Every Monday I get a topic to write on from Story Worth. Usually, though, I pick another subject because I've written so many stories about my life already. I did want to document my childhood home in one piece with photos, and at the end of the year, my Story Worth book will be printed up and mailed to me. (one of the best Xmas presents I ever got) Anyhow, the story I submitted this morning was 1200 words and I added several photos. Previous stories had been much shorter and I seldom added pictures but I knew I could have up to 480 pages and I was only at about 113 now so I typed my morning away. I did get up to go for my walk, though. Went down to Waste Not, Want Not as I'm looking for a short stool to sit on in my kitchen when I'm working. I have a shower chair I use now but the legs stick out a bit and I'm always tripping on them.
I didn't add all the pictures and all the yakety yak stuff I wanted to so I decided that would make a good blog post for today and I'd still have it documented and saved. I've got to finish this up so I can go work on testing my sewing machine settings. Sooner or later, I'm going to have a quilt wall hanging that doesn't irritate me. haha
Just got an email from the manager who said she's ordering me a new stove so I'm over the moon happy about that. My temp. gauge shot up to 500 the other day when I set it for 275. Anyhow, here's my story with added comments for my blog at the end.
I was nine years old when I moved into grandpa’s yellow house on Kuhn Street in 1952. I would live there until I graduated from high school and moved to Port Angeles in 1961 to live with 4 other girls in a duplex on Peabody Street. Peninsula Junior College was brand new and welcomed students from all over the peninsula.The Kuhn Street house has always been of interest to me so I decided to document what I remember of my childhood home.
There was only a shell of a house there in 1928 when my
grandparents first moved to Port Townsend from Galvin, WA, near Centralia.
Grandpa (Lew Gene Blankenship) went to work at the new paper mill which was
under construction. While my grandmother lived at a rental house on Redwood Street
near the golf course, Grandpa proceeded to build the house up so he could move
the family in, which included my dad and his twin, Jim, who were 5 years old,
and my Uncle George, age 14. The three older siblings had left the home by
then.
The small house
had 924 square feet. Grandpa built a large porch across the front of the house
where clotheslines were strung allowing laundry to be hung year-round. Garden
tools, bicycles, sleds, and various other pieces of equipment would also be
stored on this porch. It had a railing which was wide enough to sit on, and a
large holly tree grew out front.
The enclosed
back porch was drafty and unheated. A makeshift bathroom with toilet, sink, and
shower sat at one end. I didn’t like taking showers there because slugs
sometimes found their way up the drain and could be seen crawling across the
floor. When we were small, us kids bathed in a galvanized tub by the wood stove
in the kitchen. Sometimes we would be sent next door to Aunt Lillian’s so we
could bathe two or three at a time in their more up-to-date white porcelain
bathtub.
The other half of the back porch had a long counter and a
sink where Grandpa cleaned eggs and vegetables and washed up after working in
the barns and gardens. All our coats, hats, and boots were kept in this area.
Until dad could afford to buy a regular refrigerator, an old-fashioned icebox
sat near the door on the back porch. In the opposite corner was a wringer
washing machine. A washboard and tub also sat nearby. If it wasn’t raining, the
laundry was hung in the back yard. More often than not, though, clothes would
end up being transferred from the outside line to a folding wood rack near the
living room stove.
The house had three small bedrooms, a tiny living room,
and a large kitchen. All the floors were covered with linoleum and all the
windows (which were drafty) had pull down shades. Dad would nail plastic to the
outside of the windows every fall in preparation for winter. A wood box sat
near the kitchen stove, and we had to sweep often to keep ahead of the wood
chips and sawdust. I grew up hearing wood being unloaded from my dad’s truck,
wood being chopped, wood being loaded into the wheelbarrow and dropped into the
wood box, and wood being shoved into the stove on cold winter days. Other
sounds I recall include creaky bed springs, roosters rowing, chickens clucking,
ducks quacking, our dog barking, the courthouse clock chiming on the hour, the
mill whistle, trains unbuckling and their horns whistling, foghorns moaning,
window shades being yanked and forced open, and the motor whirring on the small
electric heater from Sears & Roebuck used to take the chill off the kitchen
as we waited for the wood stove to heat up. We often woke up to dad’s favorite
radio station, Seattle’s Country KAYO. He liked to crank the volume high on
those cold mornings when we needed a push to climb out of bed and get ready for
school. The land surrounding the house had three large gardens, several trees
and flower beds, a duck pen and pool, a wood shed, a barn which once held a
couple of pigs, another barn that was a garage on one side for the old ’47
International pick-up, and a storage area for the barrels of chicken feed
Grandpa used on the other. There was a small chicken house near the front door
with a fenced pen, and a large red barn at the other end of the property that
was home to a couple hundred Rhode Island red chickens. An alley ran from this
area down to the swamp road.
A boardwalk ran
along the side of the house and curved down to the barn area until dad, Jim,
and grandpa poured cement for a sidewalk.
Because we had chickens, ducks, and geese, we never had a
cat. We did, however, have our dog, Buster Brown. He was just a mutt and was
never trained or disciplined so he was bad about chasing cars and bikes out on
19th Street. We also had to collar him when the Fuller Brush man came, or the
milkman, or paper boy came to collect. One morning he came in all beat up and
bloody. He crawled behind the wood stove and died. Dad figured he had probably gotten
in a fight with a bigger dog, as he always thought he was bigger than he
actually was. We buried him out near the blackberry bushes.
Both the front and back doors had windows in them and
were locked with skeleton keys. A bottle of kerosene sat on the floor near the
stove to get the fire going with kindling and paper. Grandpa had a large wood
rocker in the middle of the kitchen and often took naps there. Against one wall
was a kitchen queen cupboard with a metal counter top. This 1923 cupboard was
purchased as a gift for my grandma after she had an unexpected pregnancy and
gave birth to twins when she was 40 and grandpa was 46.
Grandpa’s bedroom was off the kitchen. The double bed had
squeaky springs and a lumpy mattress. An old cupboard nearby held money jars
full of coins so Grandpa could make change when people dropped in to buy
vegetables, chickens, or eggs. He also had a sweet tooth and this cupboard was
stocked with boxes of candy bars to give any children that accompanied their
parents or for his own grandchildren. A lightbulb hung from the middle of the
room and his clothes (work overalls and shirts) were hung in a closet of sorts.
No doors, just an indentation in the wall. Another small bedroom was off
Grandpa’s room where my dad and his twin slept. Years later, my sister and I
would share this same bedroom only we had bunkbeds instead of the large double
bed my dad had.
I often drive by this old house just to observe the
changes it continues to go through. The house has shrunk and the tree out front
has grown so you can barely see the old homestead anymore. Makes me sad.
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