Circa 1975, Stark Street apartment

 Lower Stark, a few blocks west of Laurelhurst Park

I’d run Sasha at that park. I was so callous with that dog’s safety in traffic, it makes me shudder now. 

So, the apartment.  It was an old building even then, standing tall above the street. My apartment was one of two on the ground floor, the entry five steps up to a covered porch where I’d sit in the sun and do the Sunday Crossword.  It was a dump but with rent of $90 a month for a one bed, one bath, (complete with a claw footed bathtub,) well?  Nothing that a lot of art pieces and fabric hangings wouldn’t improve.  

I lived there with my dog.  Me and the dog all alone at night was scary.  I made the mistake of reading “Helter Skelter” about the Manson murders. They broke into a house one night, killed the old sleeping dog then murdered two people.  That didn’t do much for my peaceful sleep.  I wedged a chair under the doorknob. Every night.  

The apartment entry was into a living room and a dining room where I kept my sewing machine.  I learned to sew watching my mother and we both used her 1950s era Singer sewing machine.  When I left home my grandparents gave me a White sewing machine, a treadle, in a yellow oak cabinet. I’ve used it ever since, right up to now some 55 years later.  I sewed a lot of my clothes.  Fabric was sold in so many shops.  At Woolworths for instance.  Woolworths!  There were stores devoted to fabrics, patterns, the associated notions like zippers and buttons.  I made the shirt shown in this photo.  Sheer fabric fully lined with camels and desert sandstone houses.

 

Me at Jim Fisher Downtown Imports

  

I was sunning on the porch one day when a tall, dark-haired guy stopped by to chat.  No big deal.  Friendly people often talked in passing.  Made small talk for a while and he mentioned stopping by again.  Then he left.  As he left, I watched him walk away and I sensed a dense malevolence in his wake.  I was stunned.  I realized that my inner voice was screeching danger. Peril from that stranger.  I walked into my house and bolted the door.  My inner voice would not calm.  It took a moment for the logical and methodical part of me to accept that my life was in danger from that man.  I just knew. 

I considered phoning the police but to say what?  “The voices in my head say this is a bad, bad man. But no, he’s not here and I don’t know his name.”  In the end, I packed a suitcase and my dog and went to my cousin’s house for a few days.  And he didn’t come back.

One day in 1978, I was living on Oahu, and there on the cover of the Honolulu Star Bulletin was the arrest photo of a serial rapist.  Ted Bundy.  I startled in recognition.  Inner voice vindicated.