The Train to Portland

By Bill Pearse on February 3, 2013 • ( 1 )

Shana worked at the IKEA south of Seattle, where she met Marne. Marne was with Don, and Don and I hit it off. Don and I made plans to go to Portland over Memorial Day weekend, which is where we met Rob.

Marne was Don’s second wife, and Don had lived a punk rock lifestyle, leaving him with crow’s feet and a smoking habit. He talked of the Portland vagabond scene in the late 80s, how he and his friends got into freighthopping, where they would jump a train just to see where it took them.

Rob was in the seat in front of us on the train from Seattle to Portland, with his girlfriend. He seemed interesting, so we exchanged phone numbers, then Don and I went on to Portland, for more stories of Don’s punk rock days.

Don lived with a guy who had a boa constrictor, and they fed the snake live rabbits, in the closet. The snake would be in the closet and they’d just toss the rabbit in there, and close the door. There was a thumping and banging against the door, then silence. Later, the snake passed the rabbit’s bones in what resembled a piece of chalk, which they just threw out the window, onto the sidewalk.

As you might expect, the punchline involves Don and his friend coming home to the apartment one day to find the neighborhood kids mistaking the calcified rabbit as real chalk, and using it to make patterns on the sidewalk. It was this brand of dark humor that sealed my bond with Don.

Rob and Rebecca were theater people from upstate New York. Rob could make his tongue flip back like it was on a hinge, something he said less than 1% of people could do, which he learned while he was in a museum with his dad, in Rochester.

It was this ride to Portland, and my meeting with Rob, which led to my meeting Dawn, my wife.

Rob was doing sound design for a theater production of Hamlet on Capitol Hill. He asked if I wanted to help, by making sounds backstage with pieces of steel, as part of a Live Foley Orchestra.

Dawn was the director. Rehearsals always ran late, really late, and I worked early in the mornings. We went on a coffee run the morning after Thanksgiving. Rob urged me to ask her out and I did, then five years later he officiated our wedding.

As I trace it back now, I realize I met my wife through my ex-girlfriend, through her friend Marne’s boyfriend Don, who suggested we go to Portland, which is where we met Rob, who introduced me to Dawn.