Hill Street was my first world. There was a big field across the street that once belonged to the Hill family. Across the field was a friend to play with and pretty soon twins my age moved in next door. Mrs. Hill, a widow, lived next door to us on well kept and completely fenced property. What we saw through the high wire fence were her garden, her chickens, and rows of raspberries. Her brother, who lived about a mile away in the firehouse, would visit her once a week to help keep up the property. Occasionally she would venture out driving her car from its garage in the middle of her property across the well kept lawn that also ran between the rows of raspberries. Further west on the other side of Hill Street lived Mr. Morgan. He had a field that grew lots of corn and some other vegetables and a very large chicken coop. We got eggs from him for a while. Past Morgan’s place lived a high school teacher and the school district superintendent. They had small but very nice houses. A small stream ran by the teacher’s house then through a culvert and past the superintendent’s. At the west end of Hill Street was a big house with a wrap around porch and a mean dog.
Our family’s house and property changed much in the years we were there. My father and my mother’s father kept remodeling the place. From my sister’s bedroom on the second floor one could see to the South over the brow of hill and even see Mt. Rainier on a clear day. From my parent’s bedroom and the living room below we could see a good section of the Cascade Mountains. In my memory Hill Street is a world of beauty but was much more ordinary in the original experience. The giveness of where one wakes up and begins to understand relationships and finds a familiar geography make the experience prior to any esthetic of comparison. My mother took a photo of my brother, my dad, and me almost age 5 that now hangs in my office. In the photo Dad’s left hand is blurred because he’s spinning the 4-leaf clover he has shown me.
On the west side of the house, next to the Hill property, Dad made a geometric pattern on a sandy base with used red bricks from the old chimney. It became our patio next to Mrs. Hill’s hogwire fence that had raspberries on the other side. Just south of the patio was a gravenstein apple tree. I can still sense that world from the branches of the apple tree, my first place that had a sense of place. At first I was too small to climb it. One day I pounded nails into its trunk to help me get to the first branches, but before I could, my grandfather and mother told me that the nails hurt the tree. My father pulled out the nails and told me not to use my new ability to damage a good tree. I thought about the problem a little more and got wood scraps. I put them at the base of the tree against the trunk, and they helped me climb to the lowest branches. When I looked back down, it was a long way to the ground. I would have to jump past the pile of boards on the trunk. It hurt a little bit when I landed. I would climb up other days each time making a neater pile of boards. From the branches I could see my father’s garden and beyond to the big mountain. Looking the other way I could see beyond Mrs. Hill’s raspberries to her corn field. Jumping down now wasn’t so bad. I eventually apologized to the tree for putting nails in its trunk.
The next spring my father trimmed many small branches, that he called suckers, off the tree. He told me that this would help it grow more fruit. I helped my father carry the branches to the burn pile. Also on the pile were the wood scraps that had helped me climb. After we lit the fire, we went back to the apple tree. My father lifted me up and after a brief time helped me get back down. Then Dad wondered if I could climb up by myself. I did it and jumped down, landing as far as I could from the trunk. I was very happy. I think my father was happy too – only I didn’t know it then.
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