سال هزار و نهصد و شصت و هشت

1968

I was putting in six days a week at Price Waterhouse, spending early mornings and late nights and all weekends and vacations at Blue Ribbon. No friends, no exercise, no social life—and wholly content. My life was out of balance, sure, but I didn’t care. In fact, I wanted even more imbalance. Or a different kind of imbalance.

I wanted to dedicate every minute of every day to Blue Ribbon. I’d never been a multitasker, and I didn’t see any reason to start now. I wanted to be present, always. I wanted to focus constantly on the one task that really mattered. If my life was to be all work and no play, I wanted my work to be play. I wanted to quit Price Waterhouse. Not that I hated it; it just wasn’t me.

I wanted what everyone wants. To be me, full-time.

But it wasn’t possible. Blue Ribbon simply couldn’t support me. Though the company was on track to double sales for a fifth straight year, it still couldn’t justify a salary for its cofounder. So I decided to compromise, find a different day job, one that would pay my bills but require fewer hours, leaving me more time for my passion.

The only job I could think of that fit this criterion was teaching. I applied to Portland State University, and got a job as an assistant professor, at seven hundred dollars a month.

I should have been delighted to quit Price Waterhouse, but I’d learned a lot there, and I was sad about leaving Hayes. No more after-­work cocktails, I told him. No more Walla Walla. “I’m going to focus on my shoe thing,” I said. Hayes frowned, grumbled something about missing me, or admiring me.

I asked what he was going to do. He said he was going to ride it out at Price Waterhouse. Lose fifty pounds, make partner, that was his plan. I wished him luck.

As part of my formal severing, I had to go in and talk to the boss, a senior partner with the Dickensian name of Curly Leclerc. He was polite, even-handed, smooth, playing a one-act drama he’d played a hundred times—the exit interview. He asked what I was going to do instead of working for one of the finest accounting firms in the world. I said that I’d started my own business and was hoping it might take off, and in the meantime I was going to teach accounting.

He stared. I’d gone off script. Way off. “Why the hell would you do something like that?”

Lastly, the really difficult exit interview. I told my father. He, too, stared. Bad enough I was still jackassing around with shoes, he said, but now . . . this. Teaching wasn’t respectable. Teaching at Portland State was downright disrespectable. “What am I going to tell my friends?” he asked.

THE UNIVERSITY ASSIGNED me four accounting classes, including Accounting 101. I spent a few hours prepping, reviewing basic concepts, and as fall arrived the balance of my life shifted just as I’d planned. I still didn’t have all the time I wanted or needed for Blue Ribbon, but I had more. I was following a path that felt like my path, and though I wasn’t sure where it would lead, I was ready to find out.

So I was beaming with hope on that first day of the semester, in early September 1967. My students, however, were not. Slowly they filed into the classroom, each one radiating boredom and hostility. For the next hour they were to be confined in this stifling cage, force-fed some of the driest concepts ever devised, and I was to blame, which made me the target of their resentment. They eyed me, frowned. A few scowled.

I empathized. But I wasn’t going to let them rattle me. Standing at the lectern in my black suit and skinny gray tie, I remained calm, for the most part. I was always somewhat restless, somewhat twitchy, and in those days I had several nervous tics—like wrapping rubber bands around my wrist and playing with them, snapping them against my skin. I might have snapped them extra fast, extra hard, as I saw the students slump into the room like prisoners on a chain gang.

Suddenly, sweeping lightly into the classroom and taking a seat in the front row was a striking young woman. She had long golden hair that brushed her shoulders, and matching golden hoop earrings that also brushed her shoulders. I looked at her, and she looked at me. Bright blue eyes set off by dramatic black eyeliner.

I thought of Cleopatra. I thought of Julie Christie. I thought: Jeez, Julie Christie’s kid sister has just enrolled in my accounting class.

I wondered how old she was. She couldn’t yet be twenty, I guessed, snapping my rubber bands against my wrist, snapping, snapping, and staring, then pretending not to stare. She was hard to look away from. And hard to figure. So young, and yet so worldly. Those earrings—­they were strictly hippie, and yet that eye makeup was très chic. Who was this girl? And how was I going to concentrate on teaching with her in the front row?

I called roll. I can still remember the names. “Mr. Trujillo?”

“Here.”

“Mr. Peterson?”

“Here.”

“Mr. Jameson?”

“Here.”

“Miss Parks?”

“Here,” said Julie Christie’s kid sister, softly.

I looked up, gave a half smile. She gave a half smile. I penciled a shaky check next to her full name: Penelope Parks. Penelope, like the faithful wife of world-traveling Odysseus.

Present and accounted for.

I DECIDED TO employ the Socratic method. I was emulating the Oregon and Stanford professors whose classes I’d enjoyed most, I guess. And I was still under the spell of all things Greek, still enchanted by my day at the Acropolis. But maybe, by asking questions rather than lecturing, I was also trying to deflect attention from myself, force students to participate. Especially certain pretty students.

“Okay, class,” I said, “you buy three virtually identical widgets for one dollar, two dollars, and three dollars, respectively. You sell one for five dollars. What’s the cost of that sold widget? And what’s the gross profit on the sale?”

Several hands went up. None, alas, was Miss Parks’s. She was looking down. Shier than the professor, apparently. I was forced to call on Mr. Trujillo, and then Mr. Peterson.

“Okay,” I said. “Now, Mr. Trujillo recorded his inventory on a FIFO basis and made a gross profit of four dollars. Mr. Peterson used LIFO and had a gross profit of two dollars. So . . . who has the better business?”

A spirited discussion followed, involving nearly everybody but Miss Parks. I looked at her. And looked. She didn’t speak. She didn’t look up. Maybe she wasn’t shy, I thought. Maybe she just wasn’t very bright. How sad if she’d have to drop the class. Or if I’d have to flunk her.

Early on, I drummed into my students the primary principle of all accounting: Assets equal liabilities plus equity. This foundational equation, I said, must always, always be in balance. Accounting is problem-solving, I said, and most problems boil down to some imbalance in this equation. To solve, therefore, get it balanced. I felt a little hypocritical saying this, since my company had an out-of-whack liabilities-to-equity ratio of ninety to ten. More than once I winced to think what Wallace would say if he could sit in on one of my classes.

My students apparently weren’t any more capable than I of balancing this equation. Their homework papers were dreadful. That is, with the exception of Miss Parks! She aced the first assignment. With the next and the next she established herself as the top student in the class. And she didn’t just get every answer right. Her penmanship was exquisite. Like Japanese calligraphy. A girl that looked like that—and whip smart?

She went on to record the highest grade in the class on the midterm. I don’t know who was happier, Miss Parks or Mr. Knight.

Not long after I handed back the tests she lingered at my desk, asking if she could have a word. Of course, I said, reaching for my wrist rubber bands, giving them a series of vehement snaps. She asked if I might consider being her adviser. I was taken back. “Oh,” I said. “Oh. I’d be honored.”

Then I blurted: “How would you . . . like . . . a job?”

“A what?”

“I’ve got this little shoe company . . . uh . . . on the side. And it needs some bookkeeping help.”

She was holding her textbooks against her chest. She adjusted them and fluttered her eyelashes. “Oh,” she said. “Oh. Well. Okay. That sounds . . . fun.”

I offered to pay her two dollars an hour. She nodded. Deal.

DAYS LATER SHE arrived at the office. Woodell and I gave her the third desk. She sat, placed her palms on the desktop, looked around the room. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

Woodell handed her a list of things—typing, bookkeeping, scheduling, stocking, filing invoices—and told her to pick one or two each day and have at it.

But she didn’t pick. She did them all. Quickly, and with ease. Inside a week neither Woodell nor I could remember how we’d ever gotten along without her.

It wasn’t just the quality of Miss Parks’s work that we found so valuable. It was the blithe spirit in which she did it. From Day One, she was all in. She grasped what we were trying to do, what we were trying to build here. She felt that Blue Ribbon was unique, that it might become something special, and she wanted to do what she could to help. Which proved to be a lot.

She had a remarkable way with people, especially the sales reps we were continuing to hire. Whenever they came into the office, Miss Parks would size them up, fast, and either charm them or put them in their place, depending on what was called for. Though shy, she could be wry, funny, and the sales reps—that is, the ones she liked—often left laughing, looking back over their shoulders, wondering what just hit them.

The impact of Miss Parks was most apparent in Woodell. He was going through a bad time just then. His body was fighting the wheelchair, resisting its life imprisonment. He was plagued by bedsores and other maladies related to sitting motionless, and often he’d be out sick for weeks at a time. But when he was in the office, when he was sitting alongside Miss Parks, she brought the color back to his cheeks. She had a healing effect on him, and seeing this had a bewitching effect on me.

Most days I surprised myself, offering eagerly to run across the street to get lunch for Miss Parks and Woodell. This was the kind of thing we might have asked Miss Parks to do, but day after day I volunteered. Was it chivalry? Devilry? What was happening to me? I didn’t recognize myself.

And yet some things never change. My head was so full of debits and credits, and shoes, shoes, shoes, that I rarely got the lunch orders right. Miss Parks never complained. Nor did Woodell. Invariably I’d hand each of them a brown paper bag and they’d exchange a knowing glance. “Can’t wait to see what I’m eating for lunch today,” Woodell would mutter. Miss Parks would put a hand over her mouth, concealing a smile.

Miss Parks saw my bewitchment, I think. There were several long looks between us, several meaningfully awkward pauses. I recall one burst of particularly nervous laughter, one portentous silence. I remember one long moment of eye contact that kept me awake that night.

Then it happened. On a cold afternoon in late November, when Miss Parks wasn’t in the office, I was walking toward the back of the office and noticed her desk drawer open. I stopped to close it and inside I saw . . . a stack of checks? All her paychecks—uncashed.

This wasn’t a job to her. This was something else. And so ­perhaps . . . was I? Maybe?

Maybe.

(Later, I learned Woodell was doing the same thing.)

That Thanksgiving a record cold spell hit Portland. The breeze coming through the holes in the office windows was now a fierce arctic wind. At times the gusts were so strong, papers flew from the desktops, shoelaces on the samples fluttered. The office was intolerable, but we couldn’t afford to fix the windows, and we couldn’t shut down. So Woodell and I moved to my apartment, and Miss Parks joined us there each afternoon.

One day, after Woodell had gone home, neither Miss Parks nor I said much. At quitting time I walked her out to the elevator. I pressed the down button. We both smiled tensely. I pressed down again. We both stared at the light above the elevator doors. I cleared my throat. “Miss Parks,” I said. “Would you like to, uhh . . . maybe go out on Friday night?”

Those Cleopatra eyes. They doubled in size. “Me?”

“I don’t see anyone else here,” I said.

Ping. The elevator doors slid open.

“Oh,” she said, looking down at her feet. “Well. Okay. Okay.” She hurried onto the elevator, and as the doors closed she never lifted her gaze from her shoes.

I TOOK HER to the Oregon Zoo. I don’t know why. I guess I thought walking around and gazing at animals would be a low-key way of getting to know each other. Also, Burmese pythons, Nigerian goats, African crocodiles, they would give me ample opportunities to impress her with tales of my travels. I felt the need to brag about seeing the pyramids, the Temple of Nike. I also told her about falling ill in Calcutta. I’d never described that scary moment, in detail, to anyone. I didn’t know why I was telling Miss Parks, except that Calcutta had been one of the loneliest moments of my life, and I felt very unlonely just then.

I confessed that Blue Ribbon was tenuous. The whole thing might go bust any day, but I still couldn’t see myself doing anything else. My little shoe company was a living, breathing thing, I said, which I’d created from nothing. I’d breathed it into life, nurtured it through illness, brought it back several times from the dead, and now I wanted, needed, to see it stand on its own feet and go out into the world. “Does that make sense?” I said.

Mm-hm, she said.

We strolled past the lions and tigers. I told her that I flat-out didn’t want to work for someone else. I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.

She nodded. Like basic accounting principles, she grasped it all intuitively, right away.

I asked if she was seeing anyone. She confessed that she was. But the boy—well, she said, he was just a boy. All the boys she dated, she said, were just that—boys. They talked about sports and cars. (I was smart enough not to confess that I loved both.) “But you,” she said, “you’ve seen the world. And now you’re putting everything on the line to create this company . . .”

Her voice trailed off. I stood up straighter. We said good-bye to the lions and tigers.

FOR OUR SECOND date we walked over to Jade West, a Chinese restaurant across the street from the office. Over Mongolian beef and garlic chicken she told me her story. She still lived at home, and loved her family very much, but there were challenges. Her father was an admiralty lawyer, which struck me as a good job. Their house certainly sounded bigger and better than the one in which I’d grown up. But five kids, she hinted, was a strain. Money was a constant issue. A certain amount of rationing was standard operating procedure. There was never enough; staples, like toilet paper, were always in low supply. It was a home marked by insecurity. She did not like insecurity. She preferred security. She said it again. ­Security. That’s why she’d been drawn to accounting. It seemed solid, dependable, safe, a line of work she could always rely on.

I asked how she’d happened to choose Portland State. She said she’d started out at Oregon State.

“Oh,” I said, as if she’d confessed to doing time in prison.

She laughed. “If it’s any consolation, I hated it.” In particular, she couldn’t abide the school’s requirement that every student take at least one class in public speaking. She was far too shy.

“I understand, Miss Parks.”

“Call me Penny.”

After dinner I drove her home and met her parents. “Mom, Dad, this is Mr. Knight.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking their hands.

We all stared at each other. Then the walls. Then the floor. Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?

“Well,” I said, tapping my watch, snapping my rubber bands, “it’s late, I’d better be going.”

Her mother looked at a clock on the wall. “It’s only nine o’clock,” she said. “Some hot date.”

JUST AFTER OUR second date Penny went with her parents to Hawaii for Christmas. She sent me a postcard, and I took this as a good sign. When she returned, her first day back at the office, I asked her again to dinner. It was early January 1968, a bitterly cold night.

Again we went to Jade West, but this time I met her there, and I was quite late, arriving from my Eagle Scout review board, for which she gave me much grief. “Eagle Scout? You?”

I took this as another good sign. She felt comfortable enough to tease me.

At some point during that third date, I noticed we were both much more at ease. It felt nice. The ease continued, and over the next few weeks deepened. We developed a rapport, a feel for each other, a knack for communicating nonverbally. As only two shy people can. When she was feeling shy, or uncomfortable, I sensed it, and either gave her space or tried to draw her out, depending. When I was spaced out, embroiled in some internal debate with myself about the business, she knew whether to tap me lightly on the shoulder or wait patiently for me to reemerge.

Penny wasn’t legally old enough to drink alcohol, but we’d often borrow one of my sisters’ driver’s licenses and go for cocktails at Trader Vic’s downtown. Alcohol and time worked their magic. By February, around my thirtieth birthday, she was spending every minute of her free time at Blue Ribbon, and evenings at my apartment. At some point she stopped calling me Mr. Knight.

INEVITABLY, I BROUGHT her home to meet my family. We all sat around the dining room table, eating Mom’s pot roast, washing it down with cold milk, pretending it wasn’t awkward. Penny was the second girl I’d ever brought home, and though she didn’t have the wild charisma of Sarah, what she had was better. Her charm was real, unrehearsed, and though the Knights seemed to like it, they were still the Knights. My mother said nothing; my sisters tried in vain to be a bridge to my mother and father; my father asked a series of probing, thoughtful questions about Penny’s background and upbringing, which made him sound like a cross between a loan officer and a homicide detective. Penny told me later that the atmosphere was the exact opposite of her house, where dinner was a free-for-all, everyone laughing and talking over one another, dogs barking and TVs blaring in the background. I assured her that no one would have suspected she felt out of her element.

Next she brought me home, and I saw the truth of everything she’d told me. Her house was the opposite. Though much grander than Chateau Knight, it was a mess. The carpets were stained from all the animals—a German shepherd, a monkey, a cat, several white rats, an ill-tempered goose. And chaos was the rule. Besides the Parks clan, and their arkful of pets, it was a hangout for all the stray kids in the neighborhood.

I tried my best to be charming, but I couldn’t seem to connect with anyone, human or otherwise. Slowly, painstakingly, I made inroads with Penny’s mother, Dot. She reminded me of Auntie Mame—zany, madcap, eternally young. In many ways she was a permanent teenager, resisting her role as matriarch. It struck me that she was more like a sister to Penny than a mother, and indeed, soon after dinner, when Penny and I invited her to come get a drink with us, Dot jumped at the chance.

We hit several hot spots and wound up at an after-hours joint on the east side. Penny, after two cocktails, switched to water—but not Dot. Dot kept right on going, and going, and soon she was jumping up to dance with all sorts of strange men. Sailors, and worse. At one point she jabbed a thumb in Penny’s direction and said to me, “Let’s ditch this wet blanket! She’s dead weight!” Penny put both hands over her eyes. I laughed and kicked back. I’d passed the Dot Test.

Dot’s seal of approval promised to be an asset some months later, when I wanted to take Penny away for a long weekend. Though Penny had been spending evenings at my apartment, we were still in some ways constrained by propriety. As long as she lived under their roof, Penny felt bound to obey her parents, to abide by their rules and rituals. So I was bound to get her mother’s consent before such a big trip.

Wearing a suit and tie, I presented myself at the house. I made nice with the animals, petted the goose, and asked Dot for a word. The two of us sat at the kitchen table, over cups of coffee, and I said that I cared very much for Penny. Dot smiled. I said that I believed Penny cared very much for me. Dot smiled, but less certainly. I said that I wanted to take Penny to Sacramento for the weekend. To the national track-and-field championships.

Dot took a sip of her coffee and puckered her lips. “Hmm . . . no,” she said. “No, no, Buck, I don’t think so. I don’t think we’re going to do that.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

I went and found Penny in one of the back rooms of the house and told her that her mother said no. Penny put her palms against her cheeks. I told her not to worry, I’d go home, collect my thoughts, and try to think of something.

The next day I returned to the house and again asked Dot for a moment of her time. Again we sat in the kitchen over cups of coffee. “Dot,” I said, “I probably didn’t do a very good job yesterday of explaining how serious I am about your daughter. You see, Dot, I love Penny. And Penny loves me. And if things continue in this vein, I see us building a life together. So I really hope that you’ll reconsider your answer of yesterday.”

Dot stirred sugar into her coffee, drummed her fingers on the table. She had an odd look on her face, a look of fear, and frustration. She hadn’t found herself involved in many negotiations, and she didn’t know that the basic rule of negotiation is to know what you want, what you need to walk away with in order to be whole. So she got flummoxed and instantly folded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

PENNY AND I flew to Sacramento. We were both excited to be on the road, far from parents and curfews, though I suspected Penny might be more excited about getting to use her high school graduation gift—a matching set of pink luggage.

Whatever the reason, nothing could diminish her good mood. It was blazing hot that weekend, more than one hundred degrees, but Penny never once complained, not even about the metal seats in the bleachers, which turned to griddles. She didn’t get bored when I explained the nuances of track, the loneliness and craftsmanship of the runner. She was interested. She got it, all of it, right away, as she got everything.

I brought her down to the infield grass, introduced her to the runners I knew, and to Bowerman, who complimented her with great courtliness, saying how pretty she was, asking in complete earnestness what she was doing with a bum like me. We stood with my former coach and watched the day’s last races.

That night we stayed at a hotel on the edge of town, in a suite painted and decorated in an unsettling shade of brown. The color of burned toast, we agreed. Sunday morning we spent in the pool, hiding from the sun, sharing the shade beneath the diving board. At some point I raised the subject of our future. I was leaving the next day for a long and vital trip to Japan, to cement my relationship with Onitsuka, I hoped. When I returned, later that summer, we couldn’t keep “dating,” I told her. Portland State frowned on teacher-student relationships. We’d have to do something to formalize our relationship, to set it above reproach. Meaning, marriage. “Can you handle arranging a wedding by yourself while I’m gone?” I said. “Yes,” she said.

There was very little discussion, or suspense, or emotion. There was no negotiation. It all felt like a foregone conclusion. We went inside the burned-toast suite and phoned Penny’s house. Dot answered, first ring. I gave her the news, and after a long, strangling pause she said: “You son of a bitch.” Click.

Moments later she phoned back. She said she’d reacted impulsively because she’d been planning to spend the summer having fun with Penny, and she’d felt disappointed. Now she said it would be almost as much fun to spend the summer planning Penny’s wedding.

We phoned my parents next. They sounded pleased, but my sister Jeanne had just gotten married and they were a bit weddinged out.

We hung up, looked at each other, looked at the brown wallpaper, and the brown rug, and both sighed. So this is life.

I kept saying to myself, over and over, I’m engaged, I’m engaged. But it didn’t sink in, maybe because we were in a hotel in the middle of a heat wave in exurban Sacramento. Later, when we got home and went to a Zales and picked out an engagement ring with an emerald stone, it started to feel real. The stone and setting cost five hundred dollars—that was very real. But I never once felt nervous, never asked myself with that typical male remorse, Oh, God, what have I done? The months of dating and getting to know Penny had been the happiest of my life, and now I would have the chance to perpetuate that happiness. That’s how I saw it. Basic as Accounting 101. Assets equal liabilities plus equity.

Not until I left for Japan, not until I kissed my fiancée good-bye and promised to write as soon as I got there, did the full reality, with all its dimensions and contours, hit me. I had more than a fiancée, a lover, a friend. I had a partner. In the past I’d told myself Bowerman was my partner, and to some extent Johnson. But this thing with Penny was unique, unprecedented. This alliance was life-altering. It still didn’t make me nervous, it just made me more mindful. I’d never before said good-bye to a true partner, and it felt massively different. Imagine that, I thought. The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.

FOR ONCE, MY former contact at Onitsuka was still my contact. Kitami was still there. He hadn’t been replaced. He hadn’t been reassigned. On the contrary, his role with the company was more secure, judging by his demeanor. He seemed easier, more self-­assured.

He welcomed me like one of the family, said he was delighted with Blue Ribbon’s performance, and with our East Coast office, which was thriving under Johnson. “Now let us work on how we can capture the U.S. market,” he said.

“I like the sound of that,” I said.

In my briefcase I was carrying new shoe designs from both Bowerman and Johnson, including one they’d teamed up on, a shoe we were calling the Boston. It had an innovative full-length midsole cushion. Kitami put the designs on the wall and studied them closely. He held his chin in one hand. He liked them, he said. “Like very very much,” he said, slapping me on the back.

We met many times over the course of the next several weeks, and each time I sensed from Kitami an almost brotherly vibe. One afternoon he mentioned that his Export Department was having its annual picnic in a few days. “You come!” he said. “Me?” I said. “Yes, yes,” he said, “you are honorary member of Export Department.”

The picnic was on Awaji, a tiny island off Kobe. We took a small boat to get there, and when we arrived we saw long tables set up along the beach, each one covered with platters of seafood and bowls of noodles and rice. Beside the tables were tubs filled with cold bottles of soda and beer. Everyone was wearing bathing suits and sunglasses and laughing. People I’d only known in a reserved, corporate setting were being silly and carefree.

Late in the day there were competitions. Team-building exercises like potato sack relays and foot races along the surf. I showed off my speed, and everyone bowed to me as I crossed the finish line first. Everyone agreed that Skinny Gaijin was very fast.

I was picking up the language, slowly. I knew the Japanese word for shoe: gutzu. I knew the Japanese word for revenue: shunyu. I knew how to ask the time, and directions, and I learned a phrase I used often: Watakushi domo no kaisha ni tsuite no joh hou des.

Here is some information about my company.

Toward the end of the picnic I sat on the sand and looked out across the Pacific Ocean. I was living two separate lives, both wonderful, both merging. Back home I was part of a team, me and Woodell and Johnson—and now Penny. Here in Japan I was part of a team, me and Kitami and all the good people of Onitsuka. By nature I was a loner, but since childhood I’d thrived in team sports. My psyche was in true harmony when I had a mix of alone time and team time. Exactly what I had now.

Also, I was doing business with a country I’d come to love. Gone was the initial fear. I connected with the shyness of the Japanese people, with the simplicity of their culture and products and arts. I liked that they tried to add beauty to every part of life, from the tea ceremony to the commode. I liked that the radio announced each day exactly which cherry trees, on which corner, were blossoming, and how much.

My reverie was interrupted when a man named Fujimoto sat beside me. Fiftyish, slouch-shouldered, he had a gloomy air that seemed more than middle-age melancholy. Like a Japanese Charlie Brown. And yet I could see that he was making a concerted effort to extend himself, to be cheerful toward me. He forced a big smile and told me that he loved America, that he longed to live there. I told him that I’d just been thinking how much I loved Japan. “Maybe we should trade places,” I said. He smiled ruefully. “Any time.”

I complimented his English. He said he’d learned it from the American GIs. “Funny,” I said, “the first things I learned about Japanese culture, I learned from two ex-GIs.”

The first words his GIs taught him, he said, were, “Kiss my ass!” We had a good laugh about that.

I asked where he lived and his smile disappeared. “Months ago,” he said, “I lose my home. Typhoon Billie.” The storm had completely wiped away the Japanese islands of Honshu and Kyushu, along with two thousand houses. “Mine,” Fujimoto said, “was one of houses.” “I’m very sorry,” I said. He nodded, looked at the water. He’d started over, he said. As the Japanese do. The one thing he hadn’t been able to replace, unfortunately, was his bicycle. In the 1960s bicycles were exorbitantly expensive in Japan.

Kitami now joined us. I noticed that Fujimoto got up right away and walked off.

I mentioned to Kitami that Fujimoto had learned his English from GIs, and Kitami said with pride that he’d learned his English all by himself, from a record. I congratulated him, and said I hoped one day to be as fluent in Japanese as he was in English. Then I mentioned that I was getting married soon. I told him a bit about Penny, and he congratulated me and wished me luck. “When is wedding?” he asked. “September,” I said. “Ah,” he said, “I will be in America one month after, when Mr. Onitsuka and I attend Olympics in Mexico City. We might visit Los Angeles.”

He invited me to fly down, have dinner with them. I said I’d be delighted.

The next day I returned to the United States, and one of the first things I did after landing was put fifty dollars in an envelope and airmail it to Fujimoto. On the card I wrote: “For a new bicycle, my friend.”

Weeks later an envelope arrived from Fujimoto. My fifty dollars, folded inside a note explaining that he’d asked his superiors if he could keep the money, and they’d said no.

There was a PS: “If you send my house, I can keep.”

So I did.

And thus another life-altering partnership was born.

ON SEPTEMBER 13, 1968, Penny and I exchanged our vows before two hundred people at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in downtown Portland, at the same altar where Penny’s parents had been married. It was one year, nearly to the day, after Miss Parks had first walked into my classroom. She was again in the front row, of a sort, only this time I was standing beside her. And she was now Mrs. Knight.

Before us stood her uncle, an Episcopal priest from Pasadena, who performed the service. Penny was shaking so much, she couldn’t raise her chin to look him, or me, in the eye. I wasn’t shaking, because I’d cheated. In my breast pocket I had two miniature airplane bottles of whiskey, stashed from my recent trip to Japan. I nipped one just before, and one just after, the ceremony.

My best man was Cousin Houser. My lawyer, my wingman. The other groomsmen were Penny’s two brothers, plus a friend from business school, and Cale, who told me moments before the ceremony, “Second time I’ve seen you this nervous.” We laughed, and reminisced, for the millionth time, about that day at Stanford when I’d given my presentation to my entrepreneurship class. Today, I thought, is similar. Once again I’m telling a roomful of people that something is possible, that something can be successful, when in fact I don’t really know. I’m speaking from theory, faith, and bluster, like every groom. And every bride. It would be up to me and Penny to prove the truth of what we said that day.

The reception was at the Garden Club of Portland, where society ladies gathered on summer nights to drink daiquiris and trade gossip. The night was warm. The skies threatened rain, but never opened. I danced with Penny. I danced with Dot. I danced with my mother. Before midnight Penny and I said good-bye to all and jumped into my brand-new car, a racy black Cougar. I sped us to the coast, two hours away, where we planned to spend the weekend at her parents’ beach house.

Dot called every half hour.