That summer kitchen was built by the original builder of our house, Doc Owens. He learned how to be a carpenter in the 1930s so his style basically froze there. The summer kitchen had a smoker, a sink and the well. The well has long been abandoned since city water became available at the bottom of our hill, and I’m thankful for that. I’m not sure what the water quality would be around here with all the chemicals that get sprayed on the fields. But the well is a practical thing for watering the yard in the summertime, so Kory will be installing another pump soon.
As far as I know, Doc Owens was the only one to enjoy the summer kitchen as it was designed. The second owners of the house, Bill and Julie Curry, just used it for miscellaneous wood storage – mostly firewood. It fell into disrepair over the years and the summer kitchen wasn’t in good shape when we bought the house in 1997. But strangely enough, my sentiments for our summer kitchen revolve around the roof.
Bill Curry died in the late 1980s and all maintenance on this house pretty much came to a screeching halt. When I rented the upstairs apartment from Julie Curry from 1989-91, even the roof of the house leaked. The summer kitchen had bigger problems. Kory did a few home repairs for Julie while we were dating, but after I moved out, there literally was no man around the house and time took its toll. Because Julie wanted to keep the wood dry for her woodstove, at some point after I married Kory and moved out, she started asking around for a handy-man to come to her rescue and repair the roof of the summer kitchen. Little did she know, the man she found to do the repairs was my father!
My dad had a friend that lived in Conway that he was doing some carpentry work for over there. Julie heard about “a guy out in Conway” that did side-jobs and gave him a call. When my dad came out to do the work for her, he told her that his daughter had lived in this area at one time, but he never knew exactly where. When Julie asked who his daughter was, they both got a pretty good laugh over the irony of it all. My dad soon got a little “sweet” on Julie and started hanging around looking for more chores to do for her. She enjoyed his company, and his stories right up until the time he was killed.
When we bought this house, the roof on that summer kitchen always made me smile, just thinking about my dad crawling around on top of it, pounding nails. It was something tangible to remind me of him every day and even though I didn’t like how the summer kitchen blocked so much of our view of the Skagit Valley, I liked that roof and the memories of my dad that went with it. Now it’s gone. We probably won’t rebuild it, but maybe within the walls of the foundation that still remain, we’ll do something that honors my dad. Short of putting in a moonshine still, I’m not sure what that would be, but I’ll think of something.
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