One of the nice things about going to school in the Portland area is she got taught in high school; I doubt I'd have found out about her back then otherwise.
Another cool thing was having Beverly Cleary come to your elementary school a few times a year and read her books to you. We live on the streets in her books. Pretty cool growing up.
God I love her books so much. One of the reasons I moved to NE in 2019 was to be near Klickitat and that area of town because of her books. I lived in Klamath Falls as a kid, which sorely lacked Beverly Cleary (or anything good), and I really wished I could have gone to Beverly Cleary Elementary as a kid.
Yeah we live smack dab in the middle between Klickitat and Siskyou. her childhood home is 2 balks from Grant….and they have a great water feature up at the park they put in a few years ago. Love it.
I've met and known quite a few celebrities in my life...I used to housesit for Jonathon Richman when he was on tour and I spent a few holidays with Roger Hodgeson of Supertramp as I dated his sister in law for a couple of years. My favorite was probably a Saturday night at a Salsa club that opened in Hollywood and the band was amazing with 14 members but the club flopped...the good thing was that my date and I were one of two couples at the event and the other couple was Robert Duvall and his Argentinian wife who is a world champion tango dancer....spent the whole night talking with the Duvalls and the club owner....nicest celebrity you could ever meet. The other was when my Salsa band opened for Flora Purim and Airto Moreia from Brazil...they spent the weekend at my house and I got to know them a bit and jam with them...these folks were amazing too...very earthy musical giants. I also played in a band with Melissa Ethridge's ex girlfriend and got to meet her when she came to our gig once. She's a live wire.
Oh yeah, ever "since59"...I was six and Mantle was my hero. I had to fight every other kid in the neighborhood for the right to wear #7 on my little league jersey...sometimes I won, sometimes I got my ass kicked and has to settle for Yogi's #8. Pretty sure I knew how to read a box score before the 1st grade....big Raiders fan too.
I got to play Roger's big jumbo Guild 12 string guitar...he keeps it in his living room..amazing instrument. Jonathon had the greatest record collection I'd ever seen..real obscure african library of congress recordings and doo wop and amazing stuff.
My favorite way to start a fight is to say, "Now, was that the mets or the yankees that had Mickey Maris?"
I'm about 100% sure I delivered to this house when I worked at Amazon. That was my area and that house is distinctive enough.
Since others have mentioned Kersey, he gave me a head nod after I saw him coming out of Pioneer Square Mall once.
I don't really have anyone cool. I spent time around a lot of NBA players at practice or the locker room, but that doesn't really count. The one story that surprised me though was when I was at the Fred Meyer over in Burlingame and I was looking at stuff in the bakery section and I hear "what's up man!" and I look up and Sebastian Telfair is coming over with his friends. He gives me one of those half hugs and asks me hows it going. It was surreal. I didn't even know that he knew me. I talked to him for a couple minutes and that was that. Oh.... and then there's the Greg Oden 24 hour Fitness story.
