We had recently moved into McMicken Heights in the mid 40's. I decided to join the the volunteer fire fighters. They had one shiny new engine. The new station was built on SW 170th across the street from Herron's grocery store. Third son Tim (6) would raid my pennies jar to purchase Bazooka bubble gum by the pocketful at Herron's. I could never figure out why he needed some much dental work when he was ten.

McMicken elementary school was only about five blocks from our two bedroom bungalow. Sons Mike and Ken were two of the school's first students. They got a kick out of sitting in the driver's seat of the truck making siren sounds when they came by the station. Ken was destined to become a fireman. I know because I changed his diapers a few times. The kid could spray.

There was very little training in fighting fires for rookies so we just watched what several old timers did and aimed the big hoses at the flames till the fire died. We then hung the hoses up when we got back to the station. We had to climb like monkeys up the ladder in the drying tower to let the woven fabric hoses dry out.

One duty I detested was sleeping at the station or jumping out of bed at home and putting on heavy rubber boots and a fireman's coat that weighed more than I did (I was a skinny 140 pounds). Those darned boots made it almost impossible to hit the gas pedal on my '39 DeSoto without hitting the brake at the same time. Luckily I only had a few calls like that.

One New Year's eve we were coming home from a dance at Angle Lake. As we got close to the station the siren was blasting so I made a quick turn to drop my wife off at the house and raced up to the station. The siren was just wailing and the station was all lit up. But not a fireman was around. So I ran over and pushed the alarm again. Still no firemen showed up and then I noticed the fire engine was gone I quickly raced home in humiliation. A local residence was ablaze somewhere and they were fighting the fire without my help.

Some fireman I turned out to be. The whole neighborhood wanted to hang someone. Okay, come and get me guys. (See the photo by clicking on the photo above).

The construction of Bow Lake (Sea-Tac) Airport in the 1940s brought people into the McMicken Heights area. In 1944, after several fires, the residents of the McMicken Heights neighborhood decided that they should have fire protection. They petitioned, and in October 1944 King County Fire District #23 was approved. Covering approximately 2.5 square miles, the District began at South 160th Street and followed Highway 99 (Pacific Hwy S.) to South 176th Street. The eastern border ended in the valley and is now part of the city of Tukwila. The station, located at 3521 South 170th Street, was built by the volunteers and while it is still in operation at its original site, it was completely replaced in 2009.(courtesy City of Seatac)

When they built our first home on 33rd Avenue S, they scraped all the topsoil off the whole block and pushed it back into open land and built our 2 bedroom house.

I wanted a garden so I had to haul about a million wheel barrow loads of the topsoil they had bulldozed. I used a chunk of screen to keep rocks and roots out. It gave me a thin layer of top soil maybe 2 inches thick. I didn't know I needed a foot of good topsoil on that hardpan.

It became 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. (see the image by clicking on the photo above) It had no insulation so I had some mineral wool blown into the attic to save on our oil bill. We had no basement or garage. I made a rough ladder to the crawl space over the three small 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 Quasidmodo 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.

Jerry Robinson is our publisher and can be reached at Publisher@robinsonnews.com