Summary

In “Welcome to the Future (1962),” present day Ernest tells Juju about his being raffled off and sold to a brothel. Ernest says that if Madam Flora had not taken him in, he “might have wound up as a street kid, eventually sent to a poorhouse, or a reform school that was more like a jail, or worse” (84). Juju is disbelieving that anything could be worse than being sold to a brothel, but Ernest says, “If I didn’t end up in the Tenderloin, I might never have met your mother” (84). Ernest attempts to write his life’s story on paper, but finds it extremely difficult, while Juju is writing a comparative piece of journalism on the differences between Seattle in 1909 and 1962. Ernest does not think that the World’s Fairs are especially important; they are "merely...