The Hill of Yesteryear

                                                           

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         Growing up in the suburbs of a city in the 1960’s can have it’s share of ups and downs, especially in the Pacific Northwest with it’s multitudes of weather variables. One day you could be out in the yard playing ball with the kids or perhaps planting your favorite plants or vegetables and next day you would be inside reading the paper or listening to the radio and hearing the kids playing with their toys or hobbies or perhaps their imaginations running rampant.

         For what ever reason it was just good to be home and away from the job for a change.

         Cena was a single mother of 3 kids through no fault of her own. Parents were divorced in the early 50’s. From a Dutch family of 14 children she came, whom were taught their shares of responsibilities. She worked as power sewing machine operator making everything from canvas tents to the Mud Mountain Dam cover to Boat covers. Use to sitting hours at time at an  industrial power sewing machine and sewing canvas articles.

         She would see the kids off to school in the early years and later she walked up the long hill to catch her bus that drove her into downtown Seattle as she did for years after.

         Life was arduous back then. You worked to make ends meet and family assisted when hard tasks or problems would arise. Her family always pitched in to help her in all ways.From a brother watching the boys, or a sister to loan money when it came time for a car and her driving . The brothers and sisters always helped when needed.

         This story is not only about a family, but about the suburbs the children grew up in and the things their eyes beheld and their minds developed

                                                                   

The Hill





         Seattle had a population of 557,080 people in 1960 and the Boeing Company had just developed the 707 which went into service a couple of years earlier. The Hill was dotted with communities of farmers, aerospace workers and blue collared working families. Some wives had stayed home to rear the young and do the laboring tasks of being a house wife, while others worked outside of the home in different trades. Some local resident wife’s worked either in the local grocery store or in a State Liquor store or as a Meter Maid for the city of Seattle. We lived on the south end of Beacon Hill which at that time was predominantly occupied by  blue collared workers and Italian famers, whom grew crops to sell at the Public Market in downtown Seattle on weekdays and weekends. With its two lanes, Beacon Avenue was the main thorough fair that led people across the hill going north and south. In about a 5 mile stretch there were two taverns , two grocery stores, and an elementary school which myself and my siblings attended.

         The Hill was where a forest of evergreens , maples and assorted hardwoods had met field and farms and residential neighborhoods. There was as well a low income housing project called Holly Park, where, during the summer months it came alive with parents taking their little ones down to the shallow pool for them to play around the sprinkler head in the center and the water around. The hub of the housing project was a community center that served not only for senior nights and bingo, but for our Boy Scouting affairs as well. A couple miles north of the park was a major golf course called Jefferson Park where many hours were spent looking for overshot golf balls to sell back to golfers. Across from the golf course was the Veterans Hospital which original during early years was called the Marine Hospital.



         One evening, while out for a drive with friends, we went down a twisting turning road next to the golf course which was called Carkeek drive which was a rather a long thin road and we happened upon a car wreck. Two of the individuals we knew from high school . In their interests we stopped to help them. An older boy was driving and they all had been drinking. Luckily no one was seriously injured that we could see, but only knocked out and a few cuts and bruises. The driver was injured and over age and asked us to help get him away from the scene of the accident where he had literally wrapped a 1949 ford into a U shaped mess around a tree. We of course helped him and the others.



          Down the hill from our home, which overlooked Boeing Field, we had terrific views of the field and its sounds of the jets and the periodical propeller engines that would soar overhead, and where farm fields of vegetables, fruit trees and an unattended pecan grove met the downhill graveled street called military road, where I just loved to pick up the nuts in the summer and fall. I can still see the rail road tracks down below military road and the stairs we used to scramble down to the railroad tracks, and upon occasion roll tires down the hillside till one day we got chased away by the railroad cops. These were the tracks upon which rolled The Union Pacific and Burlington Northern lines with its hundreds of different box cars from all across the country. I can still hear the sounds of the whistles in the evening that we rolled our eyes to and dosed off to sleep with.



                                             

The Playground

         For us kids all around the neighbor hood, our playground was mostly in the wood. Where tree camps and forts were abundant, where you kept an eye out for the critters that once existed there. I remember seeing Beaver, Giant red squirrels, and a carcass of a deer one time left by poachers. Some days we would go down and play around the box cars, looking for opened ones. Many were empty but a few were full of grain, we tried playing inside one once but it seemed dangerous to us so we left it alone. I can still vision the pigeons swarming down upon the grain that spilled out of those type of cars.Climbing down into sewage drains to discover what they were other than disgusting. But as a child those things do not bother you much when your a young boy unlike the girls we knew. Another favorite place to play and use our imaginations was at the Aircraft bone yard where torn up body's of B-17's, B-24's and other aircraft from WWII lay unprotected,unfenced and unknown till we discovered it.

Climbing into a B-24 fuselage (body) was a thrill in it's self, and seeing the 2 inch thick glass windows with bullet holes in them and blood stained seats we gave much thought to those whom were in the plane before us before beginning to let our imaginations go.All the gauges and switches and belts and other parts laid around for our exploration as well.



         We were a family of four and our mother, whose soft touch and caring ways kept us close and had as well scolded us when we needed it and taught us to help one another and others as well. With my brother being the eldest, he seemed to always be near, when I or my sister needed a helping hand along with our pet companion, Sparky our dog.A very nice mid sized black Labrador Retriever that kept a close eye on all us kids and always greeted us with a big smile and wagging body and tail as we walked up to the house. My sister was the youngest and most loved. She had her playmates she grew up with as well that lived up the street. Their house was a small rambler like ours with two large pie cherry trees and the front yard, and then there was myself full of energy, never listening except to my inside drummer, back then they did not know what ADHD was, but to this day I believed I had it. I never listened very well to many of the adult figures whom surrounded me and couldn't focus very well in endeavor's at school, and always was wandering off on my own to friend's homes with out letting our mother know where I was till late. Our father and mother divorced after about 8 or 10 years of marriage. Between his drinking and her family the twain never met. I can picture the old back door with a hole in it from where our mother told us he had thrown the coffee pot , I believe they could never reconcile their differences.



         Our mother worked the rest of her life providing for us three and keeping the family lifestyle in order as much as a single mother could have done. She was very good at it, and was always there for us. She had dated a number of times and brought a few men home for us to meet whom she felt would be a decent man figure for us children. Only one seemed to be of our liking, but he had 4 children of his own. I think they came close to deciding to tie the knot but decided it would have been too hard with seven kids. The relationship ended and our mother didn’t date much after that. She seem to settle into her ways with us three kids and just having a family and keeping us close to hers. She had been raised in a family of 14 children and they all stayed rather close. Her closest brother seemed to always be there for as well as the others in her family.



         Our home was a small two bedroom home with my brother and me sharing one bedroom, and my sister and mother sharing the other. In later years our mother must have refinanced the home and had the old carport remodeled to make a recreational family room with two built in beds and a closet where it became her bedroom combined for family usage as well. The second bedroom became our sister’s room. Outside their was a modest sized backyard, an oil tank beside the house for heating, and a small shed. I remember my mother taking my brother and I out to the shed and giving us some of my fathers things from the war, he was in the Navy and army air corp as well during World War II. He was a bombardier over Midway he mentioned once, but never again.



         The old carport had held many young memories for us as well, like the time my sister stepped out the back door just as my uncle was burying the hatchet across the pet ducks neck, for our mother had grown tired of the constant mess upon the porch where it had roosted at night. My sister dropped like a fly to the kitchen floor and I remember mother picking her up and rushing her to the faucet to run water over her forehead. Upon another occasion I remember my uncle showing my brother and I what happens to a chicken after you ring its neck. My uncle at the time was an avid hunter and I believed he had done a few things to discourage us from becoming the same. Well he rung the chickens head right off of its body to show us two boys how the body kept jumping around, yep, it discouraged me alright.



         The house was heated by oil and still is to this day. The smells were abundant around this neighborhood, the musty and dusty smell of the dry graveled bed of the road in summer, the spring smell of a new mown lawn and there was always the lingering smells of the alley with it's garbage waste, rutted mud pits, and other debri skirtted along it's sides.The pungent odor of the seepage lingering from the over flowing septic tank in the side yard that our mother had to deal with, so she had her brothers come over and dig trenches and lay pipe to connect to the new sewer system that the city was putting in the deep trenches out in the street, that was an expeience as well There was an alley in the back that had so many pot-holes in it that residents were always throwing their yard debris into it to fill up the potholes as the city would never repair or maintain this back alley. The only vehicles that would dare brave using this alley were usually the garbage disposal trucks or residents with trucks that had a high center as to not get stuck.



                                             

Finding Things

         With us two boys we were always finding things to do and get inventive when there was nothing to do, such as building plastic model cars in our room with the windows closed and we were sitting in there for hours using plastic glue adhesive and the fumes I’m sure were very overwhelming , as mother would come in the room and just say “Oh my God” and go over and open up the window. Yep, building models was a great pass time project for many a boys. One of my favorite models was a 56 ford pickup that I had just finished two weeks work customizing it when my sister barged into the bed room angry about something, picked up the model, threw it on the floor and stomped on it and left the room. I went crazy and rushed out of the room right at her a hollering. She just held up her fist with a straight arm and I ran it to it full force earning myself a terrific bloody nose.



         At other times when there were no other kids to go hang out side with upon occasion we would go down underneath the house with our green army men and other toys and our shovels and be digging trenches around the foundations of the house. After about a week of that our mother would be searching for us outside and upon finding us she would say the same thing, “Oh my God” and drag us out from underneath the house. The only thing I didn’t care for underneath the house was the smell coming from the oil furnace. But we did manage to find my sisters pet cat’s mummified carcass. She had been missing for a several months.



         There were meadows of plenty before the Freeway ( I-5) came through in 1971. The meadows were lands of discovery as well. They met along wood side where we would roam for the whole day, taking ropes with us to go hang over a cliff of clay discovered earlier and sandstone. We would repel down against the side of the cliff after securely tying of the rope onto one of the many large maples finding fossils of crab ,shells, and other unknown objects in the hill side. And upon the journey home would stop to talk with a hobo whom was cooking a stew of wild vegetables in an old  large Folgers coffee tin. He took the time to show us what he was pulling up to cook. Back then people called them hobos, no they call the people homeless people, either way they were people out on their own with no resource nor income. They would fend for themselves in a world of hopelessness and no close famlies. Many from the War era I tend to think.



                             

Disocvery and Autumn Nights

         I can remember delivering papers to the residents of the area and on the nights I had to go make monthly collections in the dark of the early evenings things seemed a bit eerie at times. I used to take a short cut down to Portland Street through a small meadow that separated the local areas. Upon this one night I was crossing this meadow and I could hear something following me, I hollered out, “who’s there?” and received no answer, the foot stepping noises became louder and louder. Frightened I began to run and I could hear the quickening gallop of whatever was behind me. All of a sudden it leaped upon me pushing me to the ground. To my foolishness it was a very friendly black lab dog of the name I cannot remember that was licking me every which way. We got up and walked together down to the neighbor’s house to collect payment.



A few of the homes in the area were in disrepair and one had been vacated but a lot of things were left behind. Broken tables and chairs missing legs, with colors of age showing through the peeling curled up veneer and a grand piano hunkered down in a corner leaning on its side that was missing a few of the black and white keys and some that had loosened from age and weather. Scattered around the floor of this old home were blue medicine bottles and a large stuffed Moose head that was missing one of the glass eyes and was pretty tore up. I had always thought that a physician had lived there at one time.



Now this was a time prior to the freeways coming through and the state buying up all the property it could to make way for the cement monster that was to invade our state of Washington. Upon these times were hard times for I’m sure a lot of people in the area giving up their residences in the name of progress. Well as kids we roamed the streets a bit and seen a few of these abandoned homes that would be eventually torn down. When we had to walk to our high school; as our mother had no vehicle as yet, we would take all the normal short cuts we could to get to what was then called “Swift Avenue”, as we walked down this long stretch of road on the west side of street was a huge Victorian mansion that had been a been bought up by the state. Now there were many homes and the state apparently had not the time to post no trespassing signs or to rope things off. At a later date we went down to see the insides of this old home. Inside there were exquisite spiral stair cases that lingered up to the upper floors, carpets still laid out everywhere and some furniture pieces were left behind . It just mystified us why everything was left this way. In a matter of weeks it was sadly torn down.