By Peggy Sturdivant

I’ve read about an alleged “Seattle Chill” for newcomers. In my neighborhood, it’s the opposite, more of a “Ballard Melt.”

On Labor Day, I tried to make it home from Market Street and was waylaid for hours by cross-connecting stories at a single yard sale (and no offense, not the greatest yard sale). It’s almost as though they were lying in wait for me, wanting to tell the story called, “They Bought the Farm.”

West on N.W. 61st, the street ends on 34th N.W. At that T-top of that dead stop, there’s a newly landscaped vegetable and flower garden. Not attached to the house on either side; it has always been a garden. In fact, the 2,250 square foot plot of land has never, in the history of Ballard since white settlers, been built on. But, it has passed through a lot of different hands, and it has always been farmed.

With sundry goods for sale on makeshift sawhorse tables, the past and present owners of the land recounted increasingly complicated stories about outlying streets, the neighbors, and a chronic pattern of people relocating to houses within one or two blocks. It’s one big house swap.

The folks to the north of the farm used to live in the house two doors down from it. The new owners actually live on the street to the west; the plot is now their back yard. They moved a whopping five blocks north when they purchased their home, from a family that moved four houses down. I took notes.

In between this convoluted tale they asked me questions. “Do you know Henry? Did you know Mike and Mickey D’Andrea (original owners)? Do you remember Victor?” (I once wrote a column called, “Everybody knows Victor”).

The latest land swap was unfortunately prompted by a divorce. Eric Smith (who’d been farming it with his wife even before they purchased it from the one guy who really did leave Ballard) contacted all of the adjacent neighbors to see if anyone wanted to buy the lot. Anyone who owns the land gets inquiries from numerous developers. As we’ve all learned in Ballard, 2,250 square feet is no longer zoned too small for development. No one on the block wanted new construction, but few could afford to buy a vacant lot, even with Smith trying to put together a consortium.

It was getting close to the wire, and so Smith made another phone call to the neighbors “below.” This time Gayle Tate said it took her ‘about three seconds’ to realize she and her husband had to buy the farm. Gayle and her husband Jerry decided that rather than a second home they would have a backyard. As love for Ballard grew, priorities had changed. The tipping point was the move of the classic house at 36th N.W. Two modern homes now occupy what was part of a large lot. “We couldn’t let that happen,” Gayle said.

I was on the verge of getting all the logistics straight when we were joined by another neighbor, one who had been referred to many times. (“You’ll have to ask Suzanne”). She came bearing plums.

Then a mini-van stopped in the street. “Did you know Ron Fulton who used to live here?” a man called out the window. Heads turned toward Suzanne.

“We bought the house from Ron,” she replied. Mind you she was talking about the house that Smith lives in now. The newcomers to the sidewalk sale were Bill and Gloria Roll, just passing by…even though they live in Bellevue.

I suspect that whenever they’re in Ballard they drive along this particular street. Bill Roll grew up around the corner, on N.W. 65th (BHS ’63). He proceeded to tell me, in amazing detail, the history of the Sunset Hill retail area. He described the butcher and the drugstore, the milliner and the barber, Food Town, a bakery without a storefront, the newspapers getting dropped between 3:30 and 4:00 a.m. for the delivery boys.

He knew the people who owned my house: the Mullahans. Mike Mullahan was editor of The Ballard News; his wife Maryann played bridge with his mother. (“Left her body to medical science,” he told me). Turns out they’d lived across the street from Bill, and then, you guessed it, moved one block north.

In the end I bought a pad of newsprint and got a tour of the stunning garden (Fasoldt Garden Designs, architect Alexandra Immel, structures by John Akers).

Then I wheeled home with a bicycle helmet full of ripe plums.

My mind was racing. How is that we’re all connected? What if I hadn’t seen the yard sale sign? What if the land had been sold and developed? What if the Rolls had passed by on a day when everyone was back inside their swapped homes? What does it take to create community like that, knowing the answer: a gathering place, a yard sale, an open space.

Which is why I’ll be doing a pop up park again on Park(ing) Day on September 19, 2014 at 32nd & 65th. It’s why I’ve just become part of a group dedicated to saving surplus Seattle City Light substations from development, to convert instead into more green space such as a Tree Banks.

Density is here, but in order to keep community in the midst of the growth, we need to have meeting places. Pocket parks and places to gather outside of where we live. The antidote for “Seattle Chill” is being able to interact, learn from those who have lived here a long time about what came before each new one of us. We need to share plums and apples, clotheslines and sawhorses. We need to be able to be out on the street when a mini-van pulls up to ask about an old friend.
We need to keep the farm.

Contact Peggy through atlargeinballard@peggysturdivant.com.