Gastown : Xanadu : Gringo

Memoirs of a Lone Baby Boomer

1. My grandmother of the north

My grandmother of the north lived in a neighborhood of houses near High Street on the island of Alameda (the town on San Francisco Bay where my father grew up, where I was born). A block or two away sat a beauty shop that gramma frequented; it was built ont the front of another house. "Her husband died," my grandmother explained one summer, "and now she does ladies' hair."

It was my first lesson in life insurance.

A few years later, that woman's son -- my age -- saw me and reminded me who he was. Perhaps that was the summer my grandmother died, when I rode all over Alameda on a bicycle; I don't know. That is the only moment I remember of him -- that blond kid on his tree-shaded street. Yet not a year goes by when I do not think of him several times and wonder how or where he is. I will be older when my father dies, but... now we have something in common. Yes. I think his name was, is, Michael; but I am not sure.

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INDEX

2. When I was one-and-a-half

3. The big engines growled and thrummed

4. I think I was three when we moved

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Send e-mail to the boomer thomas@masinternet.zzn.com

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Copyright 2001 Daniel Charles Thomas