510 NW 62nd St, Seattle WA - $499,000

In 1976(?) my parents bought this cute little yellow house in Ballard for about $70,000 and about a year later had me (1977) and Sarah in (1979). We lived in this house for 5 years and then we moved to upstate New York, to Poughkeepsie - Hyde Park. I remember this house so well!
In this living room my Dad flung my first loose tooth across the room and it bounced off the then diamond shaped ties on the fireplace, after slipping a piece of floss around the tooth in a slip knot and snapping the loose ends of the string away from each other, thus popping my tooth out of my mouth. I was just so glad he didn't tie the string to the front door knob like he had first suggested. I also remember laying on the red, orange, and mustard yellow, round rug as Barbara Streisand's Yentel record played on the Atrak stereo, propped up on a very large wooden spool. I layed there warmed by the fire place as my Mom and Dad read (or did something of the like) and I thought to myself, I wonder if this is what it means to be romantic.
The house's floor plan was much like the shape of a donut with a stairwell going up the middle to the second story. I remember the cat chasing the dog, or was that vice versa, around and around the house. If you were standing in the kitchen as pictured below to your left would be a door leading to the then unfurnished basement. Down there my Dad had a really large bird cage full of finches. He had little nests in there and they would lay these tiny eggs. When we moved to New York he took the cage outside and let them all go and they all flew up onto the telephone wire in front of our house and just looked back. I thought it was sad, because where would they go home to now? I used to go down into this basement also to listen to my record player and my one record; Aquarius - you know, "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius..." and play with the rope mop because it so much looked like a person to me with long stringy hair. If standing in the picture below the back door would be to your right. It was here that my Dad held our gentle Husky down on the floor with his hand on her head cutting the bone she had gotten wedged in her mouth with a hack saw. She was afraid but so trusted him and just layed there the whole time.

In the above dining room we used to do so many art projects! My Mom ran a daycare and we did finger painting with paints and pudding and cookie cutters, we glued things with macaroni and paper, played with home made playdough which when baked or dried would last quite a while, wrote letter to ourselves that we mailed and then were delivered to us (that was too cool!), among many other things. It was at this table that my Dad told me at 5 that it was my birthday. I had never celebrated my birthday and found it interesting but that was as far as it went. I really felt like "Huh! Interesting!" and I went off and played. I also remember having conversations about nose picking, and thinking about what I was going to say before saying it, and to stop stuttering. It was also in this room that I leaned against the door jam where the photographer is standing in the picture above and watched fully suited firemen (hats and everything) (3?) rush through the living room with Sarah in their arms as my Mom cried hysterically because Sarah had stepped off the dining room chair and had fallen face first into the Microwave cart slicing her nose open across the bridge. It was bleeding badly enough that the blood was in her eyes and my Mom thought she maybe blind. It was tramatic for all of us. But just imagine two of those fire fighters with Sarah (1 1/2 yrs?) in the tiny bathroom below.

This bathroom had a vent that allowed you to hear everything that was going on in the house. I also lost at least two paddle ball/bouncy balls down the toilet, showed one of the daycare kids I could pee standing up, and used to sit on the toilet and hum the Star Trek theme song to myself because the acoustics of the bathroom would creep me out. Across from the bathroom were the stairs that led up to the second story that was one large playroom for the kids (way cool!). I remember braiding my rag dolls hair on the stairs and thinking to myself that I would definitely be a hair dresser when I grew up. I also remember watching my Dad shave while sitting on the stairs and telling him I thought he looked weird because he had shaved his beard off and then immediately felt guilty because I wondered if I hurt his feelings.

Upstairs truly was the coolest - it was like a tree fort for kids (that was the feeling I had anyway)! It ran the length of the house and was full of learning activites for Daycare and toys as well as toys and books borrowed by the Book Bus. We had giant blocks made from milk cartons, a felt board to play out stories and songs, we would sit in a circle on the floor and sing songs that required hand movements, and we had a large poster of the food group pyramid on the wall. In this room the kids played during a winter party, thrown by my parents for people in our church congregation, and I remember playing on the rocking horse with another boy while watching frosty the snowman on the small TV on the floor and thinking this is the BEST day EVER!!!!! I had such a good time! We also had a cupcake party (we had cupcake parties until we moved back to Seattle where we would watch movies, have a friend or two over, eat cupcakes until the movie was over, and then the friend would go home) and watched the Wizard of Oz. I was so scared for Dorthoy who cried into the Wicked Witch of the West's crystal ball as Auntie Em cried and called for her.

The house had a really cool backyard too. My Dad built a really nice jungle gym for us including a dock like structure and I remember laying on my back on it listening to the birds, looking up at the perfectly blue sky with hardly any clouds, watching and listening to a airplane fly by, and thinking I will never forget this. I think we were just about ready to move and to this day on a warm sunny day I can look up at the blue sky and remember the smells and the sounds and the total comfort I felt that day. We also had a Deadly Nightshade plant in our backyard that I snacked on one day exclaiming to my Mom that I had been eatting raspberries. I soon was on the kitchen floor throwing up because she had given me ipecac and milk because the berries I had been eatting were poisonous. I also squished a fuzzy caterpiller to a mushy mess in Winter Jacket when it climbed up my sleeve and I freaked out. And I remember my Dad having to call a bee guy to come and remove a large bees nest from our tree. That was cool.

Now what was the garage has been remodeled into a bedroom, the attic play area has been remodeled into a bedroom and small office, and somewhere they have stashed another bathroom; I'm guessing somewhere in the basement. My Kindergarten- two or three blocks around the corner and down the street, where they made me pledge allegence to the flag but I made the teacher mad because I woulnd't keep my hand over my heart, where I stashed snails to keep as pets, and where I put holes in my winter coat sliding across the very smooth cement in the entry way- is now gone due to asbestos. It is such a cute house and the current owners have done a wonderful job of remodeling it.

When I was five it was a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, living room, dining room, and rec room house with a smallish kitchen where the fridge didn't quite fit, as well as 2 rooms downstairs in the basement that my Dad built. I still love this house. I think they should just give it to me because i love it and could never afford it. I hope a family moves in and loves it as much as I did. And I hope that Padon loves our house as much as I loved this one.