Growing up in White Center in the fifties, I was exposed to the revelry and tragedy that coincide in a honky-tonk town. The party that had started on 16th Avenue, just across Roxbury from the Seattle city limits at the end of prohibition and persisted through the war years was grinding on, pulverizing the souls of those who had lost track of time and found that their elbows had become deeply rooted into the bar.

Friday and Saturday nights the music would begin as the carousel atmosphere came...