It’s funny how memories work.
My wife and I took a quick trip out to see our friends in California this past weekend, and as we boarded our Southwest flight to Orange County, my eyes caught the small metal plate that held the model number of the aircraft; if you’ve ever flown with Southwest, you’ll know that their fleet is exclusively made up of Boeing 737 jets, allowing them some efficiencies of scale in the maintenance department.
Seeing that particular number emblazoned on the metal that morning, though, had me suddenly thinking about the summer I spent the month of August with my aunt and uncle at their home just outside of Seattle. I wasn’t quite a teenager, but it was my very first trip away from home — and my very first cross-country flight (an experience that merits its own future blog post). Uncle John was an engineer with Boeing, so I was lucky enough to get a tour of their plant in Everett, Washington, where the then-brand new Boeing 767 was just starting to roll off the assembly line. Up to that point, the only manufacturing plants I’d ever toured had been a textile maker in Biddeford and a shoe factory in central Maine; as intriguing as those operations had been, they paled in comparison to the buzz of activity in those massive hangars where jets are built. My uncle pointed out each stage of the construction to me with the intricate detail only an engineer could provide; I came away from the experience with a fine appreciation for both systems engineering and operations management — and a desire to never do either, given how complicated they seemed to be.
Oddly, though, it wasn’t that trip to Boeing that popped into my head this past weekend. The memory that came to me out of the blue was one of going grocery shopping with my Aunt Jane — a unique experience, but only perhaps for a kid from a small suburb in Maine. I forget the specifics now, but what I do recall was that she was still feeding a somewhat full house, for in addition to their guest (me), two of my three cousins were still living at home while they finished up their college degrees. That meant it wasn’t a trivial exercise keeping the pantry stocked.
I was no stranger to the grocery run, for my mother tended to bring us with her on the weekly excursion to our local supermarket. But that was where the similarities ended, for while we tended to hit a single store the next town over, Aunt Jane had a complicated route that involved four different supermarkets. Setting aside for the moment that there were multiple chains within easy driving distance of their home, I was floored by the amount of effort she put into crossing items off of her grocery list. Seattle-area traffic was far worse than anything I’d seen in Boston, but Aunt Jane seemed quite adept at zig-zagging through Bellevue in her pursuit of the lowest prices on ground beef.
Thinking of Aunt Jane always brings me back to Uncle John, though, and his love for jazz. I’d never really experienced that art form until he introduced it to me; whenever we went anywhere in his Volkswagen pickup, he immediately tuned to the local all-jazz radio station and cranked the volume so the music could be heard above the rumbling of the diesel engine. He’d tell me about the artists we were listening to — Coltrane, Fitzgerald, Armstrong — though it would be many years and one Intro to Jazz class in college before I truly understood much of what we’d discussed. Still, while I may not have known who I was listening to at the time, I loved what I was hearing and went out of my way to find more of it when I returned to Maine; that proved to be pretty difficult during the pop-infused 1980s, but ultimately I discovered our local public radio station went to an all-jazz format during the overnight hours.
I’ve often thought about that summer and the amazing cultural experience it turned out to be; I have no doubt that some of the interesting adventures I had while visiting have percolated into aspects of my writing. One of these days I will have to return to Seattle if for no other reason than to see how much it has changed since I was there last. I’m not sure I would recognize it, especially given I’d seen it through the eyes of a nascent teenager. Still, it would be fun to hike up to (what’s left of) the Carbon Glacier again, and wander through the Pike Place Market with all of its fabulous wares. Or ride to the top of the Space Needle to get that one-of-a-kind view of downtown Seattle, framed by the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other.
Someday.