Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

I thought that the Experience Music Project Building was OK until I saw it from the Space Needle. Now I just think it is stupid. However, I found out that the Science Fiction Hall of Fame was in the same building, so that makes it mostly OK. I prefer folk music and Star Trek. Life is not perfect.

And speaking of not being perfect, we stopped by the house I grew up in Bellevue. Well, it isn't there anymore. It has been torn down and replaced with a McMansion, which is true for 1/3 the houses on the street. I found out that it was sold last summer for $3 million. I think the buyers were ripped off, since any house worth $3 M should be on more than 1/5 acre and further than 30 feet from the next house. (But that is probably because I live in a smaller city where acreage is available for a reasonable price, not an arm and a leg and your firstborn and their children. And $3M is the one of the most expensive homes in the area.) It is also the ugliest house on the block. (my friend agrees). Still, they could have bought the house next to it for 1/3 the price, since it is still the original construction from the 50s. The other McMansions are worth $1.5 to $2 Million. (You can get all this info online at the King County Assessor's website.)

Bellevue has always been a rich city, and for me a city where the important things were what you looked like, what you owned, and how much money you had, not who you were or what you accomplished. Since I had zits and my forte was my mind, I was not popular. (My brother's friend came up to me one time and said "Marion, your eyes are like pearls...and your face is like the rest of the oyster." I can now give him points for originality, since his is one of two remarks I remember from that era. By the way, Billy, thank your parents for not rebuilding their house into a McMansion! But your crack about going out for Halloween as a zit, while memorable, lacks a little panache.) (Yes, you said both of those.)

Back to Bellevue...back then, 60's and 70's, not everyone had a car at 16, and most of those who did drove junkers that should not be driven out of town. We had to make our own beds. We earned our money for records (they cost $4 and a lot of us didn't have that much money at one time!) We had record players. The stereo systems were owned by our parents -- of course, size was a problem. We did not act up in school and did our homework, although the smartest were not the popular. We did have a work ethic. Bellevue Square consisted of individual stores, including Petrams Five and Dime. There was a horse pasture next to it, across 8th street.

Now, the surface values are worse than ever. The horse pasture has been gone for 40 years, and gas stations can't be found near Bellevue Square, which is now a covered mall of who knows how many square feet, with a four story parking garage. The Five and Dime disappeared long ago, I guess no one is interested in cheap. The best illustration I have is one time when we stopped for snack food at QFC before driving home and looked at cars in the parking lot. The pattern was: Lexus, BMW, Porsche, Lexus, Mercedes, BMW, Dirty blue Chrysler minivan (that was ours). Later that day, after arriving home, I checked out my grocery store's parking lot: Ford, pickup, Chevy, dirty blue minivan (not ours), dirty blue minivan (ours).

So I guess what bothers me most about my house being torn down is not the lack of ...reverence... for my childhood (I wanted out of that house really badly), but the kind of values that are emphasized.

The neighborhood just isn't kid friendly anymore.