After breakfast on Thursday, I decided to walk across town to my old house on Eddy Street.
1265 Eddy. It was part of a first time home owners project. There were six homes to be built, 3 each on two different streets. The future homeowners took part in the construction process.
The other development
I recall afternoons after school visiting the work sites where my mother was busy hammering nails and hoisting lumber.
After construction I lived in a big two-story home with a nice yard, a tree out back and my dog. I had my own room, we had a guest room for company.
1265 Eddy Street
A friend of my mother visiting from Canada stayed with us once. And another friend lived with us for a time in the guest room. She had a little one-eyed cat, I think it’s name was Fafnir.
I would ride my bicycle to Grant Street where I attended an alternative school program called ICE. It provided some classroom instruction for home schooled children. After graduating ICE, I attended the local high-school through my sophomore year. From then on I rode the bus most mornings, unless I slept in.
My mother worked at the nurse’s station at Jefferson hospital for a awhile but she couldn’t continue.
The housing was an inventive idea, but we couldn’t make the payments on the mortgage and sadly had to sell the home. We got very little after paying the bank back. After that we lived in a single-wide trailer outside of town on a gravel and dirt track named Hidden Trails Road.
One of my childhood homes was down in an old funky boatyard, nestled away below an old railroad track. The boatyard was home to many folk working on boats and dreams of returning to the water.
Up a short slope there was the old track and down an embankment on the far side was a beach, partly stones and partly sand. At low tide you could walk all the way to the ruins of an trestle bridge.
Many a meal included shellfish gathered from the beach or fresh vegetables grown in a little garden beside our home. We lived in a small 12 foot trailer parked beside an old step van. The van in turn had been expanded using scrap wood and construction materials to include a workshop alongside it.
Now years later I stand atop the spot where our roof would have been. The entire old funky boat yard is gone. All that remains is a sandy paved driveway and parking area with a lavatory nearby.
I had seen it once before after returning from school in Oregon. I think seeing now has had more of an impact on me. Being older now I feel a greater void when recalling the past and from my memories the life I once lived.
Also gone is the trestle bridge, that at least was still there 18 years ago. Now the beach is uncluttered excepting of course the driftwood, a staple sight in the PNW.
After the trestle beach we drove through downtown and on to the other harbor. I saw connsiderably more buildings around there than we had in the past. The whole town has seen much development.
Other parts seemed the same. The food co-op hadn’t changed a great deal other than some interior remodeling. The public library and uptown businesses still stood. Although, Aldrich’s had been rebuilt. I think I heard it had burned down while I was away at school.
In the harbor I got a good look at another boat my father shares with a delightful lady who lives in the flat below his home.
The beach here was also littered with driftwood and seaweed. The pungent aroma of salt and seaweed could not be avoided.
In drawers, in boxes, and stashed in closets. My collections, which started in childhood, and continued through adulthood are now simply nostalgia and a glimpse of fond memories.
I can still recall that fateful day in third grade when my older classmates brought out their Magic: The Gathering cards. It was still early 1995 and Magic was making a splash with the release of the Ice Age expansion.
I had up until this moment been happily paging through Archie comics during my break periods. However, Magic was a whole new world that I felt driven to explore.
I convinced my parents to give me the money to buy a booster pack. Once I got back to school the next day, I traded all the cards in the pack to my classmates. I left that day with enough cards for two decks.
I continued collecting Magic cards and playing matches with my friends until the end of Summer when I encountered a fellow who was nuts for Baseball cards.
Having contracted a similar strain of sports fever, I traded away my Magic collection for Baseball cards.
I must say, In my adult life I have often regretted that decision.
Later, when a friend was visiting from Canada, I got to see his Magic collection. This was the spark that reignited my love for Magic cards.
Sometime after getting into Magic, the Star Wars Trading Card Game (TCG) was released. My dearly departed best friend Cedar and I both collected and played Star Wars TCG.
I got my Executor Star Destroyer card from Cedar. Later I pulled an Executor variant from a booster pack. I still have the two cards in a hard case back to back.
In late 1996 I joined legions of aspiring Pokémon masters as I took up the Pokémon TCG. I had been quite enamored of the Gameboy game and the cartoon and so was more than happy to shell out my allowance for some more cardboard.
With Pokémon, I didn’t have anyone to play with so I taught my mother how to play and then bothered her whenever the mood struck.
After Pokémon it was Yu-Gi-Oh!, I pulled the foil Gate Guardian from my very first booster pack. That got me hooked.
This repeated with a few different card games that I don’t recall the names of and that likely no longer exist.
Aside from trading cards, I have an extensive collection of domestic and foreign coins including quite a bit of silver coinage.
Some coins came from working in retail while others have been gifted to me by relatives. I inherited my maternal grandfather’s coin collection and I’ve purchased some coins myself.
Notably, I purchased 5 sets of the Pride of Two Nations silver coin set which features Liberty and the Maple Leaf of Canada. I’m selling 3 of the sets on eBay.
To a lesser degree, I have dabbled in collecting bottle caps, stamps, liquor bottles, (photos of) custom license plates, stones, jewelry, and seashells. Oh, and the PEZ dispensers. I have the Star Wars, Lotro, and Harry Potter Limited Edition PEZ sets.
While I no longer possess them, I had a moderate collection of heavy blocks of sediment filled with semi-ancient shells and bones. I was quite enthralled by fossils for a period after an excavation when I was enrolled in Cub Scouts.
I’ll leave aside my digital collections of Pokémon, literature, and Internet Obscurity, and call this the end.
Thank you for taking the time to read my response to this writing prompt.
Fat Wallet Refugee 
