When they cleared for our house on 33rd Avenue S in SeaTac’s McMicken Heights, they scraped all the topsoil off the whole block and pushed it back into open land towards Highway 99.

Hard clay makes for a great foundation base. For three blocks in both directions Lowe built bungalow- style cracker boxes during the war. Most were two bedrooms and one bathroom.

Many have since changed but a few remain today, much as they were in 1943...tiny. Imagine a bathroom the size of your hall closet. We were a close-knit bunch out of necessity.

We had a two-step porch leading to nice sidewalks and a gravel street. The back yard was open to the west on a fair sized lot. I built a picket fence so I had something to paint every year.

I wanted a garden like we had in Portland. It seemed like I had to haul about a million wheelbarrow loads of the topsoil they had bulldozed.

Using a sheet of wire cloth I kept the bigger rocks and roots out as I sifted the dirt. It gave me a thin layer of topsoil maybe 2 inches thick. I didn't know I needed a foot of good topsoil on that hardpan.

My experience showed, as it was a dismal vegetable patch but I did grow some champion, plate-sized dahlias that made me a big hit with the ladies on our street.

The house was 720 sq. ft. if you counted the narrow hallway from the bathroom to the bedrooms. It had no insulation so I had some mineral wool blown into the attic to save on our oil bill.

The 50-gallon oil tank was attached to the outside wall on the back of the house. It dripped and smelled terrible after a new supply was delivered. What did we know? We needed heat.

We had no basement or garage. I made a rough ladder to the crawl space over the boys' bedroom closet. With my skinny six-foot frame I could not stand up in the five-foot space.

I made a low workbench and wired in some lights. It was misery sniffing that mineral wool insulation while sweating over a picture frame or a kitchen drawer repair.

I'm not Quasimodo but I did ring a bell when I needed my wife to put the ladder in place so I could come down for dinner. My wife called me the Hunchback from McMicken Fame.