But we had a tiny little apartment that was managed by a little old maid who was very fussy. We were allowed one bath a week for each of us and to save on water we saved our bath water and washed the clothes in our bath water which was a hassle!
But we rented an upstairs apartment, about three or four rooms, and my Dad was working on what was called the Denny re-grade which was a process of moving a big hill out of downtown Seattle. It had been so high that they - any buildings that were on top of it, they used an elevator to go up the side of the hill to get to the building. They just decided this big old hill in the middle of town was just a terrible waste, so they had this company come in and take away the hill.
From Wikipedia:
The more dramatic Denny Regrade No. 1 (1908–1911) sluiced away the entire half of the hill closest to the waterfront, about 27 city blocks extending from Pine Street to Cedar Street and from Second to Fifth Avenues. 20,000,000 US gallons (75,708 kl) of water a day were pumped from Lake Union, to be aimed at the hill as jets of water, then run through tunnels to Elliott Bay.[6]
Much of the motivation for the regrade had been to increase land values, but the area opened up was left as a strip cut off from much of the rest of the city by the remaining eastern half of the hill, whose western face offered no route of approach.
The result was Denny Regrade No. 2, begun in February 1929 and lasting 22 months. This time, the technology was power shovels rather than sluicing, with earth carried to the waterfront by conveyor belts, then placed on specially designed scows and dumped in deep water.[6] The scows were intentionally designed to capsize in a controlled manner. They were symmetrical top-to-bottom and side to side; a seacock could be opened to fill one side with water. In three minutes it would capsize, dump its load, bob up, empty the tank, and right itself.[10]
One of the buildings demolished in Denny Regrade No. 2 was the Denny School on Battery Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. Opened in 1884, it had been described as "an architectural jewel… the finest schoolhouse on the West Coast."[7]
All the time they were doing that, my Dad said it was such a waste to take all that dirt and just dump in the bay because that is what they were doing. They had big - they had built a conveyor belt from the regrade up over the town and out and put it on barges at the dock and took it out a ways into the bay, take soundings and then dump it. So they dumped the whole hill; in the last, probably 10 years, they've been digging up the bay, bringing dirt back in and filling low spots in Seattle, which is what they should have done in the first place! But that was interesting to watch. There was one they resettled the people who had lived around the edges of the hill, and I remember that there was one house that was still there - the man wouldn't sell his house for what they were willing to pay for it, and he wouldn't move, so finally the steam shovels just dug all around his house and left him sitting up on about a 5 food high perch of left hill under him. And he'd have to rock it in, because with the Seattle rains, it would have to wash away. So that was the way it was when we finally left Seattle in about 1933 or 34.
Wallace and I used to like to drive around Seattle. Seattle is a lovely place and we'd start out from our place and somehow we'd always end up home and we never knew how we got there; Many times we'd leave our house at the base of Queen Anne Hill and end up circling the thing, coming back and being parked right in front of our house again! We'd just go around in circles. But we explored frequently.
Wallace decided that he should get some more education. He had gone to Utah State University when we lived in Logan and graduated. But after he'd been out of school for a while he decided he wanted to be a geologist, to know more about it. So after working with Dad the summer in Seattle, he left Dad and Mother and I there and put the car in storage because Dad wouldn't drive in Seattle and Mother and couldn't, so the car was put in a garage and left there for a couple of years. He left and went back into the Midwest someplace to go to college and get a master's degree in geology.
So in the fall I started school and went to Queen Anne High School which was up on a hill; we lived at the base of the hill and it was at the top of the hill and I don't know how many steps, there must have been 200 or 300 you had to climb to get up that dang hill. You either did that or you took a cable car part way but then you had to hike the steps the rest of the way.
From Wikipedia:
Queen Anne High School (1909–1981) was on Galer Street atop Queen Anne Hill and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The building was converted to condominium apartments in 2007.
The school was built in 1908 with additions in 1929 and 1955, (ID #85002916). It is also an official City of Seattle landmark.[1]
Most of the time, because I was having arthritis again, with some iritis thrown in, which is a disease of the eye - you can't stand daylight, I'd wear a patch over the eye that was bothering me the most and try to get by, going to school at Queen Anne. It was a huge school about three or four levels. I remember I used to have one class in the top corner of one building (it was an L-shaped building) and my next class was at the bottom floor in the opposite end of the L shape. Well, it took ya 10 minutes to make that, even in good conditions, and I was having trouble walking up and down stairs! It was a little rough! I went through a period of time up there where my feet swelled so bad I couldn't buy shoes to fit and I had to wear house slippers, and then would attach a ribbon or bias tape or something at the back of the heel and tie straps around my ankles to hold the heels on because otherwise I couldn't keep them on. It was altogether miserable.
School was so different from Logan High School that I hated school. One good thing happened: in my transfer of credits from Logan High School to Queen Anne High School I had much more credits than I'd had at Logan. The classes I'd taken at Logan like orchestra only gave half credit and in Seattle they gave whole credit. And some other classes I'd had at Logan only gave a half credit and up there they were a whole credit. So when they got them all equalized out, I ended up that I could graduate in just the first semester of school. So I graduated from Queen Anne High School at mid-term 1932 after only 3 1/2 years of high school. School is Seattle was very difficult. I had taken some history classes where the teacher believe that we should outline all of the stuff that we read. I swear she must have weighed those outlines to see how much they weighed before she gave us a grade.
Our graduation exercises were ridiculous. They had all the graduating students sitting on the stand. And they had a new P.A. system (which P.A. was just being invented) and we could hear the speaker speaking at the pulpit and then the sound would go out and pick up on the little speakers they had on each side of the stage so we sat up there on the stand and couldn't understand anything anybody said. It was really boring. Somebody had brought a comic book with them and finally tore off pages and passed them up and down the aisles of the graduating class. That was how we spent our graduation night. It was really boring. the graduation exercises I had attended at Logan High School had been beautiful. Everybody cried because they were leaving school, loved everybody else, etc.
All the dances at Queen Anne High School were matinee dances from 3:00-5:00 in the afternoon. There was never anything in the evening. I don’t' think they even had a senior prom or junior prom or anything. Where at Logan all the dances had been mostly in the evening. I don't remember matinee dances at all. In the orchestra we played some really good music and that's what got me started liking symphony music. We played for several musicals, which were fun, and I enjoyed that, as we had done at Logan High School - we had put on a couple of musicals that I'd been in the orchestra for. But in Queen Anne High School my music by then was good enough that I made the first orchestra, or the A orchestra, which was nice; I enjoyed that. But I was second violin, which was all I was really qualified to play. While we were there I was eventually in an all-girls orchestra that we were going to play for dances. I don't know what convinced me that I was good enough to play for a dance, but we tried it a few times. It eventually dissolved; somebody moved away and that kind of killed it. I think probably the one who was most interested in keeping it going left, and the rest of us weren't all that dedicated.
I had my first plane ride while I was living in Seattle. I was dating a young man who was managing a grocery store, so he decided one day we should go for a plane ride. We went up in a Sea Plane.
Mother and Dad had been out shopping one day. They made so much noise coming up the stairs as they were coming home. when I opened the door for them, my Dad's hands were just shaking; he had had a stroke while they were out. We had kind of a hard time taking care of him. I don't remember that we even had a doctor.
Then the depression hit; Dad's job ended and the rest of the family decided that they should come up and move Mother, Dad, and I back to Brigham City where my brother Evan was running a service station. they said Dad could help run the books for him and it would give Evan more time. So that was done. They came and got us and we rented or got a little trailer to pull behind the car. We loaded everything we had on the trailer and the car. Cars in those days had wide running boards, and you could really load a car. I remember we had a barrel that Mother had put a whole bunch of stuff, or I had. I was a better packer than her and I filled up every nook and cranny. (Note from Arlene: I believe this is the story Mom used to tell about how the barrel fell off and things in it broke and all mixed together - jam or honey and buttons, etc. They took the time to sort through it all to save as much as they could because commodities were so hard to come by, and some things were rationed, so they couldn't spare anything - even a button.)
Anyway, we finally moved back to Brigham and rented a house there. It was a nice home and had a big yard with fruit trees in the back. It was while we were in Brigham City that my brother and I started to have some fun together. I really hadn't been around him much since we were in grade school together. I remember one trip he was invited to a wedding out in Juniper for a wedding reception or shivaree or something and he said, I know very well when I get out there, they're going to try to get me drunk. So he said I'm going to fool them. He'd been told that if you drink just a little bit over a long time, you can't get drunk. So he started drinking just a little bit as we were driving out there. When we got to that wedding dance, Evan was so sober he was mad. He was just plain bored with the whole thing and thought it was so stupid.
After we'd been back in Brigham City for several months, my mother's stepmother died and my uncle Walt (Walter Halverson) and his wife, Geneva came up from Long Beach California; I'd been having terrible headaches in Brigham. They had a daughter named Ruth who was about three years younger than I am. Then, in living with Uncle Walt and Aunt Geneva, and Ruth, I learned to really laugh. I couldn't remember things ever being funny at my house.
Oh yes, after grandmother Halverson died, and because I'd been having such terrible headaches, Uncle Walt, who was a chiropractor, talked mother into letting me go back to Long Beach with them. I stayed with them from - I went down just before Christmas 1934.
One night Ruth and I were to a MIA dance that they had after MIA at that time, and we met a couple of sailors. My darling Lynn. Ruth's mother said nice girls don't go with sailors.
But I started to date Lynn, but he was never allowed to come out to the house in his uniform. Our first date was to the Gold and Green Ball that year.
This is SO fascinating! Thank you for taking the time to transcribe it all!
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