Time to Move On
We sold our beachfront home last week. It’s been in my family for 63 years; my parents bought it as a fixer-upper in 1958. And I mean a real fixer-upper; when dad asked my grandfather what he thought, my grandpa said, “I think you’re crazy.”
My parents used every last dollar they had to buy it. Those first several years we lived on cold cereal for breakfast, peanut butter or bologna sandwiches for lunch, and a lot of hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner.
It was an old beach house originally built in 1900 as a vacation home. It wasn’t even platted in the city records until 1903. Although since added onto three times, it still had no central heating, no insulation and was about as drafty as a barn. What heat there was came from a gas stove in the hall between the living room and kitchen. We would lay out our clothes the night before so we could grab them after emerging from our blanket-laden beds and dash downstairs to dress in front of that stove with it’s hot-red glow.
A neighbor, Carl Bergman, owned a home heating company. He took pity on my parents and outfitted our house with proper ducting and a real furnace as a gift. Carl was a wonderful man with a big smile and a bigger laugh. I admired him and was amazed when I found out what he had done for us. I still know his daughter today. Next, the house was insulated. Wow, now the drafts were manageable, and we had heat in our bedrooms!
Everything in and around that place was a project. My dad used his weekends and vacations to work around and on the house. Everything was a DIY project because he wasn’t going to spend good money on someone else doing the things he probably could do himself. He remodeled the second floor, added larger dormers to our rooms, striped almost every room of its plaster lathe walls. My brother and I were his gofers, and I learned a lot by watching and being given smaller tasks.
After my brother and I dug about 175 feet of ditch through clay, rock, roots and buried logs to hook into the new city sewer in 1968, a major remodel followed in 1974 (based upon a floor plan I had drawn). The kitchen moved from the back to the front; the living and dining rooms were expanded, and the little tv room became a real family room where the kitchen had been. Knob and tube wiring was replaced with modern Romex cable and a new electrical panel, and the plumbing was updated with copper.
When my dad was done, he had built a huge deck (bringing its footings within a few feet of the water), a tetherball court, a basketball court, and a river rock wall. He had directed, paved and decorated an open stream with waterfalls fed by a system of french drains. He built concrete stairs and repaired and anchored a 50-step concrete stairway that descended from the road to our yard. To manage our 14-foot ski boat he salvaged parts from a boat yard and created his own crane to launch it, a buoy to moor it on and a stout, carpeted raft to ski from.
Add in the volleyball and badminton played in the yard, the paddle boards he built (in 1962) and the sailing dinghy and you can see why a friend of mine called it ‘Camp Morgan.’ He was right; it was amazing and my parent’s hard work had made it that.
We spent summers never needing to go anywhere else. With a neighborhood full of like-minded kids, we water skied to our heart’s content, played hide and seek, fished, sailed, ran around barefoot in not much more than cutoff Levi’s, and finished most days with a beach campfire – I never thought anything could compare, and I still don’t. Growing up on that beach was a wonderous, magical time.
Being right on the water and open to winter storms from the southwest, there was always a lot of maintenance; boat, bulkhead and house repairs, wind damage to trees, leaves to rake, walks and courts to sweep, hillsides to prune and tend, gardens to manicure, stream and ponds to fix. Every spring it seemed dad was in a mud-laden french drain cutting out root intrusion and laying new pipe. We had a huge chestnut tree complete with a treehouse that loved seeking out those drains. I finally cut that thing down after our boys had grown and I couldn’t take doing any more mud-slinging myself. I grew to understand why dad was always in a bad mood while doing that.
Despite all that it is still close to paradise. No day, no month, no year is the same. The water is always changing, the view of the Olympics is unbeatable, and the birds and animals are always entertaining. Water fowl like Coots, Harlequins, Golden Eyes, Mergansers, Canadian Honkers, Turns, Cormorants, Blue Herons, and Bald Eagles; harbor and elephant seals, grey whales, orcas, porpoises, sea lions, river otters (I hate those little F’ers. They’re cute, but very destructive.); the list goes on. Then there are the water rats and scavengers – seagulls and crows.
There’s never a shortage of entertainment or things to do. Watching storm waves crashing into the bulkhead and sending salt spray clear over the house, observing 1,200 foot container ships on their way around the world or admiring sailboats showing off their spinnakers while racing around Vashon Island; in summertime, taking a 10 minute boat ride to the quiet isolation of Blake Island State Park or dashing an hour through Rich Passage on the way to Poulsbo or around the other side of Bainbridge Island to Docs Marina Grill in Winslow.
Our neighbors are fantastic people. When you live where we do, you grow up and grow old together. You help each other, tend to each other, look out for each other’s property. I know of one beach home that’s been in the same family for four generations; people just don’t sell that often, because once you’re here what better place is there? It all becomes a part of you. The people who are getting our place don’t know, can’t know yet, how lucky they are.
There’s a magic to living on the beach. It’s a bit like choosing to live in the mountains – it’s a choice that brings a thoughtful solitude, an observance and a necessary respect of nature, rather than a harnessing of it. You are along for the ride, only controlling the fact you have chosen to engage. It’s a marvelous place, one I will always remember and miss.
Circumstances will not allow us to keep this place. I won’t go into it; if you search this blog you will eventually find the reasons why. But it’s also getting more difficult to keep it going and I’m not getting any younger. A 120-year old house on the water is no small matter to keep up. It was never built to last this long, so it shows.
Our new buyers will no doubt level the place and build something grand only a software techie could pay for with cash. We’re glad it’s a family, though. Hopefully they will get as much out of this place and cherish it as much as we did. And I hope they become part of the neighborhood. It may be old fashioned, but it’s also a wonderful way to live. Here’s to you, old girl. We will always love you.
Life’s a beach! Having lived on the water from 1972 till present, I totally get what you are saying. My family and I bounced along the WS waterfront 5 times from Alki Point down to south of Brace Point and finishing up in Fauntleroy Cove house wise. Circumstances brought about change and now I live on the water on board the Yolo. Each location was amazing such as you described – we were truly blessed being able to live the life we lived on the Beach! Supply and demand. There is only so much waterfront and so this creates quite the demand and taxes too!
Sorry to hear that you are moving along, however it sounds like you and family had a wonderful time living the dream. Memories are forever. Bet you won’t miss those stairs
“Camp Morgan” – how come I never heard that name? I wonder if grandpa imagined it would have been that for us too. This really captures it all, nice job Dad.