I think this is the spot, but I'm not sure, and I don't remember the address, but I think that you can still see the big white house from the freeway as you drive by.
I went to all of 5th and 6th grades in Olympia, at McKinley school. The school has been razed because of asbestos in its construction.
I have lots of happy memories from here. We had a nice little dog called "Cricket". My mom had the house fixed up so nice and neat everybody liked coming to see it. It was a two story house with 4 bedrooms. There was camel hair carpeting in the living and dining rooms and going up the stairs. My mom bought our furniture at second-hand shops and used Jasco to scrape off all the old gunk. Then she decorated it by painting Norwegian rose maling designs. I liked living there and reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I read nearly all the books in the library of McKinley school.
It snowed for Christmas and we had a Christmas tree, and our cat , Lakris, (Licorice) went insane and climbed to the top of the tree. I sewed little Christmas socks out of red felt and I liked thinking I was Laura Ingalls when I was making them.
There was a crick across the field to the left of the house and we would go there and catch crawdads. There was a swamp on the other side of the house and on my 10th birthday we went there with sack lunches to catch frogs and polliwogs. I've always wished I could have stayed 10 forever.
The house had a full basement where my dad had built a boat in the evenings. The house had been built on a hill where there were fruit trees: a crabapple tree, hazelnut trees, and a cherry tree where the tree fort was. There was a pulley line from the kitchen to our tree fort so we could get sandwiches and stuff from our mom. There was a front porch the length of the house.
Then one morning we woke up and there was a huge bulldozer in front of "our" house. The Bulldozer started BANGING into the porch to knock it off, another digging machine went after the crabapple tree, I left the breakfast table to run out there and pick the poor daffodils. CRASH into the wall, our paintings, originals done by a special family friend, came crashing off the wall inside. My brother and I had to go to school, and when we came back the house was naked, the mound it had been built on was shaved away by earthmoving machines, we had to wade through mud to get inside. Of course we had to look for another place to live, the landlord had neglected to tell us he was tearing the place down to put in a car dealership just like the one across the street.
It was a trick moving out of there, especially dropping the piano out the front door 8 feet down into the moving van.
We found a really nice place to live next, it was the uninhabited executive mansion of the Weyerhaeuser Lumber Company. That was nice too, but lots of work for my parents to fix it up.
The last thing I did at the Pacific Ave. house was to walk through the whole place with muddy feet and unscrew every light bulb.
And it amazed me to see the house still standing last time I was up there, some 6 years ago...is it still there anybody???
6 comments:
Kjekke minne.
Mor.
I was never allowed into that tree fort!
The area where the crick was, was also a huge exposed sewer pipe. The pipe ran along the ground in order to get on top of it you had to run for it and scramble aboard. We would then walk along it and purvey the land. One cold, snowy Saturday morning we were all out on the pipe making new tracks, I am 7, big sister Trude 11 and a couple other local kids in tow an I fell through! That was a bummer, I was hauled out and marched home, the entire way Trude kept telling me to keep moving or my legs woulf freeze and I would be stuck to the ground until summer came.
Some years later that same house was turned into a restaurant (after the dealership). When we went there to eat I remember eating lunch in my old bedroom. I felt guilty sitting there chewing, (Mor didnt want us eating in our room!)
Laurie and I were up in the area this summer to visit some good freinds and it has been so long since the last time that I couldnt remember where the house was.
I did however point out to Laurie where I thought the Olympia convention was from the freeway. Sure enough it was there!
Good memories
that's almost too awful to be true... are you SURE about that? ok- but Wow, I guess that landlord sort of makes some of these seem soft and cuddly... can you imagine if you'd still been sleeping when that started? Sounds like an up-until-then idyllic setting.
ps- Will you tell us the one about the false teeth and the run-off pipe (or whatever it was)? Huh? Will ya? Puh-leeeeeeeeeeeze??????
after reading li'l bro's comment just now (which wasn't there when I started mine a few hours ago) I'm wondering if this is the same place where the false teeth appeared? If so, it must truly have been a memorable place! lol
ok I will, but I have to get psyched up first.
Wow! What memories! I am not too far away and if you could remember more of where the house was it would be fun to have a look and see what I find. We do have an Olympia address but are on the west side of town. Is the one on the map the Pacific Ave house?
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