The way I remember it, I was young back then, and the Market was really showing its age. The center of activity in the North end was the State liquor store and an ample number of bars. There was an old greasy gas station where Stienbrueck Park is now. A meat packing company unloaded sides of beef and pork every morning at the far North end of Pike Place, where now you can buy fine wine. Old warehouses loitered aimless and forgotten to the West down to the waterfront and North towards the Space Needle. Just a few years earlier I had worked alone after school in one warehouse very near the Market, assembling new motorcycles from parts in crates. There were no directions, just the parts. It was kind of like putting my life and this story together, at times I didn`t quite know how all the parts would fit.

The rickety wooden staircase surrounded by blackberries that accessed the side door of the warehouse became the terraced and tiled Market Hillclimb. The third floor that I put motorcycle puzzles together on is now a Mexican restaurant and a tee shirt shop. At the South end of Pike Place, First Avenue was a continuation of Skid Road, and frequented by many people as forgotten as the dark old warehouses. They regularly wandered into the Market to mix with the local shoppers and tourists, and to feel a part of all the activity. To the East, old people lived in hotels long past their prime, like their aging tenants. One day the warehouses and hotels would be reborn into expensive condos. First Avenue would transform, the old hardware store and pawn shops giving way to galleries and specialty shops. The whole area would become upscale and desirable, but not then. You would not have believed it could happen then.

Those were strange and wonderful days with drunken folk veering around as I carefully set my things out at 9 AM amidst the wives of elderly Italian and Fillipino farmers.  Starting in early spring each morning rusting pickup trucks would converge on the Market around 7 am and unload produce and the women. Most of the men returned to their fields to work the dark valley soil that would be covered with asphalt and warehouses in the coming years. They would return in the evening to pick up wives, the remaining produce, and hopefully enough money to do it again the next day. 

When I was still new to the Market I was set up one day between Pasqualina Verde, a market farmer icon and living postcard, and another old Italian man with gold teeth selling spinach. He would stand behind his spinach and softly say ``pinach, pinach`` to the passing crowd. Pasqualina was not impressed with me, or crafts in general. She told me her son had a real job. A good job with Shell oil. She then looked me in the eye and proceeded to overwater her lettuce with a watering can and splash my display thoroughly. The sloping and guttered daystall tables on the East side of the arcade at the Market are called the ``wet side`` for good reason.  All my woodworking was wet, but had been in no danger of wilting like Pasqualina`s lettuce.  

The pigs heads in Loback`s butcher shop across the arcade stared at me, giving no support or encouragement as I dried off my damaged wares.  I guess we all knew where everyone stood. Myself below Pasqualina and Mr. Gold Teeth, and the pigs heads just below me, but not by much.  The butcher shop is long gone, replaced by a stand selling all things you can do with cherries. If the butcher shop guys had thought to toss the heads back and forth and yell loudly when they sold one, they might still be at Pike Place. Could have called it Swine Flew. They could have been as famous as the guys who toss fish, and sometimes also catch them. You can no longer buy a pigs head at Pike Place, but most people don`t miss seeing them staring back through the meat cooler glass. Cherries don`t creep most people out.

The real bumper crop for many of the farmers was not spinach or lettuce, but the eventual value of their land itself, as suburban sprawl overtook their valleys, allowing some to retire comfortably. The old pickup trucks dissapeared over the years and were replaced with newer vans carrying younger people, less produce, and more profitable cut flowers.

At times the drunks around me were some of the artists, but there were many more out front that had scored at the liquor store and were wandering around with the shoppers, helping to provide that special atmosphere not found in the suburbs. A real mean drunk eventually even got to run the Market.  Other folks each day had scored other things from less official places, and moved through the Market and stood behind a few displays with illegal smiles.

Through the years anyone from anywhere in the world or social strata might stop by and talk to me or at me, about almost anything. Sometimes even about what I had made. I had actually invited them to stop,  just by being there.  The ghosts of the Market`s past could be seen and felt in my early years, before the overhaul of it`s buildings and excesive management of it`s soul turned the unhealthy bars into things like unhealthy French bakeries.