Bill Lightfoot in 2010
At age 92, my uncle (dad's mom's sister's son) Bill Lightfoot has the baud rate to negotiate Amtrak on his own. He escapes his comfy quarters in Seattle to be with his grand nephew. He's eager for pictures of Jack, my dad. They weren't much together after their chance meetup in Alaska, in the summer of 1947 I think it was.
Jack studied International Relations in DC, then went into regional planning under Dick Meier at the University of Chicago. After a strong on ramp performance, stateside, practicing planning in Portland, he went to nation-state scale, where you're looking at zoning and freeways, big picture infrastructure, less at individual housing or office complexes. The latter is architecture and city planning, and more detailed.
I brought along some C6XTY as I'm timing myself to build a tetrahedron with four of them. By "them" I mean soccer ball looking things, each assembled from six identical plastic parts, hence the name. The hexapent C60 is a meme, and a chemical (a carbon allotrope, a family of cages, then come the tubes and of course graphene, full circle, graphite, diamond and plain old soot -- carbon powder -- being the earlier discoveries).
Carol was also routing through downtown this same afternoon, and it worked to drop her at 10th and Taylor, park in a garage, observe some Flag Day childrens performance (a traveling troupe), then retrieve the car and head to Union Station, where the Coast Starlight has just arrived. Bill and I headed over to Ringlers, where we enjoyed the usual great food and service (I'm a loyal customer). Thank you Bill, for making these forays. I'll get you some more pictures, of dad.
This was the "short format" visit where we cut it pretty close. The Coast Starlight is often late, getting here from California, but today was right on time. I had Bill back at the station with only minutes to spare, whereas on another occasion we waited some hours.
On his previous visit he did "long format", coming a train earlier and leaving a train later. That gave us time for Pittock Mansion, Kell's for lunch, visiting with Carol at Bagdad out my way, with time to spare getting back. That was pretty exhausting though, for a ninety-two year old. Did we get many pictures of Bill with his Aztecs (those were cars many considered rather funny looking, Bill loved 'em)?
Howard and Wilma came with Bill on one of these outings. Bill and Barbara Hancock on another. Amtrak: keeping families together. Bill wore his Northern Pacific hat.
