The Truly Unincorporated King County

Posted by Guest | November 21, 2008 | 12 Comments

This is a guest post from Erin Jones. Originally from Kent, WA, Erin is currently an English and Editing student at Brigham Young University.

I didn’t grow up in a city at all, but in a suburb my best friend and I dubbed UKC. UKC stood for Unincorporated King County, because our county didn’t bother to include our area as part of an official city. Although I told people from other states I was from Seattle, Washington, I officially counted myself as a member of Kent, the city on my address. Later in my life, I was thrown for a loop when our house was placed into the Renton LDS stake. Did I live in Kent or Renton or simply Seattle? I was never really sure what to tell people.

Kent, or Renton, or UKC, was a green lightly forested suburb when I was a child, and with youthful innocence I admired daily each of God’s creations. Although we lived in a large community of neighborhoods, there was a huge wilderness next to my house where we could walk up to the fence and feed the neighbor’s horses. There was an escape down the street we called “Blackberry Hill,” with a vast wooded area where we would run through like lost children and attempt to build tree houses. In late summer, we would collect our largest bowl and fill it with juicy blackberries straight from Blackberry Hill’s prickly thorns.

Since we had several trees in our yard, my sister Kylie and I thought of them as familiar friends, and even named them. Our favorite tree was the giant one in the side yard we christened Bee. Bee had grown high up to the heavens, so towering you would have to crane your neck to see the top. He had a carving on his trunk that looked like an eye, so we knew that, like God, he was always watching us.

Though our neighborhood friends might have thought that naming our trees was a bit outlandish, they were always willing to play with Kylie and me in the mild weathered Washington outdoors. We amused ourselves with chalk games on the driveway or scooter riding down the hill or, my personal favorite, making up all sorts of plays and performing them for our parents. The neighbors behind us had two girls our age, and they made a door in their fence so we could easily go through and play in their enormous yard and playground paradise. We would play “doctor” and “house” using their miniature cabin with a door knocker in the shape of a rooster. Their mother and our mother held a neighborhood barbeque every summer, which consisted of neighbors chasing each other with squirt guns in our large cul de sac.

As I aged and lost some of my interest for playing outdoors (but never all of it, of course), the neighborhood started to change. When I was in junior high school, the neighbors with the horses sold their land, and the forest by our house was demolished to make way for a community of identical card board cutout houses. Our yard had been torn apart to make room for the phony new neighborhood; it looked mutilated for years until the workers finally agreed to replant the damaged grass. Our friendly cul de sac was destroyed, creating a straight road for cars to whiz down without noticing the neighborhood children, who started to move their games indoors.

The neighbors my age started to move away or grow up, or both, so eventually I didn’t know most of my neighbors. The neighborhood barbeques had stopped before I even finished elementary school, which was a shame. I suppose it didn’t matter, since everyone began to stay inside their houses and didn’t talk to anyone.

The last blow was when Blackberry Hill was destroyed to make way for yet even more houses. The wilderness games and summer trips to pick blackberries were officially gone. What really shook me, however, was when I came home for the summer after my first year of college, and found that Bee, the tree with the all-knowing eye, had fallen during a rain storm. For a while, I stood on my porch and stared at Bee’s remains, remembering the majesty he had added to our yard. I mourned the loss of that tree, which was one of the last pieces left of the nature from my childhood.

I have lived in the same region known as the UKC for my entire life, and I’ve seen the gradual, yet dramatic, changes it has undergone. Of course there are still some trees and a few friendly neighbors, but the neighborly atmosphere has vanished. Because much of God’s striking nature has been destroyed, no one bothers to go outside. The neighbors don’t feel any need to meet the people living in their own backyard, but instead continuously keep their doors shut and locked. It’s no wonder that their kids now stay inside all day and play video games. Through the disappearance of the sense of community, this incorporated area has become truly that: unincorporated.

Even so, my community is still a very nostalgic place with strong childhood memories. When I come home, I drive to the same grocery store down the corner. I attend the same church building I’ve gone to for years, and I pass by the same high school just five minutes away from my house. Fortunately, I still pick the crab apples off the crab apple tree, I still jump on the trampoline and maybe even swing on the swings, and I still look up at the blue sky on the rare days that it is clear. But I still mourn the loss of the giant tree in my side yard, because I know it’s never coming back.

Category: Daily Special

Comments

12 Responses to “The Truly Unincorporated King County”

Leslie R
November 21st, 2008 @ 10:27 am

Erin,
What a lovely piece, thank you. You have truly captured what defines community and how place is essential to our inner landscape.

Like you, my childhood memories are almost tangible at times. Just behind my home was a place we called “Rock Town.” As a group of neighbor kids, we created a make-believe community that was our anchor in the Wasatch mountains. Now, there are over-sized homes dotting the mountain, and our childhood town is under new layers of life. It’s an interesting study to look back at where we have been and then look ahead to where we are going.

The other day I ran that same mountain where I romped as a young girl. All of a sudden I stopped, closed my eyes, and tried to breathe my way back to my childhood. I imagined the voices, our small bodies, and our innocence. The free-play was so fine. Sure, there were long gas lines and I am sure money was tight, but the world had a different feel to it than it does today.
So much has changed. Our culture is so different from my days on that mountain, which is why I take our children back there for weekly hikes after school. Perhaps it is more for me than it is for them.

Even though the landscape of some communities change, I think it is where we learn about kindness and how to get long as human beings. Thank you for setting the tone of the day—nostalgia.
Leisha
November 21st, 2008 @ 1:02 pm

Your childhood could easily have been mine. It sounds so similar except I grew up outside Houston, TX. Very well-written! I am so happy to say that we live in a cul-de-sac where all our similarly aged children romp and play. The girl down the street babysits and we all attend each other’s birthdays and have swimming parties and BBQ’s.

It isn’t because of me. I’m too shy. It just took one friendly neighbor and suddenly doors started opening and the children started playing. One invitation turned into two, then three. We unfortunately do not have as much nature around to explore, but gratefully the sense of community is alive and well on our little street! I feel very lucky.
Jennifer B.
November 21st, 2008 @ 1:23 pm

What a beautiful and poignant post. Thank you so much.
jamesrivergirl
November 21st, 2008 @ 2:21 pm

Beautiful and sobering. Thanks.
Kevin
November 21st, 2008 @ 3:53 pm

Thank you for a beautifully written memory. I suspect we idolize our childhoods and think the grass was greener then. Perhaps it sounds trite, but small gestures, like taking cookies to your neighbors even nowadays, really does wonders to bring them out. I am so glad to have married an extrovert; she still strives for the kind of community you lived in, one that she lived in, too, by letting our kids play at the nearby school-yard unsupervised, by letting them walk down the street. She does this in part because she has walked down the street and introduced herself to the neighbors previously, so she doesn’t fear them or their places. I could learn a lot from her; I think we all could reach out to make our communities more like they used to be, couldn’t we?
Breanna
November 21st, 2008 @ 5:58 pm

What a beautiful piece.
You go girl!
Susan M
November 21st, 2008 @ 5:59 pm

You could’ve been describing my childhood, too, but I grew up in Kent.

Went to KR, graduated in 88. It used to be the sticks; now it’s just part of Seattle.
hennchix
November 21st, 2008 @ 8:17 pm

I love your piece!! I have always thought I was melodramatic in the way I felt about my “formative” years. As an Air Force brat, I spent most of 3-8th grades on a naval station in Iceland. We were there when the island was reopened to missionary work. So many of my memories revolve around being there. I remember climbing the cliffs down at the harbor, exploring the town, watching the daily catch come in off the boats, saluting the fighter planes and feeling so safe and protected on that base. Trick or Treating in the officer’s section of the residential area in winter clothes, woolen socks and rubber boots, and bringing home the proverbial haul. Having the missionaries over weekly for dinner,sharing FHE,laughing with the other branch members, visiting the Icelandic branch, all taught me to appreciate the differences in cultures,delight in sameness, and soak up the light and love of the gospel across a language barrier. Thank you.
Kylie Jones
November 22nd, 2008 @ 3:05 am

Way to go sis! I love reading this because, obviously, these are my memories too. We are so lucky to have those experiences. It makes me sad that the bros can’t make the chalk roads in the cul de sac and make a city with their scooters. Their childhood is a lot different from ours.
Thank you for capturing our childhood in this piece. It is a treasure to me. Love you!
Carina
November 22nd, 2008 @ 11:44 am

I feel a sense of loss as I see the fields and hills of my childhood disappearing.
Jessie
November 24th, 2008 @ 2:47 pm

Erin,

I really connected with your story. Although my neighborhood is still quite friendly and gets together, it isn’t what it used to be. Many of the children have grown up and more and more people stay to themselves. I often feel sad when I go back home and drive through my neighborhood as I think of how magical my neighborhood used to be to me and what it has now lost. I loved your story! It is very well written and I love the symbolism.
Hayley H
November 24th, 2008 @ 5:44 pm

Erin,
I loved this piece. It actually brought tears to my eyes, how crazy is that. I love how you put words to the feelings that I am sure all of us that lived in UKC have. Thanks for this wonderful essay!