Chapter 10 What was Your Room Like When You Were a Child?

I thought that this was an interesting question. The simple answer is "small." I will try to describe the whole house. A picture is worth a thousand words, but unfortunately, I don’t have photos of the rooms.

When you enter the back door of the house, you enter into a small room. This room was added to the house before I was born. It had a small couch with wooden arm rests at both ends. At one end of the couch was a big radio on a small table. I would often sit there to do my homework while listening to rock n’ roll on radio station KJR. Behind the radio was a narrow closet. I believe it was for mops, brooms etc., but we seldom opened it because the radio was in front of it. There was a red brick fireplace that used natural gas for heat. On snowy winter days, the floor was covered with wet boots, jackets and gloves to dry in front of the fire. There was also another closet where we hung our jackets. I remember there being two broken umbrellas in the closet. I had never used an umbrella until I lived in Japan. I often tell my Japanese friends that people born and raised in Seattle never use umbrellas.

From the “back room” you enter the kitchen. It was very narrow. On the left side, there was a long counter with the sink in the middle. My father built drawers and cabinets under the counter and two large cupboards above both ends of the counter. On the right side there was a refrigerator and a gas stove. At the back side of the kitchen there was another large cupboard for dishes etc. Under that cupboard there was a washing machine. We didn’t have a drier. We hung the laundry out to dry outside or in the basement when it was raining. If we wanted to quickly dry some clothes, we would hang them on a foldable rack and place it over the very large furnace vent in the living room. The furnace was attached to the ceiling in the basement.

Halfway down the kitchen and to the right was the entrance to the dining room. This room was converted into a bedroom for my grandmother for several years before she passed away. From the back of the kitchen, you entered into a very small room. In the room were two large drawers and four small drawers built into the wall under the stairs leading to the second floor. You can enter the living room from this small room to the right, or from the dining room. The living room was rather long with a very large window at one end. There was an upright piano in the living room. The piano came with the house when my father bought it because the previous owner didn’t want to pay to move it.

Side note: when my daughter left Japan to attend the University of Washington, she lived with my parents for about six months or so. She learned to play the piano when she was younger and want to play the piano in my parents’ house, so my mom called a piano tuner. The tuner was blind, but he had a good ear and also a young man to assist him. The piano hadn’t been tuned in many years, so he had to come back after a few weeks later to tune it again. The piano was made in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

Anyway… from the small room, you go through another door and walk down a long hallway to the front door. No family or friends visiting us came through the front door, everyone came in the back door. The front door was always locked but the backdoor was always unlocked for many years until someone tried to sneak into the back door. My mom was awake in the dining room when she heard the backdoor opening. She yelled out to my father, “John! Get your gun! Someone just came into the house.” The person tried to hide in the stairway leading to the basement. It was dark and he knocked over some empty milk bottles and then ran from the house. From then, they would lock the doors at night.

When you enter the house from the front door, there is the stairway leading upstairs. From the top of the stairs, you turn left and go straight into my parents’ bedroom. It was rather large with two closets. The second and third bedrooms were also large and the room at the end was small with bunkbeds. At first, my next older brother, Jim, and I shared a bed in the second bedroom. My eldest brother, Jack, had the third bedroom and next to oldest brother, Bill, had the bunkroom. My sister was small and slept in my parents’ room. When Bill left for the seminary, Jim and I got the bunkroom and my sister the second bedroom. Finally, when Jack moved to another state for his job with Boeing, Jim got the third bedroom, and I finally got a room to myself.

The basement was unfinished. It had a concrete floor, and the walls were originally wooden, but the termites got to it and my father made concrete walls. About a third of the basement was for my father’s hobbies. He had a lathe for making wood and metal items. His main hobby was shooting guns. He had about five or six pistols and four or five rifles. He would make bullets from lead and then reload the used casings and sell them at the shooting range. Making and selling the bullets paid for his hobby. He was a member of the Seattle Police Association firing range in South Seattle. I would often go shooting with him at the range. I shot a rifle for the first time when I was about six or seven years old.

I wish that we had cell phones when I was young. I would have had many photos of the house. I hope these words give you an idea of what the house looked like. The house was built about 100 years ago. Today’s houses mostly use 2x4 or 4x4 wood. This old house had 6x6 and 2x8 for the frame. On windy nights you could hear the house creaking while it swayed. I think the frame will last forever.

Here is the front of the house. This is a recent photo, after my brother sold it. The house has new windows and painted a different color, but is basically the same design outside. On the right is a rack for drying clothes. Ours was a little bigger with more rods to hang clothes.