Seattle --------< by Yearn Hong Choi >



Seattle

The Pacific Ocean comes to the inland and makes a city an island.

Winter means rain, not snow, to the city people.

Needle leaf trees contrast with the snow-covered mountain tops like the Alps.

The city still has the Space Needle which was erected for the commemoration

Of the 1962 World Fair, the Boeing, and the University of Washington.

I see a Korean young man working as a janitor at the Roosevelt Hotel in the daytime

And as a dishwasher in the Greek Village, a downtown restaurant, at night.

He worked all of the summer months of 1968 and went to Indiana University after earning one semester’s tuition at the end of that summer.

He returned to the town after his retirement from a long college teaching career

And checked into the Roosevelt hotel on

Pine St and 6^th St.

No one recognizes or greets him.

He is trying to find the house of a young couple who accommodated his first night in America on May 30, 1968, but fails to find it.

He remembers this city as the place where a couple warmly welcomed him, a poor young Korean man who came to town with $70 and ambition in his pocket. He may come back to the town in order to find them when they are no longer a young couple.