My hometown – an essay by Betty J. Poltrack

My sister and I are settling our mother’s estate. I discovered this essay that she wrote about her hometown for a senior group. We had traveled to Bellingham in 1955. She lived in this home which was quite elegant. I believe we got to sleep in an enclosed porch. I have memories of a breakfast of corn flakes with heavy cream poured from the top of the milk bottle. Also the smell of the pulp mills which wafted throughout the town. I also remember looking for agates at the beach and playing with the long strands of pacific seaweed. I had a chance to visit the house during my time in Navy. I was enroute to Vancouver and stopped to visit. At that time it was owned by a music teacher who gave me a tour. It hadn’t changed from what I remembered. Currently I believe it is a lawyers office.

Senior Essay Contest

In the northwest corner of the country on Puget Sound is a town called Bellingham. It was in this town on the main street named Holly Street that I was born and grew up.

Like many main streets, Holly Street starts as an extension of a highway, moves through farmland, residential, commercial area, residential, farmland and once again becomes highway. 

My home was in the residential area but
 very close to downtown and from the time I  was quite young, I was permitted to walk through town. The first large building I would come to was the YMCA. It was was no particular interest to me except  to wonder if the rumor that the boys swam with no swim suits  was true. My music  teacher's studio  was in this same block. For many years she suffered through my renditions. 

Further down the street was Piggly Wiggly, the only  grocery chain store. I was envious of my friends whose mothers shopped there and brought sliced white bread with a colorful Wrapper. My mother baked all our bread. Behind this store was the bowling alley and pool hall. One day I would bowl a perfect game my name would be wood burned in a plaque which hung the bar in the pool hall.

My parents were proud of my accomplishment but never mentioned the plaque. Further down we was a department store and a Five and Ten Cents store where some things were really five and ten cents. Because the next few blocks were the first settled in town, they became known as Old Town. Here were junk shops which had a fascinating assortment of items. These shops would adopt new names and became the antique shops of today.

As you approached the bay you got Hie wonderful smell of salt water or the unpleasant smell of tide flats ог, if the wind was right, the irritating. smell of sulfur from the pulp mill. Here you could watch the fishing fleet unloading their catch or thr loggers leaping about on the logs in the bay, breaking up the log jams with their peaveys as the logs were fed into the Iumber mill.

Finally came the tain depot Twice a day a small train came through town from Seattle on its way to Vancouver. B.C. It had a coach and a parlor car with green wicker furniture and a pot bellied stove. This train your take me on the first leg of my journey to the east coast, Long Island Sound and life in New England.

Betty J. Poltrack (undated)
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