Our time in the Gig Harbor area covers roughly 5 years. We were living on a country road, Ray Nash Dr., between Rosedale (@4 miles from Gig Harbor) & Arletta (@6 miles from Gig Harbor). I attended this school in Arletta for 2 years & then Gig Harbor Intermediate for about 3 years.
We had 16 acres of land. It was like a paradise. We had an apple orchard near the house, a cherry tree in front of the house & wild strawberries growing on the bank between the house & the road. There was a small stream running to the left of the house. Our father dammed up the stream, creating a pond from which we pumped water to a water tank on the top of the house, which gave us running water. Here are some pictures showing how it is now.
Remember, this was about 1951. Homes back then didn’t have Town Water & Sewage. We did have electricity & a phone line, for our “Party Line” phone. this is what our phone looked like.
At this time, TVs hadn’t been out long. At first, only the rich bought them. We were invited by one of our neighbors to watch their TV. We took them up on that invitation, once in a while. They were about 1/4 mile down the road. Our mom said she wasn’t going to buy a TV until they came out with inexpensive color models. The 1st ones were just Black & White. Here is a picture of a real old one with the picture projected on a mirror. Friends of ours, that @ 2 miles towards Rosedale, had one of these.
Since we didn’t have a TV, we listened to radio programs on a radio inside a “Grandfather Clock” we had in our living room. I remember radio programs such as, “The Lone Ranger”, “Sky King”, “Jack Benny”, “Fibber McGee & Molly”, “The Shadow” & many more. They were usually half hour shows. Another thing about our radio, was that it had a TV Audio, switch position. I remember listening to the “Mickey Mouse Club” TV show on the radio. At that time I thought this was very “Cool”.With all the property we had, there were a lot of things to keep us busy. Going to the back of our house, there was a path that led up to a large field & then nothing but woods beyond that. There was an old barn on one side of the field. When we first moved in, we couldn’t open the barn doors, because the weeds had grown up on the outside of the doors, preventing you from opening them. We cut all the weeds down & opened the doors. Who knows how long it had been sitting there, unopened. Inside we found all sorts of old relics.
There was an old horse drawn wagon, a variety of tack for hooking up a horse to the wagon. I don’t remember what else was in there, but I imagine there were old bottles & other small things. We used it on Halloween, for parties. With no electricity & just candles or karosene lanterns, it was the perfect atmosphere for the occasion.
On the outside of the barn was a Blackberry lovers. paradise. The barn was covered on all sides with Blackberry bushes. We picked them when they were ripe & mom would can them. On the side of the house we had a root cellar, where we kept all the things our mom canned. The term “Can” is very deceiving. She actually put things in jars, poured a small amount of perafin (wax) on the top & screwed a metal lid on it. The wax sealed everything in the jar & kept it from spoiling. This is quite different from how it’s done today. A lot of people then, didn’t have refrigerators, but had “Ice Boxes”. You made arrangements to have large blocks of ice, delivered every so often, which went in the Ice Box, & kept the food cool.
In the woods part of our property, we discovered a lot of interesting things. One way the previous owners got water to the house, was by way of water troughs, that started quite a distance from the house. Since the woods area was higher than the house, the water was gravity fed. There were a lot of these old troughs all over. Another discovery, was finding “Sea Shells” in the ground. We figured this area must have been under water at one time. How else do you explain the shells in the dirt? Another theory is that Seagulls dropped the shells after eating what was inside them.
There was an open area between the barn & the woods, that looked like nothing more than a field of weeds. Wrong!! There was actually a huge patch of rhubarb & another of asparagus hidden by the tall weeds. I happen to love rhubarb, so that was a great find. In the midst of all the trees and brush, beyond this field, was a gigantic Douglas fir tree. We named it George Washington. We had no idea how old it was, but it was so big, you couldn’t get your arms around it. The smaller trees we used to climb up as far as we could go, but old George was too big & none of the branches were reachable without a ladder.
Being there was water close to everyone that lived in this area, myself & some of my neighbor friends, spent a lot of time fishing. We would take a pole, worms that we dug up for bait, walk to the nearest water, find a pier to go out on and fish for a few hours. We usually caught Perch. We put a string through their gills, drag them on the road on the way home, which took a lot of the scales off while we walked. Our mothers would clean them & cook them for a fresh fish dinner. Reminds you of Huckleberry Finn, doesn’t it.