Cracked Window

Two barbershops, fifty years and three thousand miles apart.

One is where I got my first haircut without a parent in tow. It was in Florida, and I was a young boy new to the South. The father and son proprietors were Alabama crackers. About the only time they spoke more than a few words was when talk turned to farming. They grew corn on acreage outside my small town of Maitland. Even at my age I could tell they wanted to be with their crops and not messing with other people’s hair.

What I remember most was their only employee, a black kid about my age who swept up hair. We often exchanged glances that felt like long conversations between occupants of different worlds.

Some days some things jump out at me. This morning it was signs. I was traveling a familiar route, and three signs looked new to the urban landscape.

“Keep Portland Weird!” cried out from the west side of Music Millenium, the only place I buy CDs in person. I knew the store on East Burnside Street sold bumper stickers with the slogan. Until inquiring inside I didn’t know how many, more than ten thousand, or that the store had copyrighted the slogan. And had the sign painted a year ago. What fog have I been in?

A young man played bagpipes while riding a unicycle on one end of the Portland Farmers Market. On the other, protesters decried passage of the anti-gay marriage amendment in California.

In between on the Park Blocks amid the produce and other foods was scene after scene that made my Saturday morning. Maybe the brisk bike ride to the market with wife and son heightened everything, an endorphin rush of awareness. Whatever the reason, I want more of that drug.

Parents like to display schoolwork the kids bring home. At our house we put it in on the dining table and eat it.

To be precise, Daniel isn’t our kid. He’s my nephew and twenty-three. But he’s living with my wife and me for now. With increasing frequency he’s bringing home what he prepares at school — delicious food cooked at the Oregon Culinary Institute.

He lugs the food in plastic bags tucked in his pack. Slung over the pack in a case are his wicked-looking chef knives. All this arrives home after train and bike rides.

I was a human dynamo today. Literally. Working out on a specially outfitted exercise bike, I generated electricity while burning calories.

Sweat dripped from my nose at the Green Microgym whenever I glanced down at the flashing numbers showing how many watts I was producing. It’s too soon to call me Megawatt Man, but I helped power other cardio equipment, slightly reducing my carbon footprint.

In our yard, autumn turns elegant Japanese laceleaf maples into flashy look-at-me strippers. For several days each year, the tree hovering over the pond dons the color of the goldfish swimming beneath its branches. An exception is their recent offspring, little gray clouds that won’t brighten until spring.

Cold has already induced torpor among the big fish, which have lost their dart-hither-and-there charm. In fact, they barely eat compared to the thrice-daily frenzied feedings just two months ago.

Post-election observations keep washing over me, none more powerful than this: democracy worked when I had lost faith in it.

The doubt was well-founded, I continue to believe, but today I’ve never felt better about the country. I’ll feel even better when the sins of the last eight years are reversed and daunting problems confronted. Honest and tough leadership combined with pragmatic solutions will carry us a long way. And President-elect Obama’s victory speech was a paragon of sober leadership.

Before Obama won, I was so caught up in the race that I failed to anticipate how his victory would affect people. The scenes on television stunned me in the best possible way. A phone call from my youngest brother and his wife moved me even more. My brother, not the most emotive guy and never one to get caught up in politics, had tears streaming down his face, his wife said.