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.

I’m waiting for numbers. As in how my Portland precinct voted in the presidential election. Only county-by-county totals are available, though I know Barack Obama’s tally will be staggering. During the campaign, I saw only one John McCain sign in the neighborhood, and it was homemade. Obama signs, including this one in my yard, spread like dandelions. And nobody is taking them down.

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.

Every spring I start filling up the front porch with potted plants. The porch extends the width of our 1920s Craftsman house, so there are long wide ledges begging for greenery. The back deck next to the small goldfish pond gets a few plants too.

I gravitate toward the tropical and cold-sensitive, mostly begonias because of their exotic-colored leaves and elephant ear varieties that remind me of a youth spent in Florida lakes and swamps.

If I left them outside much longer, the first freeze would write their obituary. So a sad annual ritual took up an hour this afternoon: the move inside.

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.