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I have been observing Jack Block Sr. for over 30 years.

This former White Center schoolboy is a graduate of Highland Park Elementary, West Seattle High and the U Dub class of 1957 with a degree in International Studies.

He went on to become a Port of Seattle commissioner a record of 28 years.

Jack is now retired and living with a new wife in a beautiful home overlooking the ferry dock in West Seattle. Not bad for a working guy, a longshoreman crane operator on Seattle's waterfront.

The house has a gorgeous 50-foot pool, a landscaped yard with carefully landscaped exotic imported rock from Canada, a gazebo and waterfalls, and a killer view of the Olympics and knockout sunsets.

Is America great or what? This is a local-boy-makes-good guy whose family was barefoot poor, who used to deliver the White Center News, and boxed and wrestled in a ring set up at the White Center Fieldhouse. His weight was around 147 pounds but he casts a much larger shadow now.

He and his equally wretched buddies used to hang out with soldiers manning a barrage balloon station on Ninth Avenue Southwest during W.W.II.

When the GIs were not on duty they often drifted over to what is now Westview Park, but then a heavily wooded hideaway where they could get tanked on beer.

Jack and fellow scroungers made spending money cadging beer bottles and cleaning rifles for the soldiers.

To this day a fanatic fisherman, he often walked to Miller Creek in what is Normandy Park and caught sea-run cutthroat trout. Now he fishes in Alaska for salmon and once caught a 400 pound halibut.

He is the father of Jack Block Jr., a Burien city councilman and three daughters. Several years ago, his wife of over 40 years died and he recently married the former Vicky Schmits, who is retired now but was assistant manager of King County licensing.

When I asked him how he got along with the other board members of the Port, he said, "I am the only member who voted against the third runway but they tolerated me because they were all downtown Seattle oriented and had the vote."

He is proud of a huge public park named after him and said the other commissioners agreed to honor him for his long years of service, and putting the park in a superfund toxic waste site was his idea.

Each morning I ask Elsbeth if she has any improvement in her recovery from knee renewal and her recently added right hip cortisone treatment.

My purpose is to ascertain if she will be ready in case she gets the opportunity to do some mud wrestling or calf roping should something like that competition chance to come to our community.

Having once been quite proficient at doing double parallel rope jumping and teen-age jitterbugging, I know she yearns for a return to the good old days of slide and glide, cartwheels and cat-like tree climbing.

Alas, it is doubtful if she will ever be a contender again. Not that modern medicine and artful doctors have not done their job. It is because she has found other outlets for her talents.

She is still a most highly feared pinochle player, a renowned flying fingers knitter, a recognized authority on removing spent flowers from geraniums, a champion ironer of my pants, shirts, shorts and handkerchiefs, and world-class tennis shoe restorer.

All of this activity does not mean that she neglects doing all the family bookkeeping and other duties as personal secretary for me in my role as head golfer, shop tinkerer, channel surfer, arcane word researcher, raspberry picker and cross-eyed puzzler.

In place of youthful leaping onto the back of horse-drawn ice wagons, she now has to keep a log of projected family and friends birthday recognitions, which includes gift and card buying, but also maintaining a calendar of countless meetings, lunch appointments, doctors and dentists dates and times, business meeting times and places, and accounts payable.

If she has to appease her intense craving for buying things that are on sale, I will drive her to Big Lots or Bartell's. I don't mind this as it gives me time to sit in the car and catch up on my thinking time.