Buried beneath

We are still in here someplace. Under the gray hair, the glasses and the aches and pains these two people are still here, just in case anyone was wondering.

It's an incredible gift to have some one to love for over thirty years that you still are excited about. I am the luckiest man in the universe.

The Chronic Yard Sale

Thrills! Excitement! HiJinx!

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Eulogy.

It's hard to put a life into 500 words. Bud was a good man. I am glad he is at rest. This is what I said at his funeral:

Hi, I’m Jim. Bud was my step dad, but more importantly he was my friend.

            Many of the people here knew Bud from very different times in his life.  To live to 92 is a good ride and you collect a lot of people over that time and Bud loved people. Bud was the quintessential Seattle native; the grandchild of Swedish immigrants raised a block North of Green Lake, a graduate of Lincoln HS and the University of Washington. Bud was the only child of Len and Em Anderson. His dad, Leonard or Len as we called him was a milkman, a semi-pro baseball catcher and a real character; hard as nails one minute and laughing the next.  Bud’s mom Emma, was ahead of her times, a shrewd and ambitious businesswoman who was also sweet and funny. They lived on Densmore Ave, and Bud had what sounded like a nice childhood, featuring lots of sports and friends, travel and relatives. Bud loved to sing. It’s very appropriate that we are here in the choir room. He would have liked that.

             Bud had a lot of stories to tell. For a man who was an only child, Bud had an endless supply of cousins and relatives. Bud, like many people of his generation knew how to talk to people and made friends wherever he went. He found things in common with people he met: families, jobs, backgrounds.  I used to joke with Bud that we could parachute him into the most inaccessible Amazon jungle and he would walk out two weeks later with two cousins, somebody from his Naval ROTC, and a kid he coached in football.

            Bud served in the Navy during WW2. He married and had two sons Rick and Steve. He had a successful business. He traveled around the world.

            Bud once told me that his favorite achievement in life was his role in the construction of the University Presbyterian Church in 1952, where as a young parishioner, he was asked to oversee their new construction as general contractor.  He went at that task with everything he had. If you wanted to listen he would tell you at length about the cement used in the rectory, or the specs of the windows they installed. He would glow while he talked about it. Building that church was very special to him

            Bud came into our lives after we had lost our dad, Ned Sander. Bud and Ned were friends. I remember that Dad had me call Bud “Uncle Bud” when I was very young, the only person I ever called uncle who wasn’t actually my uncle. I guess that is some kind of achievement right there. When Dad died in 1972, Bud was in California, on some kind of retreat, and heard about it on a pay phone. Many years later Bud told me, standing there in that phone booth he imagined my Dad walking off over a hill. I had almost forgotten that until that week we spent at Evergreen hospice with Bud. Over those few days I could see Bud getting ready to walk over the same hill.

            I won’t lie to you; when Bud and my mom got married. I didn’t like him much. My mom could have married anyone for that matter and I already had made my mind up that I wasn’t going to like him.  Bud tried very hard. He tried to get me to accept him. We went on trips. He was my baseball coach; he tried to “relate” to me in the most 1970’s meaning of that word. I generally I used up most of my teenaged distain on him. He never gave up, though I am sure he was discouraged. Over the years my anger and know it all attitude very slowly gave way, and we began to be friends. He wasn’t my Dad; he was my Bud. I was lucky, because we didn’t have the normal father son baggage, we could have a really interesting friendship. I learned that he was a really special and wonderful man.

            Bud was at heart, an engineer. He liked to get his hands on things.  Like his 1931 Ford Model A coupe: a project he started in the mid seventies as something he and I could bond over.  All I remember him teaching me was how to grind rust off of metal. That’s what I remember most but in the end, when he was finished with it, it was something beautiful, built from parts found in barns and scrap heaps, and in want ads in the Times. It was a car built from basically scratch, over almost twenty years. So much so that he confused the State Patrol when he went to license it because it wasn’t actually a car- it was a collection of parts that he had lovingly pieced together into an amazing thing. I will always remember his smile behind the wheel of that car.

            Bud also loved football. He coached youth football in the 1950’s and that experience never left him. Once a coach, always a coach. While he lived to see the Seahawks win the superbowl, Bud specifically loved Husky football. He was a season ticket holder most of his life. When it got too difficult for him to go to the games, Bud would watch from home with the telephone in his lap so he could call his buddy Walt Harrison to discuss the finer points of the game or pick apart the defense. If you accidentally called during a Husky game he would invariably think it was Walt Harrison and answer, “ Hey Walt did see that play?”

            Some of you may have heard Bud tell the story of the first time he died. In 2004, when Bud was 82 he had heart surgery, his second round of open heart. The doctors, specifically his surgeon, did not give him much hope. On the day of the surgery my family gathered at Overlake Hospital and waited to hear the outcome. The doctor came out in his scrubs, straight out of a movie script he told us that they had done all they could and it looked grim: he didn’t expect him to survive. We all went home thinking it was Bud’s last day. Bud wasn’t having any of that. It was a hard slog but he pulled through and a week later he was talking.  I asked him what he remembered of his surgery.

            “Oh, I was dead. I was gone.”

            “Really. What was that like?” I asked him

            “Oh, it was a bright light and a fellow was there and I talked to him”

            “Well what did you say?”

            “I said thanks a lot but I couldn’t go. I had people to take care of. People depended on me.”

            So Bud negotiated his way out of dying in 2004. He loved to negotiate. I am surprised he didn’t get St. Peter’s watch and sandals in the deal.

            In his time in hospice, Bud wasn’t lucid but seemed to be very intently talking with someone for a while. He would fade in and out, on the first night and occasionally he was clear and communicating with me. I told him that it sounded like he was negotiating with some one. He said yes he was. I asked if he was getting terms that he liked. He said “ yep. I can live with it”.

            Bud knew great success and sadly some failure too. In business and in his personal life there were highs and lows. He was not perfect. He made mistakes; he tried hard but fell short at times. He worked at being optimistic and valiantly tried to stay positive in the face of tough times and difficult personal challenges. It didn’t always work. He had his share of disappointment.  He did have his joys though. He enjoyed lifelong friendships, he loved my mom. He loved his grandchildren, Dave, Katie, Tori, Melissa, Ned and Tom.  His cup was full.

             So I guess he got the deal he was looking for. Bud’s not gone he just got the deal he could live with.

            

Watching the Titans Fall

Bud became my step father when I was twelve years old, over forty years ago. I will not lie, I hated him at first for the simple reason that he was not my dad. I grew to tolerate him and finally he became a trusted friend, and some one I loved.  His relationship with my mom was always strange and complicated but lasted those forty years. Bud is falling apart now and the time seems short. Plans are being made and he seems to be getting ready. It's hard to say good bye even at 92.





Bud passed at 11:25 PM  July 26, 2014

Ernest L. “Bud” Anderson, a kind and beloved man, passed away July 26th. Bud was

born in Seattle on April 15, 1922 to Emma (Nelson) Anderson and Leonard C.

Anderson, both children of Swedish immigrants and pioneers. Bud was Em and

Len's only child and was raised in the family home just a block from the north shore

of Greenlake in Seattle. He graduated from Lincoln High and the UW, where he

made lifelong friends, studied engineering and joined the Naval ROTC. During

WWII he graduated from mine warfare school in Yorkton, VA and served in the US

Navy.

After his service, Bud married and had two sons, Rick and Steve. He began a career

designing and building windows and sliding glass doors. His company, Durell

Windows, was a successful manufacturer of aluminum window frames for home and

commercial construction. One of Bud's accomplishments was serving as the General

Contractor on the construction of the University Presbyterian Church, where as a

young member of the congregation he was chosen to help build the (then) new

addition. Later, for NANCO, in Redmond, Bud constructed wood-framed windows

and also designed and held several patents on modular housing techniques.

Eventually Bud went on to become General Manager for Buffelen Door in Tacoma,

then worked as Vice President of Nord Door in Everett before pursuing a career as a

business consultant.

Bud enjoyed many years of coaching his sons in football and membership in the

Seattle Golf Club. One of his most memorable achievements was when he took his

family on a literal trip around the world in 1961, visiting the Middle East, India,

Japan and Europe, making more friends along the way.

In 1973, Bud married his second wife, Virginia McCallum Sander, the widow of his

Lincoln High School and UW friend, Ned Sander. Bud and Virginia traveled, had

many good friends and adventures and enjoyed over forty years together. There was

probably no greater Washington Huskies fan than Bud. He was a proud grandpa to

Virginia’s six grandchildren. Bud is survived by his wife Virginia Anderson,

stepchildren, Joani Wright, Bill Sander, Dean Sander and Jim Sander, and six

grandchildren and by his son Rick Anderson. His son, Stephen Anderson, preceded

Bud in death.

He will be missed.

In lieu of flowers the family request remembrances to their Evergreen Hospice,

Kirkland, WA.

Long slide home

       I am on third, waiting for  the sac fly to bring me home. My luck it will be a passed ball or a balk. Actually I will probably be picked off and be the third out in the bottom of the ninth. Baseball metaphors are only so useful.
      My novel is in the second draft, close to done. The cover painting, and the back cover are done. My son will help me with my remedial photoshop skills to get my lurid paperback cover complete and then SHABANG- I will self publish my very own self indulgent novel on Amazon (the evil empire of narcissism). I expect with the e-version and paperbacks (which I will hawk and beg my fellow humans to purchase) I will make almost $60 for my year of writing, which frankly is probably more than it deserves.
      The story came out better than I hoped and I do like it. It is not the ugly step child that you need to love even though it is deformed. I am proud of it. Laurie read it and  liked it, even found parts funny which I was very relieved about. I am working on a final third draft. It makes me happy to be so close to being done. However , the reality is that no one will ever read it. I will get some hard copies printed and force my family and friends to read it, but it will never be seen by more than a hundred humans. That makes it a little bittersweet but it is the truth. The system is broken, like film distribution, like music and everything else: the digital age has made us all equal and better able to be completely ignored.

So many adventures, ultimately revealing emptiness

I paint. I work. I stopped being a vegetarian. I went to Disneyland. I put loud headers on my El Camino. The earth still turns. I hope that the future is tolerable. There is something in my eye.

Disneyland was fun. My son is an interesting guy who I like a lot. The fascist irony and comforting familairtiy to the realm of the mouse makes a fine short holiday. 

Melinda Gates sat here. She is smart.

I am the natural successor to Ashleigh Brilliant

The most pampered beater in America.

Male Bonding with Bullets

Nothing in the world quite like taking your 17 year old son to a military base rifle range with an uncle and two cousins to shoot a variety of handguns and assault weapons. Here is my son Ned firing a clunky Serbian SKS at a threatening piece of cardboard 50 yards away. The weather was mixed- rain and occasional sunshine. Ned's response was mixed to shooting as well- neither excited by it or disinterested. He enjoyed the experience without judgement.

Adulthood

It occurred to me that I am now about 12 years away from being of retirement age. This is troubling because I have yet to gain the knowledge I always assumed would be instantly given me upon reaching middle age. 

I some times wonder if I am going to make it to retirement.

Vaguely ashamed of my menial servitude, partially elated.

Due to the impending crisis of college tution, retirement on the horizon and global warming reeking havoc upon our lives, I have decided my days must be spent earning something when my relatively lucrative self employment is not happening. I have taken a part time job working on the renovation of a friend's new building, an industrial space destined to be used as a manufacturing facility. Demolition is a little bit fun, and very filthy.

Before

After

Return to the Orgy of the Strange Oblong Ball

I get paid to do field audio. Sometimes it is a long grind of many hours. Sometimes it is a boondoggle. The NFC Championship for some audio guys was a grind. I spoke with one mixer whose call time was 2:00 AM and he was there until 9:00 PM wrap, and worked his ass off much of the time. My experience was the opposite: our call time was 1:30 PM and we only had to do post game, leaving us to partake of the full buffet lunch in the press box and wander the field and stadium, enjoying our all access photo field passes. Sort of like getting to eat just desert for dinner. It was a strange intersection of celebrity and wealth and sports. All the standard sports talking heads: Joe Buck and Troy Aikman (both overly made up for camera),  multiple suited and expensively over coated league officials and 1% masters of the universe strutting around. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis were everywhere. Watching the Macklemore halftime show from the end zone. I was vaguely aware of a guy in a 49ers hat and coat standing next to me. A guy from the SF bench walked by and shook his hand "Hi Mr. Wilson!" I immediately thought of Dennis The Menace next door neighbor. I turned and looked and it was in fact Owen Wilson. The post game in the Seahawks locker room was surprisingly sedate.

End result Seattle millionaires beat San Francisco millionaires to the pleasure of the masses in Seattle.

Operation MINOTAUR is GO

I have purchased a cruck. A 1981 Chevrolet El Camino. Be it man? Or beast? 

It was retrieved from the netherworld of Yelm, WA, (home of Ramtha- ancient mystical spirit warrior and for-profit gift shop) by myself and Johnny "the Boot" Pai on Sunday, January 5th, 2014.

Crank up Zeppelin, fire up the Lucky Strikes, and get me a beer: so begins my midlife crisis

I have chosen to name the car "Harry Dean" after Harry Dean Stanton, the poster child of 1980's independent film: