Happy birthday to me!

And you might wonder precisely how old I am. Well, I’d rather not come right out and flatly reveal something like that. Instead, I like to keep you guessing.

For instance, I’m old enough to recall the old high school and how students used to amble around the hallways in small groups – girls with girls and boys with boys – and it could get pretty crowded in a narrow corridor near the band room, much to the occasional embarrassment of the young ladies. The more rebellious and sexually forward fellows would congregate in that small alcove with the wooden gate, where they’d leer at the women and occasionally shout crude remarks.

I remember visiting the old Enumclaw Cooperative Creamery with my father. The place was humid and noisy and men scurried about in ankle-length rubber aprons and washed the floor with thick, black hoses spraying hot water. Steam erupted from unexpected corners with a loud, hissing sound and milk cans clanged into one another as they slid along roller-tracks.

I can recall Rochdale General Store on the southeast corner of Cole Street and Initial Avenue.  (It’s a parking lot today.) This old wood-frame structure was divided into two sections: dry goods to the left and groceries to the right. When I was a child, I thought such an arrangement was quite ancient, especially compared to the town’s newer stores like Hinshaw’s Payless Food Store; but today, of course, that’s the standard design in modern box stores like Walmart.  (What goes around, comes around.)

Speaking of Hinshaw’s Payless, the first job I ever had was bagging groceries in his store, which was located in that empty cinder-block building across from the Chamber of Commerce. It was a good job for high-school kids and the three years I worked there paid for my first year at Washington State University.

I can remember when we’d congregate in the Bluebird and Moran’s, where the junior high kids would leaf through the comic books while their older peers gathered in booths, usually segregated by sex but not always, and laugh about “Duke” Thomas’ latest tirade.

And finally, I remember driving back from Seattle at 2 in the morning, listening to a DJ on some long-forgotten local station play the Beach Boys’ quaint little hit, “California Girls” and being positively shocked – I mean, absolutely stunned – when the next song was by a new group called The Doors and I heard, for the first time, Jim Morrison screaming those incestuous lyrics from “The End.”

So, how old am I? Suffice to say, I’m not a fresh, spring-time bloom.