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Tri City Home Team

Now days, even if we get dumped on here, they only give the schools a 2-hour delay. A complete rip-off for both my kids but not really for me. For me I don’t have to worry that my kids will be home during the day if I’m not there, and that it might mean coming back to a smoking ruin of a house. Ok, I have great kids, so that probably wouldn’t happen. But it could, so let me have my little irrational concern!

As an adult, I’ve grown to hate the idea of snowfall in the Tri Cities. Now most people who know me, if asked (and don’t do this- I don’t want this statement to be found out to be a lie) will tell you I’m a pretty easy-going and patient member of society. That holds true until the complete morons come out driving on MY roads in the snow and ice. Just check out how many 911 snow/road/accident related calls were made the first day of snow this last week by 10 am. News reports said over 300! Probably due to the truck and 4-wheel drive folks who were doing the same speed on the road they do in July. I mean I’m going down my neighborhood street of Bellereive (a 2-lane arterial) at a completely rational 15 miles an hour (posted normal speed is 25) when a woman comes tearing up behind me, attaches her front bumper to my back one, rides me like a merry-go-round pony for a block, and then PASSES me on the left (fish-tailing while she’s doing it) and goes tearing off towards the stop light about 50 feet ahead.

Oh, and she slid right through the intersection of Gage Blvd. on the stop light and narrowly missed getting nailed by three cars on Gage. This was not an isolated experience for me this week either. Where’s a big chinook wind when we need it???

Ok, end of rant. Now onto Carmichael Hill.

Carmichael Middle School (or Jr. High to those of us from the Neolithic period) in Richland has an incredible hill on the back side of the school. It’s gotta be close to 4 miles wide (ok, maybe 400 feet)  has a 90 degree slope (ok, I get out of breath climbing it) and is 2 miles to the bottom (or 15 seconds from top to bottom on a store-purchased sled or just an old refrigerator door). Everybody would race to the school and spend the day sliding down.

In my day, the school’s baseball field was at the bottom of the hill. Surrounded by a chain link fence supported by steel posts. Only the weenies (and the fairer-and smarter-of our species) would slide down the far sides of the hill to avoid their otherwise fate of going down the middle to the fence. For the less-fair (and less blessed with intelligence) the object was to either slam your boots into the snow when nearly reaching bottom to lightly tap into the fence or to steer (a relative term with the Neolithic sleds we possessed) to a graceful curve at the bottom and pass the fence on either side.

This picture was taken by a Tri City Herald photographer, Paul T. Erickson (hope I don’t get sued- I am giving him credit!)

When I was 10 years old there was an angel in my class (who’s name I won’t print here- this is still a small town, she probably still lives here and I don’t want her to suddenly realize the ruin her life is when she finds out the missed opportunity she had with me after all). For this vision on earth in her pink snow jacket with matching gloves and hat, I abruptly ended my day in Kadlec hospital’s ER requiring over 20 stitches to my head. I left the field of battle both scarred and triumphant. No kiss or scarf from the fair maiden. I did receive a very nice valentine’s card from her later that year.

This week that institution again hosted a mob of young children. However, the field has been moved to the left and the fence is now mostly gone, so I can’t imagine how a young squire can capture the heart of his fair maiden as we once tried. I guess they just have to settle for having fun….

Here’s someone ‘s video off Youtube of the experience.

Another year is nearly over and it’s time again for you to ring in the new year. A family-friendly way to do this is to enjoy First Night Tri Cities.

This year they are again holding it on the campus of Columbia Basin College in Pasco. This has been an ideal site for the venue and i’m glad to see that they’ve settled there. I didn’t personally like the city-hopping they were doing in the early days.

This has grown to be a huge annual event here with something for all ages to enjoy. The admission buttons are $50 and you can get further information on this fun outing here.

I love my neighborhood. When my kids and I first moved back to the Tri Cities from Orange County, CA it was such a quick transfer I didn’t have time to find a house to purchase, so I called my mom while still in Cali and asked to her find a house for us to rent. In talking with her I found that, after selling the house I’d grown up in the prior year, the 2 bedroom apartment they were in was driving them bonkers. Quite a comedown from the over 3500 square foot house they’d lived in for over 30 years; and now they actually had to see each other more than just at meals! I asked them to move in with the kids and I,  and directed her to find us a large enough house that all of us would be comfortable and have our own space.

I’d grown up in central Richland, right off the main drag of George Washington Way smack in the middle of town. But with my work now, I needed something a little more centralized for the entire Tri Cities. We found a house in SE Richland in the Meadow Springs area. This area has historically (well, since I was a kid in the 70′s and early 80′s anyway!) been the hoity-toity area of beautiful homes surrounding the Meadow Springs Country Club. I knew kids that lived there- you know the ones. They actually got cars when they turned 16 bought for them by their parents- and the cars ran! And if they wore Chuck Taylor’s it was by choice! Ok, I never really wanted for anything growing up- it wasn’t like I was “Please sir, may I have some more?”

Anyway, I digress.

I spent a year looking around for just the right house to buy, in just the right neighborhood. We’d grown up buying little prefabs (see previous post here ) and fixing them up as rentals, so I was really looking for a bargain house that needed updating.

I found the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood. After buying, I stumbled upon a great informational site called Street Advisor. You can write a review praising the merits of your neighborhood. And if you’re looking at buying a home, you can look to see if that neighborhood has been reviewed!

Check  out my write up here.

Remember, an ode to your neighborhood could mean the next neighbors moving in will be more likely to be more like you!

In this edition of this blog to you, I’d like to share a video that really shows why this is such a great place to live. I grew up here, my kids have grown up here, and my mom grew up here- see the pattern??

We spend as much time as possible on the river during the summer. On the Columbia River the Hanford Reach is beautiful, the Snake River is warmer and slower and makes for great skiing and wakeboarding, and fishing is great on these two or even the Yakima River. The Tri Cities may be in the desert, but with the two rivers, the Snake and Yakima, ending at the Columbia River here in the Tri Cities, we have a boating paradise to offer. This is the origin of yet another nickname for my town- Three Rivers.

I could go on and on (and my friends from southern California can attest to that!) about the area, but see the video below for a visual feast, and thanks for checking out my hometown!

History records the first white settler was John B. Nelson who homesteaded near the mouth of the Yakima in 1863. Within 20 years, several other families had settled in the area and irrigated crops. In 1905, the first post office was opened in the town of Benton. Shortly after that, local residents had a naming contest and the name of the town was changed to Richland. By early 1943 the population had skyrocketed out of control to 240.

At this point, everything changed- not just for Richland, but the country as a whole.

America declared war on Japan after the Pearl Harbour bombing on December 7, 1941. In December of 1942, a nuclear chain reaction was sustained for the first time at the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory. The country’s scientists involved in the ultra-secret “Manhattan Project” were told to fast-forward the project in order to construct a nuclear weapon for the war effort. Almost within days, Major General Leslie A. Groves was appointed Commander in Chief of the Manhattan Project and that same month, along with Colonel Franklin T. Matthias, scouted locations to build bomb factories in Washington State, New Mexico and Tennessee. They decided the Richland and White Bluffs area as ideal for a location to manufacture Plutonium. It was a remote location, with reliable water supply, a solid basalt foundation for building, abundant and cheap electricity from the Grand Coulee and Bonneville Dams and a low threat from natural disasters. This new site was dubbed “Site W”.

Unfortunately for the powers-that-be, there were residents in the way. Since that’s never been a problem for the government, the area was simply condemned, along with their farms and structures, and they were told to leave immediately. The town was quickly converted to a construction camp to house the workers that would be building the project. The site became known as “Hanford Engineer Works” and was about 25 miles north of present-day Richland and comprised 560 square miles of area. Inside a short few months, the population swelled to 51,000. Even though unknown to the rest of the world, this “town” was the fourth largest city in Washington.

Construction of the first reactor began in March, 1943, in a partnership between the army and DuPont.

“B” reactor construction began in March of 1943 and came on line in September of 1944. Let’s take a moment to consider this. In December of 1942 the first sustained nuclear reaction was successful in a lab at the University of Chicago. In less than 24 months, this country, in complete secrecy, had designed and built a fully operable plutonium reactor, one of the single-largest public works project since the pyramids- and all in secret.

On a personal note- My mother’s family moved here on one of the very first transports in 1943. Her father was an original reactor operator at the “B” reactor. Just a few short months before she passed away after a long battle with breast cancer, she and I were able to take one of the almost-impossible-to-get tickets of the official Hanford tour. Watching her face as she sat at the control panel of the “B” Reactor (now a museum) and talked about her daddy having a job but her never knowing what it was- Priceless.

The government provided everything for the workers- schools, recreation halls, stores, a theatre, activities including big-name hollywood stars and bands.

By July of 1945, the three operable reactors had produced enough enriched plutonium to test an atomic bomb. The test of the Hanford bomb was conducted in the sands in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16th.

After the war was over, most residents thought the area would be closed and would return to a sleepy little farm community. This was not to be. Richland was taken over by the federal government and became the headquarters for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Thousands of homes were constructed for Hanford’s workers.

The first homes were called “prefabs” as they were prefabricated off-site and put together in Richland. They were 1,2 and 3 bedroom houses no larger that 653 square feet, with flat roofs that had a tendency of blowing off when the aptly named “termination winds” blew in. 

http://ebchs.org/architecture/Richland/h_other_govt.htm 

These houses are still all over Richland although most of them have been extensively renovated. The next houses were the “letter houses”- So-called due to their designations by model using letters of the alphabet. I grew up in a “B” house in Richland which the family completely remodeled from its original duplex configuration into a large family home. Many of the homes in Richland proper are these original letter homes, also mostly renovated.

http://ebchs.org/architecture/Richland/h_letter_house.htm

A small book written in 1994* has the personal memories of some of the early residents, with my mom’s (Bev Sullivan Johnson) entry as follows:

“We would play hide-and-seek and get on the buses when we were hiding, then get off around the block”. “…the bathhouses, and having to go down there in the dark. Indoor plumbing was not available in the trailers, so the bathhouses were used as bathrooms, laundry rooms and showers”. “…Christmas, when there were no lights and not many decorations. Until I was grown and learned better, I thought it was because we were to poor to afford them”. “The Saturday matinees at the Village Theater. A double-feature, newsreel and cartoon cost 25 cents”. “They used to quarantine you if you had a contagious disease (whooping cough, scarlet fever, measles), and the public health nurse would come by to treat you. With several children in a family to pass a disease around, you could be quarantined for weeks”.

Even by my growing-up years of the 1970′s, Richland still had a small town feel where everyone knew everyone. And everyone had a family member working at Hanford it seemed.

For the Wikipedia link on Hanford click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford,_Washington

*”Great Memories- Early Hanford and the Tri-Cities” Editors- Carolyn Krogness & Gary Gesell

Copyright 2008 by Tri City Home Team all rights reserved- Tri Cities Hanford History