Grubby backwoods children.
They were living in rentals in
Seattle. I think he was still driving for the Metro. He was 26 years old. She
was 23. There were four children ranging in age from 5 to 1 year. I don’t
remember, of course, why they decided to move out of town. Maybe it was a sort
of leftover farmer urge to own a little land.
What they found and purchased was a ¾ acre plot of land, partially cleared of the second growth forest, with a shell of an unfinished two bedroom house, built by an actual Eskimo guy who was building these things and selling them unfinished. No power. No water. No plumbing.
The price was $4000.00, $40.00 payments. I remember some tension surrounding getting those payments in. It sounds like a fairytale now.
It sat in what would eventually become the suburbs north and east of Seattle, maybe 20 miles from where they had lived before.
My clearest memory of those days involves the oddness of living among unfinished walls, merely framed in. It was like a forest of 2x4s! It was dark at night except for the kerosene lantern, and the bit of light from the also kerosene heater. It was almost like camping, but in a building. Mom hung up blankets to divide the space up a little. I remember bathing in a zinc watering tub!
At that time, I kid you not, they were driving a Model T Ford. I don’t know the year.
That first summer, before the waterline was put in out on the road, they fetched drinking water in milk cans from a free to anyone artesian well on 164th, which means nothing to anyone but people who live here. There is now a major I-5 exit there. That was about a ten mile drive for two ten gallon milk cans of water.
Of course, there was no bathroom. So, he had to dig a hole and build the dreaded outhouse. Thankfully, living with the “wee housie” didn’t last long.
My father, at 26 years, wired the house. He plumbed it. He finished the inside too. It was never fancy. It was plain and adequate.
Since he was incurably of that farmer mindset, the next thing was to clear the lot. I remember that we were sent inside when trees were falling, or he was blasting stumps. We burned all of those trees in the stove in the house. I remember a cheap sheet metal oval shaped thing in the living room. I still have the smell of alder smoke in my nose. It’s distinctive.
He left a few trees, but cleared enough for a large garden. We children spent a fair amount of time "picking rocks." The ground was full of rather large round pebbles. Maybe a glacier left them there before wandering off.
He cut that old Ford down and made a tractor of it. I learned to drive by helping him plow with it. I was about ten then.
In a few years, he built three more bedrooms.
They planted a row of fruit trees and two rows of raspberries.
In those years, my mother had her hands full just wrangling the four of us. I remember having quite a bit of responsibility for the younger ones.
Every bite of food we ate came from her hands. There were no trips to McDonald’s. No snacks. It was good. She did a good job.
Our grocery shopping was done out on old 99, in Lynnwood and Alderwood Manor, some distance from home. There were long drives down gravel roads between stands of trees, just to get anything.
I was sent to school that fall, by bus, to first grade in Bothell, WA. Strangely, I was taught to speed-read. I remember sentences projected on a screen. My next youngest sister would have been in Kindergarten.
Ah, so it goes, or so it went.
Now it seems that they were some kind of special beings, to do so much while so young. But, you know, I think that’s how it often was in the ‘50s, and before. Things are different now.
It wasn’t all fun. There was a lot of real scraping by, and not much in the way of Christmas or birthdays. There is a reason I took up sewing my own clothing on my great grandmother’s treadle Singer! (I still have it and it works fine.)
But, hey, the first time I heard the Beatles, I was sitting on the grass in that back yard listening to a cheesy little transistor radio. The tune was “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” It’s all one very long story, and here I am in 2026, trying to let you sense a little of it.
What they found and purchased was a ¾ acre plot of land, partially cleared of the second growth forest, with a shell of an unfinished two bedroom house, built by an actual Eskimo guy who was building these things and selling them unfinished. No power. No water. No plumbing.
The price was $4000.00, $40.00 payments. I remember some tension surrounding getting those payments in. It sounds like a fairytale now.
It sat in what would eventually become the suburbs north and east of Seattle, maybe 20 miles from where they had lived before.
My clearest memory of those days involves the oddness of living among unfinished walls, merely framed in. It was like a forest of 2x4s! It was dark at night except for the kerosene lantern, and the bit of light from the also kerosene heater. It was almost like camping, but in a building. Mom hung up blankets to divide the space up a little. I remember bathing in a zinc watering tub!
At that time, I kid you not, they were driving a Model T Ford. I don’t know the year.
That first summer, before the waterline was put in out on the road, they fetched drinking water in milk cans from a free to anyone artesian well on 164th, which means nothing to anyone but people who live here. There is now a major I-5 exit there. That was about a ten mile drive for two ten gallon milk cans of water.
Of course, there was no bathroom. So, he had to dig a hole and build the dreaded outhouse. Thankfully, living with the “wee housie” didn’t last long.
My father, at 26 years, wired the house. He plumbed it. He finished the inside too. It was never fancy. It was plain and adequate.
Since he was incurably of that farmer mindset, the next thing was to clear the lot. I remember that we were sent inside when trees were falling, or he was blasting stumps. We burned all of those trees in the stove in the house. I remember a cheap sheet metal oval shaped thing in the living room. I still have the smell of alder smoke in my nose. It’s distinctive.
He left a few trees, but cleared enough for a large garden. We children spent a fair amount of time "picking rocks." The ground was full of rather large round pebbles. Maybe a glacier left them there before wandering off.
He cut that old Ford down and made a tractor of it. I learned to drive by helping him plow with it. I was about ten then.
In a few years, he built three more bedrooms.
They planted a row of fruit trees and two rows of raspberries.
In those years, my mother had her hands full just wrangling the four of us. I remember having quite a bit of responsibility for the younger ones.
Every bite of food we ate came from her hands. There were no trips to McDonald’s. No snacks. It was good. She did a good job.
Our grocery shopping was done out on old 99, in Lynnwood and Alderwood Manor, some distance from home. There were long drives down gravel roads between stands of trees, just to get anything.
I was sent to school that fall, by bus, to first grade in Bothell, WA. Strangely, I was taught to speed-read. I remember sentences projected on a screen. My next youngest sister would have been in Kindergarten.
Ah, so it goes, or so it went.
Now it seems that they were some kind of special beings, to do so much while so young. But, you know, I think that’s how it often was in the ‘50s, and before. Things are different now.
It wasn’t all fun. There was a lot of real scraping by, and not much in the way of Christmas or birthdays. There is a reason I took up sewing my own clothing on my great grandmother’s treadle Singer! (I still have it and it works fine.)
But, hey, the first time I heard the Beatles, I was sitting on the grass in that back yard listening to a cheesy little transistor radio. The tune was “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.” It’s all one very long story, and here I am in 2026, trying to let you sense a little of it.
🌳🏠🌳
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