare in awe as they think about us fans, last night, watching Beethoven at the Key Arena.

The songs reminded me of John and George and Ringo. They reminded me of the Kingdome and Wings in 1976. The songs from Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Peppers reminded me of growing up in Cherry Crest with my brothers and sisters. I thought of old neighbors and friends. Our dog Hobo that wandered into our yard without a collar. We adopted him and he was our best friend in the summer of 66. It made me well up when I thought about that dump truck driver crying when Hobo ran out into the street and went to dog heaven that day. It sounds depressing but stick with me here. I have learned through my life there is beauty in the sorrow. There is clearly beauty in the music of Paul McCartney. Sitting in the Key Arena last night watching this master play these songs will be one my greatest memories of this precious life.

Okanogan

A desert dry dusty trail in the Okanogan

Deep canyon carved steep rock walls

Boulders scattered like pebbles in random order

The heat dry, the wind pushes through the peaceful valley

Trees scarred from fires in the changing landscape

From the heights in the distance the terraced orchards

The blue waters of the Columbia coaxing fruit from their sagging limbs

Meats Incorporated

On a particularly dank and rainy day Byron come to see the old man at his office. Byron shuffled by the secretaries and salesmen and hid his gaze under his hat. The old man looked up from his desk to see Byron standing there, white as a sheet. The old man reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a bottle and poured Byron a stiff drink.

Byron “Bud” Horton was a meat man. He was the proprietor of Bud’s Meats Incorporated. It was 1943 and the war was going full speed ahead. Bud had his cutters working two shifts to keep up with military and government contracts. Bud had all the business he could handle. He was making money in amounts he could have never dreamed. Bud and the old man shared some accounts. M.L. Davies Company would take care of a ship’s produce order and Bud would take care of the meat. Bud had become very close with a local Navy supply officer. Bud had an exclusive deal to supply all of the Navy ships in the Northwest with meat. One day the supply officer mentioned a possible commission deal with Bud’s Meats Inc. He informed Bud that the Navy may consider opening up the process to bidding. Bud felt compelled to hang on to the business.

Bud and the old man were no strangers to paying “commissions” to captains and crew members on ships. They paid commissions to agents, brokers, captains, ship owners, and dock foremen to name a few. Paying commissions to active duty military personnel was something that made Bud and the old man very nervous. They would present military buyers with non-cash gifts like booze and sporting event tickets. Bud and the old man would take these guys out and entertain them. But the idea of cash payoffs rarely ever came up. But here was Bud facing just this dilemma.

The purchasing agent wanted a cash payoff. One of the ways the suppliers would handle commissions on commercial vessels was to over bill the ship’s owner for items. This extra money would be used to pay the crew members. Ship owners were often located hundreds if not thousands of miles away and had no way of ever verifying the quantities that were delivered to the ships. In the case of the military official wanting a cash payoff Bud had but one choice. He would have to “overweight” the invoice. He couldn’t charge higher prices as the prices were fixed on a contract with the government.

Bud had been rolling tons of meat through this pipeline up until the fateful day. On this day he showed up at the ship and the FBI was waiting with a scale. They proceeded to weigh each item and match the weight against the amount billed on the invoice. The buyer had been busted by the Navy for accepting payoffs from other suppliers. In order to lessen the severity of his court martial he had been coaxed into turning over as many suppliers as he could.  Bud was screwed at this point. He was literally thrown under the meat wagon.

When he got to the M.L Davies Company office at 1111 Western Avenue he was pretty shook up. He went on to tell the old man that he expected to be able to plea out the case. Bud explained he would say that was the first time the weights had been off. He would blame it on the scale at his facility. He was hoping for a fine and maybe a slap on the wrist. He confided in the old man that the FBI may have more evidence than he knows about. He drank his drink and admitted he expected the worst to happen. M.L. Davies Company had a different position in this case. They hadn’t appeared to have ever paid cash commissions on a military contract. At least they had never been accused of it.

What the produce company would do for military was still a little shady. The military buyers would order items that were “off contract”. These were usually items the government deemed to exotic or expensive for the military. M.L. Davies Company would deliver the off contract items and bill them for extra items. They would bill the ship for twenty sacks of potatoes; deliver five sacks of potatoes and peaches and nectarines and cherries that would never show up on the bill. Since the merchandise was perishable there was no way for the government to audit these transactions. Bud wasn’t going to be so lucky.

When the case came to court the FBI had been weighing Bud’s orders for a while. Bud went forward with a plea bargain. He never mentioned the faulty scale. It was clear that Bud was quite a character. He was a local legend and participated in many philanthropic endeavors. He was well known by the federal attorney. They worked out a deal where Bud could keep his business going while he spent one year on McNeil Island. They equipped Bud’s cell with a phone and he ran Bud’s Meats Inc. from his cell.

Bud liked my grandpa and also took a liking to my dad. Bud once flew on a Boeing 707 with a test crew to India. They hunted a Bengal Tiger and brought the trophy back with them on the plane. He was one of the first American’s to ship meat to Saudi Arabia. He knew sultans and kings and princes and princesses. He was personal friends with Bob Hope and chaired the Hope Heart Washington division. Years later when I was in the ship supply business I met Bud. He never talked about McNeil Island. Once in Vancouver, Washington when we were loading a grain ship the longshoremen shut down the port. I spent an entire day and night aboard the S.S. President Adams with Bud. We sat in the galley with the ship’s crew and Bud told us tales of his adventures and travels around the world.

Bud was a true character of old Seattle. He owned to old Wharf restaurant down at Fishermen’s Terminal. He told me that he never wanted to be in the restaurant business. He explained to me the guy got so far behind on his bill the only way he could pay Bud was to sign over the restaurant to him. Bud always looked up to my grandfather. Bud lived well into his 90’s. I used to see him all the time. We continued the relationship he had with my grandfather. We would split the ships order. He did all of the frozen items and I did the rest. I hadn’t thought about him in a long time.

Amtrak Portland to Eugene

Amtrak – Portland to Eugene – April 2014

A rusty bridge and the station so majestic

Saintly Portland Oregon old town trying hard to be hip

And me full of new ideas and old ideas
And the slumped awnings and cable suspended walking bridge all new
The silos and the Rose Garden and the popcorn, spilling
Trains and tracks and new apartments built on the river
Ships sit still, pumps filling holds with the gold of Monsanto
Monsanto is not that bad, especially when you have sticker bushes
And the Union Pacific and the bulls and the Billy clubs swung at the drifter
And dreadful Portland, walls scribbled by spray paint
Behold gorgeous Portland alive with a new tint, a new shade.
The vibration of the rails makes me come alive
The river, the reactor, the generator, my thoughts in a state of diffluence
Longing for New Orleans and Chicago and Los Angeles and the open road
The wheat and the fruit trees and potatoes and onions and artichokes
Roll by the window, amazing to me
And the broken hearts and broken windows and the fairway is the only fairway
Genuine America leisurely goes about her day
And the vision for these verses is you
And I am inspired by you and you are inspired by me, I hope so
And Milwaukie you’re misspelled but named for the rails just the same
And the dreams of the great railroad men
Spikes driven and tunnels blasted through shale
Who built the great lines stretching from Atlantic to Pacific
From New York to Colorado to Frisco
Here we are again the Coast Starlight rolling southbound
Kerouac and an open gondola and an old tramp
Eating a cheese sandwich on the verge of the atomic catastrophe
Sunday afternoon, full of fear, worried about it
Take me all the way to L.A great straight line of steel and rods and rusty roots

 

Astoria

1.
Here I sit up on a hill in Astoria
The bridge reaches out to Washington
Across the mouth of the river
A squall makes its way over the state line
The old garage hangs on by a thread
Paint peeling, rickety doors hang alack
Here I sit upon a hill in Astoria
Looking down contemplating all the water
That has moved though the great expanse
That lies before me.

2.
A rolling wave of thunder
Rolls through my soul, the bass rumbles
Almost scary, an impending explosion looms
Most of these poems are about the delicate balance
Between glorifying then, and accepting now

3.
I’m reminded of Lewis and Clark
And the hitchhikers they picked up
Along the way
4.
The pitched roofs and steep streets
Built by the Scandinavian immigrants
Of the nineteenth century
Some are weathered, some are restored
Each house has a story
of immigration and the land of the free

5.
The city was built on piers over the water
The city was destroyed by fire
They backfilled and rebuilt
That’s what men do when you bomb their cities
6.
We build a life while we are alive
We want to leave a legacy
Some leave nothing, their destiny obscure
Others leave giant pieces of rock
Shaped into the bust of Theodore Roosevelt
Some leave love
Some leave their spirit
His life ended and the tears burn
Every time I try to figure it out
7.
Don’t be sad
Really, don’t be sad
They went before us so we could learn
That Heaven is here on Earth
It’s right in front of me tonight
The waters of the Grand Coulee
Converging with the salt and sea of the Great Ocean
What a miracle!
8.
An old Aurora Fellowship Hall proverb:
One foot in tomorrow
One foof in yesterday
Pissing all over today
9.
The rain reminds me that all the water comes back
To where it started
It goes in a big circle
Like life
10.
When you’re alone looking out the window
Playing the Eugene show from 1993
Through the Bose Bluetooth speaker
You can turn up the volume
Loud
Here Comes Sunshine
11.
When I look across the river
And the squalls intensify
I can barely see Washington my home
It reminds me that neither Jay Inslee nor Dixie Lee Ray
Nor Albert D Rossellini
Have that much power.
12.
I don’t want to sound too cliché
I don’t want to steal others ideas
But these lines are about the same
Length.
And twelve is a good number

13.
I’m back and I’m feeling lucky
This is number thirteen
14.
Quiet calm relax breath deep
Fingers tap the keys and the letters appear
On the magic screen
I miss the click clack of the Selectric
By International Business Machines
15.
And the moon goes around the Earth
And the Earth goes around the Sun
And we hardly notice
16.
Standing in a museum staring
At a painting from the sixteenth century
Wondering what those cats were wondering
Makes me wonder and stare in awe
That feeling you get when art reaches
Your soul

1111 Western Avenue

Mike’s father owned M.L. Davies Company. They were wholesalers of fruits and vegetables and operated out of Seattle’s produce row. Produce row was part of the warehouse district located in downtown Seattle. The companies were lined up in a series of brick buildings along Western Avenue. M.L. Davies Company was located in a four story building at 1111 Western Avenue. The second story was at street level. Every morning they would roll up two huge doors at street level. The street was alive at 5:00 am with all the workers moving produce and freight in and out of the warehouses. Down below the building, facing what is now the Alaska Way Viaduct, was the dock where the long haul trucks would unload. The basement was used to store dry goods and also housed all the potatoes and onions. The second story (street level) had coolers where most of the fruits and the vegetables were warehoused. The third floor had heated banana and tomato rooms. There was also a belt driven machine that was used to sort the tomatoes by color. The top floor had the offices and was also used to store boxes and promotional material.
M.L Davies got his start in the business working at the Seattle office of Canell Brothers. Canell Brothers was an export company based in San Francisco. They primarily exported agricultural products like potatoes, onions, apples, citrus, and some bulk commodities. Sometime in the 1930’s Mr. Davies left the Canell Brothers and started his own export company. I remember him telling me they wanted him to move to California. He didn’t want to so he set up his own firm. Most of his correspondence was conducted by mail. He would write letters to importers all over the world. Sometime after he started the company he became affiliated with a company named Wannamaker Supply Company.
Wannamaker was owned by a man they always called “old man Wannamaker”. He was a ship chandler. This unique business has been around ever since man first took to the sea. Wannamaker would outfit ships with everything they needed to sail the open seas. This included all of the galley provisions. Somewhere along the line Wannamaker and M.L. Davies partnered up in this business. Wannamaker had a severe limp he had acquired in the Great War. He was an itinerate peddler and never had the advantage of having a vehicle of his own. He would always ride out the ships with the drivers when they went to deliver the provisions. He essentially used M.L Davies Company as a warehouse and distribution hub. He knew many railroad men and would ride the freights up to Everett when he called on log ships. He also used the rails to travel to Tacoma and further south to Olympia and Longview.
Mike started working in the produce warehouse when he was ten years old, it was 1940. Mike’s dad was M.L. Davies. Mike was M.L. Davies Jr. Mike was my dad. M.L. Davies Company was thriving at this point. Mike’s first job was working on the tomato sorting machine on the third floor. He would dump the boxes of tomatoes into the big hopper as they began their journey down the sorting machine. The tomatoes would be hand sorted on to one of three belts. There was one belt for the ripe, one for the breakers, and one for the greens. At the end of the belts they would fall into the boxes. All of the boxes would be stacked and moved by hand truck to their appropriate destinations. The ripe fruit would go down to the street level and would be sold to grocery stores, restaurants, and street peddlers. The breakers and greens would go into heated rooms and would be pulled for sale later. My dad told me the first load of tomatoes he worked had “produce of Cuba” stamped on the side of the boxes.
Mike was excited when his dad asked him if he wanted to ride out to the ship in the truck. Old man Wannamaker was on his way out with the driver to deliver an order to a ship at Seattle’s Smith Cove. This is the area known as Pier 90/91 today. The delivery driver helped Wannamaker up into the truck. Next he boosted little Mike up in to the seat. He shut the door and went around and climbed in the driver’s seat. The truck was loaded with fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, eggs, meat and other provisions. The engine roared to life and the driver put the truck in gear. They pulled away from the lower loading dock and were soon rolling along Alaskan Way toward the ship. Mike saw the bustling port with all of its activity as they rolled along. The wharfs of Seattle were full of ships being loaded and unloaded with all types of cargo.
On this day they were headed out to a ship called the Causeway. She was a British flagged freighter. The ship was manned by British officers and had a crew from all over the British Empire. Wannamaker was the local agent for British ship chandler J.R. Wilson Company. Wannamaker went to the ship as a representative of Wilson. He had arrangements with ship chandlers from all over the world. He had initially gone to greet the ship when they were at anchor in Elliot Bay. A small launch had taken him from the foot of Washington Street out to meet the ship. Even with his bad leg Wannamaker managed to get up the gangway and meet the captain. At this meeting he was given the ships requisition list. Everything the ship needed was on this list. It included medicine, electrical supplies, cargo hatch tape, light bulbs, liquor, potatoes, onions, live chickens, pens, paper, and all sorts of sundries and merchandise. The captain received a five percent commission for all of the merchandise ordered. Each department head on the ship also received a commission for his percentage of the order. Wannamaker would dole out the commissions in cash to each man. This was known in the trade as “buying a man a new hat”. The billing was fairly confusing as well. M.L. Davies Company would put up the money to buy all of the merchandise. They would sell the merchandise on Wannamaker’s letter head to J.R. Wilson Company. Wilson would bill the ship’s owner at a five percent markup. All of this billing was done by M.L. Davies employees. They would have to type the entire order twice. Once on Wannamaker letter head and once on J.R. Wilson letterhead. M.L. Davies would pay Wannamaker a commission for his efforts. This business was very profitable.
The Causeway was tied up on the outside pier at Smith Cove. They would eventually move to a berth at Fisher Flour Mill. They were taking a load of bulgur wheat destined for Malaysia. The provisions they had on board the truck today were meant to feed the Causeway’s crew of forty for about two weeks. Later they would receive the main order which would supply them for the one hundred day journey to Malaysia and back. When they got to the wharf Mike was excited because he was going to get to go on board the ship. Wannamaker had one of the crew take Mike down to the galley. The cook was an oriental looking man who spoke in a British accent. Mike saw live chickens in a pen on the ships deck. The cook told him the live chickens were for kosher for “the Pakistani”. Mike was mesmerized by the smells of the ship. There was fresh paint being brushed on by strange looking brown skinned men. They were from a part of the world Mike had only read about in books. They spoke a language he had never heard before. They working in funny looking flip flop shoes and wore paint stained uniforms of the British Merchant Marine. Wannamaker spent his time supervising the unloading of the truck. Mike got to spend the afternoon in the galley with the cook.
The cook had a small office in a passageway behind the galley. He had a small bunk, a desk and a primitive looking refrigerator in his room. He opened the fridge and offered Mike a bottle of orange soda. Mike used the bottle opener and chugged some orange soda and said thank you. Mike noticed two pictures hanging in the cook’s room. One was a picture of the Queen. The other was a picture of Jesus. The cook told him “when the missionaries come, we convert”. The cook had moved to the U.K. as a young man. His father had worked as a diplomat for the British government. The cook joined the Royal Navy and had sailed for Queen, God and country. Later he joined the Merchant Marine. He had been sailing all over the world on freighters since the end of the Great War. It was there at that moment; aboard the Causeway that little Mike Davies decided he wanted to be a ship chandler like Wannamaker. From that day forward he would tag along with old man Wannamaker whenever he could.
Later when Mike returned from Korea he took over the day to day duties of the ship chandlery from the aging Wannamaker. Years later in 1974 when I was helping my dad clean out a store room at the new warehouse at 1900 Occidental Avenue I found an old cane with a cracked handle. My dad told me it was Wannamaker’s cane. My dad had saved it all those years. I lost that cane somewhere along the way. I wish I would have saved it. I know it’s just an old cane. Yet it is a lost piece of Seattle history that may never be told.