We were up at the Brown Estate in Edmonds, a 1938 house built on one
acre of waterfront property. The lot is triangular, with a great stepped
lawn descending to the water where it comes to a point. It would have sweet
beach access except for the freight train track hugging the shore. All day
as we worked, the rumble of long trains periodically thrummed through the
house. (That sound always makes me inexplicably happy--maybe it reminds me
of the womb. Or perhaps my childhood home in
Blue
Point, NY, not far from the
LIRR
tracks.) After pulling up several hundred square feet of oak flooring, Joel
and I set to knocking nails out of the boards with our hammers. (The field
crew has a pneumatic
denailer, but Ben, Taylor and Marty were using it elsewhere in the house.)
As we were banging, it occurred to me that it must have sounded similar in
that same room 66 years earlier. Real people had knocked those nails through
hard wood and now we were reversing their efforts. I kept looking for clues
behind trim and under boards--old unworn coins, a note from the past, a
newspaper--but there was nothing but wood and nails. The house is coming
down soon. The estate sold for $975,000. But though the house is solid, it's
the lot itself that's so valuable. I don't know what the plans are for
it. |