Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor
Back on the bus Relaxing ride leaves day's tensions behind
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I'm weary from what's been a long day at the Gazette by the time I pick my way down the back stairs.
We've put out another paper - a good one that's worth every one of your six bits - and while I love my work, this is a good day to have over.
The sweltering heat of late July has broken, and it's cool enough this evening to wear my jacket and the khaki fedora that protects my balding head.
Nearly seven months have passed since I brought you along on one of my daily commutes aboard Clallam Transit System's Route 30 and 24 buses. Last time, I shared my ride from my home on Port Angeles' west side to the Sequim Transit Center.
Today we'll reverse the trip.
The minute hand is seven minutes shy of straight-up
6 p.m. when we pull away from the center at 190 W. Cedar St., leaving behind a band of teenagers beneath the weeping willow tree that someone had the good sense to leave standing.
Feds foot most of cost
The peak commute time has passed and only a few passengers are aboard bus No. 605, a nearly brand-new behemoth that's complete with security cameras inside and out, courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security.
Like all Clallam Transit buses, the federal government paid 80 percent of No. 605's cost.
Despite its familiarity, I still relish the passing scene, especially the Clallam Co-op grain elevator that stands among the shopping centers like the too-tall girl no boy ever asked to dance.
The big-box stores look the same as their siblings in every town but they're saved from conformist damnation by the misted blue mountains behind them that one of my acquaintances calls The Guardians.
Surveying my fellow passengers as No. 605 pulls onto U.S. Highway 101, I realize I'm the only male who's wearing a necktie. Hell, I'm always the only passenger wearing a tie, coming or going, not to mention a fedora.
That realization gets me musing about tying neckties, how most men wear a four-in-hand knot with all kinds of collars, never the slightly more complicated but fuller half-Windsor knot that's appropriate to the button-down collar on the shirt I'm wearing today.
Soon I'm wondering about other lost techniques that once conveyed adulthood: winding a watch, filling a fountain pen, folding French cuffs and fastening them with cuff links.
Such are the ways the mind wanders when one needn't pay attention to the road ahead.
Rural turning to urban
Meanwhile, the landscape reflects a shifting society.
Horses grazing in fields and barns unlikely ever to feel a fresh coat of paint alternate with lots full of RVs and trailered boats unlikely ever to roll or float again, at least not for their present owners. Narrow dirt driveways into the woods separate mini-storage complexes.
But cattails still stand tall in the drainage ditches. I love cattails, have ever since growing up in the Midwest, where they were home to redwing blackbirds whose rusty-hinge call was a staple of the summer soundtrack. The bus' closed windows shut out their song today.
Soon we're rolling into the Morse Creek curves and the westward view I always find marvelous - showing scores of shades of green as it does today, dappled with fiery foliage in autumn, revealing snow-cloaked mountains in winter.
This is one of the luxuries of riding a bus: I can gaze at such splendor with no worry that I'll run off the highway.
But beauty gives way to the chaotic retailing of Port Angeles' unincorporated east side, its incoherent architectural babble is as good an argument as I know for design review boards.
Routine brings relief
We arrive early at The Gateway in downtown P.A., where I board a smaller bus for the short trip home.
It occurs to me that I ought to find someone who'll print a bumper sticker that says, "My other car cost $340,000 (four-fifths of which were federal funds) and seats 40."
There's been nothing unusual about this trip, a rather boring ride, really.
But as far behind me are the day's little crises, the True Believers' spiteful e-mails, the bylines and the headlines and the deadlines.
And as I walk the two blocks from the bus stop to my home, I can listen for bird calls, eye the blackberry bushes for ripe fruit, feel the fresh breeze through the Doug firs and keep an eye out for deer, especially that white-bellied doe my wife and I first spotted as a fawn two years ago.
Unlocking my front door, I hug my True Love and submit myself to my dogs' slurpy greetings.
It's time to hang up my fedora.
And take off my tie.
Jim Casey is editor of the Sequim Gazette.
We've put out another paper - a good one that's worth every one of your six bits - and while I love my work, this is a good day to have over.
The sweltering heat of late July has broken, and it's cool enough this evening to wear my jacket and the khaki fedora that protects my balding head.
Nearly seven months have passed since I brought you along on one of my daily commutes aboard Clallam Transit System's Route 30 and 24 buses. Last time, I shared my ride from my home on Port Angeles' west side to the Sequim Transit Center.
Today we'll reverse the trip.
The minute hand is seven minutes shy of straight-up
6 p.m. when we pull away from the center at 190 W. Cedar St., leaving behind a band of teenagers beneath the weeping willow tree that someone had the good sense to leave standing.
Feds foot most of cost
The peak commute time has passed and only a few passengers are aboard bus No. 605, a nearly brand-new behemoth that's complete with security cameras inside and out, courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security.
Like all Clallam Transit buses, the federal government paid 80 percent of No. 605's cost.
Despite its familiarity, I still relish the passing scene, especially the Clallam Co-op grain elevator that stands among the shopping centers like the too-tall girl no boy ever asked to dance.
The big-box stores look the same as their siblings in every town but they're saved from conformist damnation by the misted blue mountains behind them that one of my acquaintances calls The Guardians.
Surveying my fellow passengers as No. 605 pulls onto U.S. Highway 101, I realize I'm the only male who's wearing a necktie. Hell, I'm always the only passenger wearing a tie, coming or going, not to mention a fedora.
That realization gets me musing about tying neckties, how most men wear a four-in-hand knot with all kinds of collars, never the slightly more complicated but fuller half-Windsor knot that's appropriate to the button-down collar on the shirt I'm wearing today.
Soon I'm wondering about other lost techniques that once conveyed adulthood: winding a watch, filling a fountain pen, folding French cuffs and fastening them with cuff links.
Such are the ways the mind wanders when one needn't pay attention to the road ahead.
Rural turning to urban
Meanwhile, the landscape reflects a shifting society.
Horses grazing in fields and barns unlikely ever to feel a fresh coat of paint alternate with lots full of RVs and trailered boats unlikely ever to roll or float again, at least not for their present owners. Narrow dirt driveways into the woods separate mini-storage complexes.
But cattails still stand tall in the drainage ditches. I love cattails, have ever since growing up in the Midwest, where they were home to redwing blackbirds whose rusty-hinge call was a staple of the summer soundtrack. The bus' closed windows shut out their song today.
Soon we're rolling into the Morse Creek curves and the westward view I always find marvelous - showing scores of shades of green as it does today, dappled with fiery foliage in autumn, revealing snow-cloaked mountains in winter.
This is one of the luxuries of riding a bus: I can gaze at such splendor with no worry that I'll run off the highway.
But beauty gives way to the chaotic retailing of Port Angeles' unincorporated east side, its incoherent architectural babble is as good an argument as I know for design review boards.
Routine brings relief
We arrive early at The Gateway in downtown P.A., where I board a smaller bus for the short trip home.
It occurs to me that I ought to find someone who'll print a bumper sticker that says, "My other car cost $340,000 (four-fifths of which were federal funds) and seats 40."
There's been nothing unusual about this trip, a rather boring ride, really.
But as far behind me are the day's little crises, the True Believers' spiteful e-mails, the bylines and the headlines and the deadlines.
And as I walk the two blocks from the bus stop to my home, I can listen for bird calls, eye the blackberry bushes for ripe fruit, feel the fresh breeze through the Doug firs and keep an eye out for deer, especially that white-bellied doe my wife and I first spotted as a fawn two years ago.
Unlocking my front door, I hug my True Love and submit myself to my dogs' slurpy greetings.
It's time to hang up my fedora.
And take off my tie.
Jim Casey is editor of the Sequim Gazette.
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