- Murakami House, Nahcotta
On Saturday at my Oysterville book-signing event I met many interesting people but, typically for me, I can’t quite match up the names with the faces or even remember precisely who told me what. I’d worry about this if it were a new factor in my aging process but, fortunately or unfortunately, it’s just a part of my usual fuzzy memory patterns.
Among the people I spoke with was an engaging man named Jim who said that, like me, he has an Oysterville blog and he wrote down its website address: www.klatu.com/oysterville. I’ve taken a quick look at it and I love it. He writes about many things of interest to me and speculates about a few things that I’d like to talk with him about.
One of Jim’s recent blogs had to do with shingles (as in house siding) and among his photographs on that posting is a picture of the Murakami house in Nahcotta. Little did Jim know that on Saturday not too many people removed from him in line was a woman who used to live in that very house. Not only that, she and I talked about the time during her tenure there when the shingles were removed and, beneath it, writing (as in signage) was discovered on the old, original siding. It was determined that the building had been the home of the Pacific Journal, the county’s first newspaper. The business and the building, itself, had been moved from Oysterville when the railroad ‘came in’ to Nahcotta in 1889.
I wanted to write back to Jim on his blog about all that but I couldn’t find a way to submit a comment. And I don’t remember his last name so I can’t check to see if he’s on Facebook. Nor do I have an email address for him. So, if you’re out there, Jim (or if anyone else knows who I’m talking about), please get in touch!
It is a very big house/building, Sydney and I would have like to have seen it being moved down the road last week much less more than a century ago. It is very well built and has six bedrooms and two bathrooms. I believe that the sixth bedroom, which has it’s own bathroom, was part of an addition as was the kitchen at the back of the house. It’s not much on insulation and during February of ’89 (1989 that is) we froze during that unusual snow fall and freeze we had. I could feel for the folks in Oysterville when you talked about the freeze that decimated the oysters in the 19th century.
I imagine that it was barged from Oysterville, somehow, as the primary transportation method in those days was still by water. The house on the back road that Dale Hamreus once lived in (it used to be pink and had a cyclone fence) was floated over from Diamond City on Long Island. In fact, I know of several buildings that were moved from one location to another in those early days — recycling to the max! I wonder if the addition you speak of (which includes kitchen and bathroom) happened after electricity came in (mid-1930s) and it was then possible to have an electric pump for their water supply. I think that’s the reason the kitchen and bathroom are often in proximity in those old buildings.
Sydney, I found his email address in the “About” section he lists, towards the end of that blog entry. He lists it as jimcourt@yahoo.com.
H writes a most amusing blog. It is hard to write humor, and he appears to do it well.
Thank you Mrs. Stevens for your kind comments and those of your friends. Just imagine my surprise when I was showing Elsie your website and the banner said “Jim are you out there?” I nearly fell out of my chair. I’m happy to learn something about the Murakami house, it is beautiful.