44 years ago, I lived where the new Southlake Clinic and Valley Orthopedics building now sits in Covington, Washington.  The house where my childhood friends lived still sits across the street from this building on 168th Place SE.  I lived in the house that would  now exist inside the lobby area of this new building, if it was still standing, from around 1964 to 1974.  We had raspberry vines out back (the area is now the parking lot for the City Hall building), tall fir trees in front of the house which my dad planted, a cool backyard, a shed, chickens, rabbits, dogs and cats, a tree fort build on four legs underneath which was a sand box, a garden, a split-rail fence I used as a freeway for my Matchbox cars and a root cellar.

I loved the root cellar, although it was a scary place, especially if I had to go down in it to get home canned goods or vegetables at night.  The temperature was always cool.  I don’t think there was a light, I can’t remember.  I do remember using a flash light to find things and digging through the bins of sand feeling for vegetables.  The only negative thing about the veggies was that after awhile they tasted like creosote since the root cellar I helped my dad dig was built out of railroad ties.  When I pass by that building now, I wonder if the construction crews found the old root cellar when they began to build or if it was filled in or removed after we moved.  I’ll probably never know. 

168th Place SE was a quiet street.  Facing our house, there were three houses, if memory serves me right, to the left and several to the right which still exist.  The neighborhood was built on a horseshoe street with houses lining both sides.  Both roads, 168th and 169th, intersected with a two-lane Kent-Kangley (272nd) road.  Where the Valley Medical building next to Kent-Kangley and sitting between 168th and 169th streets is, there used to be a big field we played in.  That was cool!  (More on that in a later post.) 

As I reminisce as to whether or not the old creosote-walled, sand-filled bins root cellar has recently disappeared or not, the memories that were made still exist in the cellar of my mind!