Clyde List at BoeingsSherwood Scroll, May 1977Americans pride themselves on being very individualistic. We have always admired the single family farm for example. Thomas Jefferson wanted the whole country to be that way. One big family farm with us Americans on the inside behind the hedgerow and "Them" on the other side. Even people born and raised in the city want to get back to the farm even if they never lived on a farm. They hang pictures of the farm on their walls. I guess that's why our office buildings have so many walls instead of windows.Ten years ago I worked at Boeing Aircraft Company, in a building that had no windows. You didn't know what time of day it was or whether the weather was cloudy or bright. You couldn't see out. To get into the building, or even to walk next to it, you had to wear a special badge with your picture on it. Once you got past the security guards and inside, it was kind of nice. There was very little to distract you from doing your job. If the weather was rotten you didn't feel rotten. If it was nice out you didn't start daydreaming about being on the farm. If you decide not to work at Boeings anymore you have to turn in your badge. You go to this office on the other end of the plant where a lady with horn rimmed glasses informs you that in order to get to your car, you have to walk all the way around the fifty-some acre fence that surrounds the plant. This can be a very strange journey if you've worked there for any length of time.
From where I worked, the Olympic Mountains were visible in all their splender just above and about fifty miles beyond the hotel. The view was spectacular. But from where I stood it was always interrupted by what was happening in the hotel. One time I kept noticing an old man who kept raising some sort of bottle and saluting me. I merely assumed then that he was saluting my superior position in life, and that's as it should be, I believed then. I wasn't about to equate myself with him in any way. There was a shoe shine parlor just next door to the hotel. Some rather plump middle aged ladies with long hair worked there. One day a policeman purchased some hiking clothes at our store to make himself look like a homeless man. Everyone hurried up to the Sixth Floor and watched him dicker with one of the ladies in the shoe shine parlor doorway. After a very elaborate series of hand gestures, they shook hands and all hell broke loose. Police and long haired ladies were suddenly spilling across the sidewalk. One of the ladies was even waving a hammer at one of the cops, but she did no damage. There was a dirty book store next to the shoe shine parlor. It had a very good cafe. We employees occasionally met there for breakfast. Some nameless fellow had eaten there just a year before, or so the story went, before he went out and got into an argument with the Seattle Police and committed suicide. We laughed with relief and no little amazement at how it must feel to be sitting here, calmly discussing sports with a person who is minutes away from joining the Nether-World! (It reminded me of a scene I had witnessed when I visited Pike Street Market with my folks some years before: A Nordic-looking man with blood streaming from his forehead whom no one had the courage to stop and question. He just kept walking along this very same sidewalk, staring off into space.) The facade of this building was interesting. It was decorated with large paintings which imitated the artworks of the Pacific Northwest Indians. It was not unusual to see a Pacific Northwest Indian or two, utterly wasted and with no hope of recovery, crawling past this tribute to his people in order to find a place to simply lie down and forget who he was. At certain times of the year, sunsets were so spectacular that the employees from the lower floors crowded onto the sixth floor fire escape where I worked. A fellow from the Sporting Goods Department brought a brand new pair of field glasses with him. Through these glasses you could see how delicate the mountains can be when they are bathed in the rose colored light of Autumn or Spring.The jagged edges that few mountaniers would dare to risk their lives on... were no more life threatening then petals on a rose. "Man, ain't that something though?" was the comment heard over and over again as my fellow employees took turns with the binoculars out on the fire escape.
I looked through the field glasses and tried to be inspired as they were. The view would have cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars if I had tried to enjoy it from a private residence further up the hill. However, instead of looking at the mountains I spent all my time staring at a remarkable article of clothing women wear but usually do not openly present to the world. It was waving like an advertising banner from the third story of the hotel below, in the window where the man with the whiskey bottle had been standing. I tried to get people interested in it. The guys from shipping and receiving were always leaving porno magazines lying about in the coffee break room and I thought sure at least they would be interested. But they were not. They were too fascinated with the horizon. "Even these guys!" I remember thinking, "And they don't even have college degrees!" (I had a college degree myself and regarded myself as a bit more "advanced" than these people. Lord Kenneth Clark was popular then. Because of this affable Anglo Saxon Lord's popular art history series on PBS, these very same igoramuses from the 3rd and 4th floor were constantly arguing about Saint Thomas Aquinas and Descartes during their coffee breaks on the 2nd Floor. Unbelieveable!)
"Whew! That was close!" I remember thinking. I was lucky. I quit working there before the lay-offs began. I never behaved well in an emergency, laid off situation. I could only imagine the stunned expressions on those who had been my fellow workers as they turned in their badges and went to the office on the other side of the campus and discovered how long the route was back to their cars. And this is where the lesson came in. Within a few weeks the management where I worked was laying off people too. The unemployment rate was reaching 19 percent, similar to what the United States as a whole experienced during the Great Depression. A sign appeared on the edge of town: "Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn off the lights?" It was only a matter of time before I realized that, in Seattle, it doesn't matter whether you work at Boeing Aircraft Company or not. Your turn comes anyway. I got in line at the Employment Office on Taylor Street with all the former Boeings employees. I remember thinking that being an American doesn't guarantee the satisfaction you're supposed to get when you go to an American school and the teachers open your eyes to the fact that as an American, you're an individual and nothing more. Copyright 2007 by Clyde List
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