Yakima Memories

We lived in three different houses while in Yakima.  The first one had a coal furnace.  The second one was white.  The final house was the house we had built for us and was red brick.  It was a beautiful house with many levels.  The bottom level had a family room with a fireplace, a couple of bedrooms (Ron and Larry had one of these), a bathroom, and a door to the back yard.  The "ground level" had the living room and kitchen.  Then there were stairs up to Tom's blue bedroom, Linda and my aqua bedroom, Mom and Dad's bedroom, and a bathroom.

The elementary school we attended was Whitney Elementary.  There were train tracks running in front of the school yard and I got in trouble for putting rocks on the tracks.  To get to the school from our house, we had to walk next to a large apple orchard.  When it was cold out and the apple flowers were just blooming or apples weren't ready to harvest yet, smudge pots would be lit to keep the fruit and/or flowers warm so they wouldn't freeze.  This meant our noses would get quite black inside from breathing in the smoke.

We also lived next to a golf course and sometimes we would find golf balls outside of the course.  One time I got paid a dime (which was a lot of money to me then) for returning a golf ball from outside the fence to someone inside.

I remember a school fairs (at the junior high I believe) where they had a cake walk.

For Halloween one year, Mom sewed Tom a clown suit.  Dad would take us trick-or-treating when we were young.

Our church building was light pink on the outside and had stained glass windows.