I left my first job at Taco Bell on Aurora Avenue North in 1970 because my boss said the people shot at Kent State got what they deserved. My second job was at DJ’s Sound City at Northgate in Seattle but my boss had an eye for another employee and when the business began to fail, she was the only one not laid off. In 1972, the University of Washington’s University Book Store hired me for the Music Department, a job for which I was eminently unqualified. Think bins of LPs and a scattering of cassettes tapes—that long ago. I would work there for most of the next four years while completing two studio art degrees. Despite having abandoned guitar, I learned a lot about music during those years.

And I met an old woman named Florence.

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