Battery Man --- Song by Meghan Moxley

My Dad delivered batteries all over hilly Seattle. Drove a truck. Lead-acid batteries. Batteries for cars. Trucks. Fishing Boats. Picked up old ones. Delivered new ones. The acid ate his clothes. Scarred his hands.

He had done the Army during Viet Nam. We lived in Ballard, near the locks. Upstairs in a once-Victorian house. My Mom worked at the doughnut shop. Coming in at four. Frying dozens and dozens.

In 1981, my Dad went to night school to learn welding. He wanted a job at the Navy Ship Yard, but they wouldn’t hire him because he had done drugs.

So they loaded the 1968 Chevrolet station wagon and headed South. But at Rice Hill, Oregon. It died. Broke. No job. No place to go.

Then a hippie guy in a pick-up truck offered to take us to a hippie commune. No charge. Doing it because of humanity.

So that’s where I grew up. My Dad was never a hippie. Just a good place to make things out of metal. To fix things. To make a living.