The doldrums of summer — a time for memories. I think of downtown Seattle 45 years ago, just after the Space Needle was built. The Smith Tower, then 50 years old, was the tallest building in a brick downtown.

I lived in Edmonds. I didn’t start to know downtown Seattle until my dad set me up with a year of kung fu lessons at a place near First and Pike. At age 12, I was expected to take a bus downtown, get off at the right spot, find my lesson, find dinner and then take the bus home. Dad walked me through it once. That was the beginning of my mental map of downtown.

First and Pike was a questionable neighborhood for a sixth-grade boy, even one being instructed in the Chinese art of kicking men in the groin. But my folks saw nothing inherently dangerous in pawnshops, peep shows and drunks, as long as I minded my own business, which I did. Parents were less protective in those days.

Dinner was in a place at Third and Seneca called the Missouri Bar BQ, but which I called the Mule because its sign was a mule’s head bobbing up and down. The Mule’s specialty was the French dip sandwich, price $1.25. The chef had a roast of beef and would cut any part, from “blood red” to “burned ends,” slap it on freshly toasted and buttered French bread and serve it au jus. I could add Tabasco, sliced onions, pickles and extra juice myself. The final product could not be consumed with good table manners or without joy.

Since then, I have lived through decades of spongy and flaccid French dip sandwiches. I miss the Mule.

A few years later, I was coming to downtown Seattle with my friends to go to movies at the Blue Mouse or the Coliseum — the latter is now the Banana Republic store — and to buy cigarettes. I’m not sure whether sales clerks downtown were more willing to sell butts to underage kids than clerks in Edmonds, or whether it was just easier to ask. Often we would ride back to Edmonds on the Great Northern. It had a smoking car, empty for the taking.