Skid Row Kid: A Shoeshine Boy’s Memories of Love, Sex, Sin, Crime, and Life on Seattle’s First Avenue During the World War II Era

This memoir is a first-hand recollection of life in the slums of Seattle during the 1940's and beyond. Seattle’s First Avenue reeks of excitement. It is a smell—in a place of littered wine bottles—of love found, lost, and purchased. Since 1851, Seattle’s gambling, prostitution, drinking, and debauchery have centered on First Avenue. The people who lived and worked here are not high society. They are survivors, comprising a community where there is bonding and friendship. People from the affluent north end come to the avenue for amusement. People from the poor south end provided that entertainment. The elected officials and police accepted graft; they take bribes to look the other way. During World War II, the special electricity between the sexes happened because husbands, wives, boys, and girls were separated for long periods of time. Men were fighting in faraway places while girls were here at home, lonely, looking for and needing love. Human beings can be without intimacy for a while—but not forever. Atmosphere and loneliness were the formula for adopting new, expedient moral values. Lonely people can and do meet the opposite sex while looking for human companionship on the avenue. And where there is “sin,” there is money to be made. These are the sights and sounds as seen by a twelve-year-old eyewitness.