Vancouver to Friday Harbor to Bellevue: 1961 - 1973 (September 2010)

From September 16, 2010

A friend recently asked me of all the places I've lived in my life, what are my two favorite places.  It didn't take long to come up with an answer: Friday Harbor, WA and Bozeman, MT.

How did I come to these conclusions?  Interesting story considering the number of places I've lived, but a long one, so I will have to divide it according to place and time.

Brush Prairie

Born in Vancouver (Brush Prairie), WA:  My main memories of Brush Prairie include skating across the wooden floor in our socks, which we were not supposed to do, and family friends (the Turpins) who were so close to us that we considered them family.  We lived at their house, they lived at our house.  I remember very little of that area, but I do remember the wooded areas outside.  We moved from Brush Prairie when I was three years old.

I don't know what I was doing on this highway as a toddler but apparently my wandering feet got started at an early age.  A stranger found me walking here and rescued me, and somehow found out where I lived and took me home.

April 1965: Moved to Friday Harbor, WA: Though I was only three, I have distinct memories of moving to Friday Harbor and out to a temporary place on the island owned by friends, called MarVista Resort.  We lived in one of the cabins there until we were able to get situated into a house.  My brother's birthday was celebrated there and that is how I remember it must have been in April.

Because I spent half my childhood there I remember Friday Harbor very well, and is probably why it is on my list of favorite places to live.  But also keep in mind it is from the somewhat skewed perspective of a child.  We lived In several different houses in Friday Harbor though I was too young to know why we were always moving.  In the first house (a farm), we would often go on duck-egg hunting expeditions.  I was fascinated by the large green eggs often hidden in the grass.  This was the house that had a barn with a loft, and a rope swing just outside the loft.  My siblings and I would climb up the loft and stand in line, while someone below would swing the rope to us.  We were to grab the rope as it came to us and swing on it for a while before dropping to a large pile of straw on the floor of the barn.  It was the same barn and loft that my impatient little brother couldn't wait to get on that rope swing (standing in line behind me) and pushed me before I could grab the rope.  Needless to say, I fell, and my head landed on a nail hidden in the hay.  Most of my memories of that place were fun.  And the older I got, the more fun I had on that island.

I seem to remember this driveway being miles longer.

Another farm on Friday Harbor my parents named Madrona Hill Farm.  There we boarded a horse named Tuke that we fed either marshmallows or sugar cubes (whatever we had in the car)  to keep him from escaping as we opened and closed the gate at the driveway.

Our next house in Friday Harbor consisted of two houses bought together that were eventually turned into an art gallery and a cabinet shop in which we lived in the very middle.  One of my favorite memories from living in that place was silk screening the Creative Eye art gallery logo onto all of the different size paper bags that would house the customer purchases once paid for.  

The Creative Eye art gallery

     

Twin Star Corporation

Memories of eating grass outside like horses surface to my mind until my mother pointed out the number of dogs and cats in the area, and I also remember being dared to eat dry dog and cat food by my siblings.  I'll leave it to the imagination of my readers whether I actually did that or not.

Snug Harbor house

Another house we lived in was an 80-acre farm, surrounded by a small number of celebrities who also preferred their privacy and seclusion.  It was here that we raised sheep and learned how to shear the sheep, wash the wool, card the wool, and spin it into yarn either with a spinning wheel or a spindle.  We also dyed the yarn and my mother started us knitting and crocheting.  We had several different breeds of sheep and at one point had 23 lambs, of which several were slaughtered for meat and kept wrapped in brown paper in a freezer.  I think all of us siblings swore off of lamb at that point.

We had a goat here named Tiny Tim who liked to walk on his hind legs and follow all the kids into the house and go straight into the pantry where he would get to the goat chow.  He also liked to follow us on to the school bus and walk on top of my grandfather's white soft-top convertible Cadillac.

It was also here that my mother pulled me out of school and I had my first homeschooling experience.  I was terrified of the first grade teacher there and cried every day and begged not to make me go.  There was good reason, and that teacher was eventually fired, but I was terrified and wouldn't set foot in that classroom without a parent or older sibling.  So my mother took me home and taught me everything at home, often while outside tending the sheep, or having a picnic lunch somewhere on that expanse of 80 acres.  One of my sisters taught me how to write cursive for the first time, and when I finally returned to public school the next year, it was decided that I was a grade ahead of all my classmates.

I loved living on the island, even though it was very much a different island than I have heard it is today.  In those days, everyone knew each other,  the doctor made house calls, and the town was quiet and peaceful.  There were hills (to me they seemed like mountains) and valleys and many interesting revolutionary and historical stories (such as the Great Pig War) which amused me even at a young age.  There were lizards and snakes and weasels, rabbits and deer.  

One of my favorite pastimes was going down to the beach for a picnic dinner, watching the whales in the distance (my favorite were the Orca whales) and my mother's infamous giant bowl of potato salad.  My dad had carved steps into the dirt cliffs so we could get down to the beach with ease which eventually became popular use for everybody and not just our private access to the beach.  My mother always fretted about the sand getting in the potato salad which it invariably did. Friday Harbor was an idyllic place to live.

I was so sad to leave Friday Harbor, I remember the exact day and time we moved to Bellevue, WA, not long after my 10th birthday: December 27, 1971.  It was a Monday and we took the 2 o'clock ferry to the mainland.     

  

December 1971:

Bellevue was a nice, young, suburban city at the time-- I lived about a mile from the school and so if I missed the bus (which was somehow fairly frequent) I learned to run home without stopping and decided that I liked running from that point on.  Must have somehow stemmed from running along the road as a toddler near Vancouver.  I also remember many times looking out the school windows and seeing our beautiful Collie dog (just like Lassie) wandering around the school yard and we would have to take him home. 

This is part of my room in the Bellevue House.  My mother had made all the curtains and bedspreads and my father had made the table cabinet.  The round table top could be folded down and used as a table.  We lived there just over a year when my dad packed us up in June 1973 and we moved to eastern Washington to an orchard in Yakima in a house over a hundred years old at the time we moved in. 

That story is next.