1976

Downtown Seattle at night.

  It was July 20th, the Vietnam War had ended, the United States celebrated it's 200th birthday, and I was a civilian again.  We had decided that we would live in Seattle, drove over there, rented an apartment close to downtown and put Betty and the kids on a plane for Alaska.
  I worked at a temporary job for a chain of shoe stores, in their warehouse - it wasn't really how I wanted to earn a living.  After a month I found a job, and was hired by Seattle First National Bank in the computer center at Lake Union, also near downtown.  I worked in a unit called "Transit" meaning that bundles, or trays, of checks came and went.  When another bank, or the Federal Reserve sent those checks to us we sorted them out, and checked their list of what was there, to what we found; when there was a difference my unit found out what it was.  It sounds pretty easy, but on our busiest day we handled over seven million pieces (checks), it was on my birthday just before Christmas.
  I also found "drinking buddies" at work, in the neighborhood or in my favorite bar - I don't remember the name, but I was there almost every day.
  Betty and the kids came home in October, and Jeff was enrolled in his 7th school, he was in the sixth grade, with a few more schools and grades to go.  Life wasn't very happy for me or for Betty, I won't go into detail but two alcoholics don't make a happy couple, we were near the end.

Our apartment was this one on the third floor.
Boy you can find almost anything with Google Earth.



I worked in the white colored building next to the water(near the center), when banks in Alaska flew things down,
their seaplane land right there.  The ship in this photo belongs to NOAA, which had several in Seattle.



Part of the Pike Place Market, or Seattle Public Market - all sorts of produce and fish fresh off the farm, or sea;
and the prices were right too, it's crowded some days.