The Otter and The Fox

Looking back on the events of the past summer, as the old man was wont to do from time to time these days, he found himself wandering down among the stacks in the deeper recesses of his memory warehouse. Such musings were not at all uncommon and in a way he took a simple but curious comfort from these outings, and while many of these excursions were good for a smile others were not so pleasant. And true enough, there were more than a few that brought a tear to his eye.

He was a meticulous old man and this was no doubt due to his upbringing. His father had been an aviator in the Great War, as the first big war of the twentieth century was called, which was the one that happened before historians had the clever idea of numbering our wars. By the time the second big war rolled around his father was an admiral in the American Navy and he was still, nominally at least, an aviator. When the old man thought about his father it was usually when he folded his laundry or brushed his teeth, because his father had been very meticulous when teaching his son how to do those most important things. Briefs had to be folded one way, socks another. Shirts were never folded; no, they were picked up from the laundry and immediately placed on wooden hangers and hung in the appropriate closet, and with an inch between hangers. The rod in his father's closet was marked at one intervals but, his father added when he passed along such wisdom his son, if you didn't have a ruler you could use two fingers placed side by side to approximate the distance. Slacks needed three inches -- or four fingers when you had small finger -- like the father's son had.

His father never explained why this was so.

The old man's mother was an even more curious creature. Her father had some modest successes as an Episcopal priest, her mother much more success as a poet who also taught literature at a woman's college in Western Massachusetts, which was, coincidentally and speaking in approximate terms, where her father and mother met. His mother seemed to exist on another plane, at least as far as this marriage was concerned. Her father seemed to wrestle with his demons during every waking moment, these demons coming to him in the form of bourbon whiskey and very young prostitutes. Her mother, on the other hand, was a saintly wraith who spent her every waking moment either preparing lectures for her students or writing poetry. This might explain her success as a teacher and a poet, and perhaps her father's demonic proclivities as well, but suffice to say that the old man's mother passed along a somewhat eclectic crop of incidental talents.

By the time the old man graduated from high school he had lived in Manila, Honolulu, Annapolis, Honolulu again, and finally San Diego. He went to college in 1960 at the University of California Los Angeles and he studied both architecture and engineering. While there he learned to sail and he learned to fly small single engine airplanes, and on a dare once he went sky-diving. He did not repeat this mistake. He finally learned to ski and loved the snow and the mountains all of which in no way accounted for his decision to attend the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. He rented a room in a little house a block off the drag owned by two women who spent a lot of time together, usually around a potter's wheel or at their kiln off the little one car garage out back. Among other things, they taught him about the joys of making guacamole, and their cheese enchiladas were beyond heavenly. He finally figured out what their secret ingredient was, too. Love. pure and simple -- with maybe just a pinch of cilantro.

He was doing an internship over summer vacation in '66; he was picking up a book at the architecture library and had just started back for his car when the gunshots started raining down on the South Mall. He saw a girl running for the door he had just entered to take cover and when he turned to open the door for her he watched as the side of her head exploded into a misty rain of blood and bone. He pulled her in, pulled her to cover and he held her while she died in his arms.

He called his father a few hours later and he cried.

And his father told him to be a man, that real men didn't cry.

The girls made him cheese enchiladas and fresh guacamole later that evening, and they helped him keep it together by teaching him all about the medicinal properties of Jose Cuervo tequila, thick wedges of juicy green limes and a whole shitload of salt. He had to admit sometime during the night that tequila was really very evil stuff and best left to others.

He graduated from the school a year later and moved to Seattle -- because he missed the sea and wanted to live close to the mountains. He figured it was either Seattle or somewhere in Norway, and at least Seattle was close to La Jolla, where his parents were bunking out now that his old man had retired his flag.

The late-60s was an interesting period on the West Coast generally and while Seattle was no different it wasn't exactly Berkeley or Haight-Ashbury, either. The "wood-butcher" school of incoherent architecture was taking off about that time, with untrained urban-anarchists retreating to the Cascades to build houses in the woods that more often than not looked more like a cross between a submarine and a pile of melted candles. Maybe this period was a revolt against the revolting ranch-style houses of the period, and maybe that was a good thing, too. It got people thinking outside of the box for once, and maybe it all had something to do with Tolkien and Middle Earth, or maybe it was all the talk about Don Juan and his "magic mushrooms" which were floating around the edges of the scene just then. Well, hell, psychedelics were all the rage around Portland and Seattle in those days, so what harm could a few mushrooms be...?

He didn't have a job lined up but that didn't stop him. He went from firm to firm, talking to partners and dropping off copies of his portfolio and it didn't take all that long; within a couple of weeks he had several interviews lined-up. He'd always wanted to concentrate on residential architecture and that proved a point in his favor. Most firms like to work on big projects, and for all the obvious reasons, but they usually keep a couple of Birkenstock-wearing creative types in a dark corner to work on residential commissions, and that's exactly where C. Llewelyn Sumner found himself working in the fall of 1967. He rented a little two bedroom bungalow in the North Queen Anne neighborhood because it was an easy bus ride into work, and he set up a drafting table in the spare bedroom and bought just enough cookware to make cheese enchiladas and guacamole because, really, what else did you need?

C. Llewelyn Sumner wasn't an ugly specimen, he was in fact fairly representative of genus Homo Americanus. Neither tall nor short, skinny or fat, his mother had always bought his clothes "off the rack" -- and most frequently from the nearest JCPenney -- and this was by the late 60s a habit fairly well ingrained in Sumner. He typically wore Perma-Pressed slacks the color of peat-moss, neither brown nor maroon but trapped someplace in between, and he invariably wore madras shirt sleeved shirts, once again of the 'never needs ironing' variety. And yes, he wore Hush-Puppies, though he never wore them with white socks -- because his father had him taught proper sock etiquette from a very early age. When Sumner went to work he always slipped on a tan corduroy sport coat before he left his little bungalow -- just because. Once at his drafting table the coat disappeared until it was time to return home.

Perhaps because of his mother's contributions to his being, he possessed a rather florid artistic sensibility. His first designs were intricately rendered prairie-ranch style houses, sprawling hipped-roof affairs with four foot roof overhangs and vast expanses of glass the defining characteristics of his early work, and as they were unusual yet very attractive he gained a following. The firm was therefore happy with his work, too, if only because nothing breeds success quite like a steady cash flow.

After a year at the firm one of the senior partners asked him to join a group the coming weekend on a kind of client interview. About all he knew going into the weekend was that the client (and his wife) was fabulously wealthy and that he wanted a very serious new house to be the focal point on a little island in the San Juans he'd just bought. They would be departing from Bellingham early on Saturday morning, and this presented a minor problem for C. Llewelyn Sumner, as he had no car, and actually had very little interest in them.

Yet the only automobile that did interest him was the little Porsche 911, but the prices were just a little out of his reach. Still, he went to a local dealer and kicked a few tires until a salesman approached. Sumner told the salesman what his proposed budget was and the salesman took him over to look at one of newer versions of the model, the 911E. It wasn't an "S" model but it was a Porsche, and the price was right on the bleeding edge of doable, so the next day after work he picked up a tangerine colored 911 and drove home with a big, fat smile on his face. His neighbors were envious. Girls started looking at him as he drove to work. He found he was happy, or at least happier than he had been in quite a while, and he thought it odd that purchasing a car could do that to a person.

So he woke up extra early that Saturday and made the hours long drive up to Bellingham; everyone hopped on the client's sailboat and they took off for the Sucia Island group. The client was a bigger than life character who was considered something "big in the timber biz" and he had a bunch of money, too, and mentioned that more than once that morning. His wife was charming, articulate, and obviously loved her husband -- in fact she doted on him constantly. When they arrived at the client's island a small but very substantial pier had already been put in place, and power had already been run to the island -- "at great expense!" added the client -- and two wells for water were up and running. A small bulldozer was working on clearing a roadway from the pier to the proposed building site, and as this was a Saturday, Sumner knew with overtime rates being paid to the operator that the client was obviously in a hurry to get things done.

So, the four of them walked the quarter mile to the site and Sumner looked at all the various views -- of Mount Baker to the east and the Olympics to the southwest and it was hard to say which was the more dramatic. From a designers perspective the setup was almost surreal...unobstructed views...and not a single neighbor...just the sea and a few other islands sprinkled in the area, and most of those were wilderness preserves. Sumner pulled out a compass and a notepad and got to work taking notes, and an hour later the group was on the way back to Bellingham.

And it was kind of funny. On the trip back, Sumner had the impression that Mrs. Client was hitting on him just a little and besides feeling a little awkward he just carried on trimming sails and thinking about the island site. He drove back to his bungalow full of ideas and so jazzed was he that he went straight to his drafting table and got to work, drawing all through the night and into Sunday morning. When he arrived at work on Monday morning the partner involved asked Sumner if he had any ideas and Sumner just unrolled the floor plan and several elevations and let his drawings answer the question. The partner involved was flabbergasted at Sumner's productive capacity and immediately called the Client and his Wife and they rushed down to the office. Sumner set about producing a rendering of the house sitting among the pines on the island, and he had that ready to go just before the Clients arrived.

Client was thunderstruck, almost speechless when he saw the first rendering, and Mrs. Client was moved to tears. She proclaimed Sumner a genius, and with that accomplished the Clients signed on the dotted line, turning the design and construction oversight over to the firm for a more than generous commission. And by all appearances every one of the firm's partners was more than pleased with Sumner's work to date and by unanimous decision he was made a junior partner on the spot.

C. Llewelyn Sumner decided he needed a house of his own, but he had run into a problem by choosing to live in Seattle. Seattle is itself a fairly diffuse concept, with the major suburbs spreading across the sound to Bainbridge Island and Bremerton, inland to Bellevue and Redmond, and north to Everett and even as far north as Bellingham. Boeing was the beating heart of the area, the aircraft manufacturer having facilities spread all over the area, and new companies were relocating to Seattle as the commercial aviation sector boomed with the success of the 707 and 747 models.

So while Sumner was now confronted with the very simple problem of where to live, he had to admit he liked living close to downtown. He liked living in a city that felt like a community, and the Queen Anne neighborhood fit the bill. But he was going to have to work on the island site several days a week and for weeks at a time and that meant three hours a day in the car just to get the Bellingham and back, and he'd need to rent a launch to run out to the island and back... And that didn't sound all that good or fun.

So he mentioned the problem at work, and one of the other new hires chimed in with an oddball suggestion.

"Buy a boat," Tracy said. "Take it up there and anchor off the island, and drive home when you need a change of clothes."

"A boat?" said C. Llewelyn Sumner.

"Sure. I do. I keep it down at Shilshole," she added.

"You live on a boat?" he repeated, incredulous now and with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Yeah. Why don't you come down after work and I'll show you around."

"You live on a boat?" he said again, mystified and now shaking his head.

"Chuck, just stop it, okay?"

His face was a blank until he realized she'd called him 'Chuck.' "What did you call me?"

"Chuck. You know, your first name is Charles, so I just thought..."

"Don't you dare call me that ever again," he snarled, now red-faced and almost trembling.

"Sure thing, Charles."

"My name is Llewelyn."

"Sorry, but I can't say that one with a straight face," Tracy said, breaking into an impish little smile.

"Try!" Llewelyn said as he turned and stormed over to his table.

He worked on the foundation plans for the rest of the day and as he was packing up to leave Tracy came over to his table and blocked him in.

"Hey, what's up, Chuck."

He ignored her as he rolled up his drawings.

"I'm just curious, Chuck, but have you ever been, you know, like...laid?"

He turned and looked at this red-hair-freckle-faced girl like she was a contagion, but he decided against a reply and just shook his head, then he pushed his way past her and made for the parking lot. She, of course, followed. She was having too much fun to realize she was poking at a sleeping bear with a sharp stick.

"Come on, Chuck! Buy me dinner and I'll show you my...boat..."

When he got to his car he stepped inside and put his things away then drove home, and she did not follow him, though he'd halfway expected she might. When he was getting out of his car his next door neighbor said hello, and that they were headed to the boat show, and that piqued Sumner's interest. "Where's it at?"

"Oh, down at Lake Union. Mainly sailboats this time of year. You wanna go with us?"

He made up his mind right then and there. "Would you mind?"

"No, no, hop on in. Plenty of room."

It was only a few minutes away and soon enough he was walking around amongst a few dozen manufacturers displays, including one from Finland, a chunky double ender with a huge pilot house, and he'd never seen anything like it down in LA.

"What is this?" he asked the representative.

"Well, it's not really in production yet, but the people back in Finland are trying to put together a consortium to build this design as a production boat."

"Mind if I take a look down below?"

"No, no, that's why we're here. Help yourself, and I'm up here if you have any questions."

"Thanks," he said as he climbed aboard. Teak decks, huge airy pilot house, easy to get on and off he thought as he walked around the deck. Then he went below...

"Oh sweet Jesus," he said as he went from the pilot house down to the galley, and he turned right around and walked back over to the rep. "Is this boat for sale?" he asked.

"Yes, of course."

"How much?"

The rep handed a flyer with the vessel's details and drawings on it, and a price was listed down at the bottom of the page.

"How much do you want for a deposit?" Sumner asked.

"You want to buy it now? You haven't even been out on her?"

Sumner shook his head. "Would ten percent down be alright," he asked as he pulled out his checkbook.

"Suits me," the rep said, shaking his head. "Let's get started on the paperwork."

Sumner would take delivery after the show ended, in ten days. He bought some basic gear for cooking and cleaning, including a little inflatable boat called a Zodiac that he'd seen on a Jacques Cousteau TV special. And it was at this point he realized he was going to need some help moving the boat off Lake Union through the locks, before he could even think about the trip north to Bellingham. The next morning he talked to the firm's partner he sailed with on the Client's yacht and of course he recommended that he talk to...Tracy.

So, when he picked up the boat from the dealer on Lake Union he did so with a little red-headed fire-plug of a girl by his side, and the funniest part of that whole thing was she hung around off and on for a few years, more like a kid sister than a girlfriend, but it wasn't for a lack of trying on her part. But, oh yes, they moved the boat up to Bellingham and he put the boat in a marina there and her big brother came up to drive them back down to Seattle. She'd come around from time to time after that and sometimes they'd go out to dinner or to a movie and whenever her friends asked if the tall guy was her boyfriend she'd just shrug and dance coyly around the edges of their assumptions, you know, like a '...wouldn't you like to know?...' kind of coy.

A few years later Boeing discontinued their SST project and it seemed, taken with the ongoing social miasma of Vietnam and all the other breathless disappointments of the late sixties, that the world was coming to an end...and who knows, maybe it was. Boeing laid off thousands and shit always rolls downhill. Other businesses either drastically cut back their payrolls or simply shuttered their doors and closed up shop, including the firm where C. Llewelyn Sumner worked. So, he thought, maybe just one world was ending, and another was beginning?

But by the time Sumner packed up his things and left the firm he'd had several important commissions to his credit, and while it was a risky move he decided to strike out on his own. Tracy asked to come with him but he just couldn't afford a partner yet and he told her so. The best he could do, he told her, was to let her set up as an independent in his office until things improved, but instead she chose to head down to San Francisco and check out conditions there. They left on friendly terms but both were a little disconcerted by the change.

He'd not been allowed to make copies of the works he had produced while at the firm, and that was a blow -- yet in a way those designs resided in the most secure space imaginable, in his mind. But then the old firm went into receivership and the assets liquidated. He purchased his originals from the administrator for a song, and he felt better about matters.