Being a Valentines Day Melancholy Baby Today In Texas Thinking About Washington

I am being a Melancholy Baby today.

In the picture you are looking at my house in Mount Vernon.

Well, actually, what used to be my house in Mount Vernon. It was sold in 2002.

The house was built in 1985. I lived there from then til I moved to Texas in December of 1998.

When I moved to Texas it was to a house I had not seen with my own eyes. I'd only seen pictures.

This morning's melancholy has me feeling a bit homesick for Washington. I think what got me started on the melancholy thing was Betty Jo Bouvier's weekend stay in Leavenworth, an Alpine Bavarian type village set on the eastern side of the Cascade foothills

There are no Alpine villages in a mountain setting in Texas.

There is a town called Alpine, in Texas, in sort of a mountain-like setting, down in the Big Bend Country Region of Texas. But, it is no Leavenworth.

I'm thinking if I still had a house up in Washington, I would move back. Having a place waiting for you to move in, makes the moving thing way easier.

When you live in Western Washington you are close to mountains and ocean beaches. If you're in the mood for a total scenery change it is a relatively short drive over the Cascades to Eastern Washington, with its more desert-like climate, turned green in a lot of locations courtesy of the Columbia River's many dams and reservoirs.

Going over to Eastern Washington in summer and fall you can get yourself all kinds of fresh fruit.

Where I lived in Washington it was about a 20 mile drive, to Anacortes, to get on a ferry to go to the San Juan Islands or Canada.

In Washington I lived about 40 miles from another country. Vancouver was just a bit further north than Seattle was south.

The San Juan Islands is in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains. Meaning the islands get way less rain than you get if you are closer to the Cascade Mountains. The New York Times recently had a list of the 41 places in the world you need to go to in 2011. The San Juan Islands was #2 on the list.

When I lived in Washington I took living in one big theme park for granted, because it was what I'd always known. Only when you move away, and return for a visit, do you really see real clear, for the first time, just how special the Pacific Northwest is.

The scenery, the tall trees, the air smelling like Christmas trees, all the fresh produce, some growing wild, like blackberries and blueberries.

The fresh seafood.

I could drive about 15 miles and catch fresh dungeness crab and dig horse clams. I lived 2 miles from the Skagit River. You can easily catch salmon in the Skagit River. Or any of the Washington rivers. And eat the fish you catch. Unlike the polluted waterway I currently live about a mile from called the Trinity River.

In Texas my big hiking thrill, which I will likely do today, is to hike some short hills. In Washington I could see the Mount Baker volcano from my living room. It was a short drive to hike up a real mountain. It was a short drive to hike up all sorts of mountains.

Well, I better get going if I want to get a hike in on some Texas hilly scrubland called the Tandy Hills Natural Area, so I can make it to my Valentines Day lunch at the appointed time.

Walking Into Kroger & Being Transported Back To Washington Via Christmas Trees With Streetcars

On my way to Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdic Lake I stopped at Kroger to get this week's FW Weekly.

As soon as I stopped my vehicle, and opened the door, I was hit with a most un-Texan fragrance.

I was instantly transported back to Western Washington, where the forests of evergreens scent the air like Christmas trees.

The Christmas trees from Washington have arrived at Kroger. According to the label on one of the trees, "Another GEM from the Emerald Forest: Emerald Christmas Company."

Based in Bellevue.

I do not recollect ever seeing a Christmas Tree Farm in Bellevue. Bellevue is rather urbanized. Think of Bellevue as being to Seattle like Fort Worth is to Dallas.

Only upscale. Very upscale. With way less open space.

If Bellevue had not entered this current discussion, due to being mentioned on a label on a Christmas Tree, it likely would have been more appropo to say Tacoma is to Seattle like Fort Worth is to Dallas.

Only. Again. More upscale. Way more upscale.

Tacoma already has a streetcar, for instance. And Tacoma has a brand new convention center hotel that required no bribes to get built, sitting in an area of many museums, which the streetcar passes through, which Tacoma does not feel the need to label as Tacoma's "Cultural District."

Unlike Fort Worth.

Which has signs all over its downtown zone, pointing you out of downtown, to the "Cultural District."

Such rubes up in Tacoma, they just don't realize it is very sophisticated to call a part of your town your "Cultural District."

Speaking of Tacoma's streetcar. It actually serves a purpose. Tacoma has a transit center where buses, trains and streetcars come together. At the transit center there is a huge parking garage.  Free. You can park there and take the Sounder Train to Seattle. Or the streetcar to downtown Tacoma. Also free. Or hop a bus. Or go shopping in Freighthouse Square.

With Freighthouse Square being a successful version.

On steroids.

In little Tacoma.

Of what 3.5 times bigger, population-wise, Fort Worth's, Santa Fe Rail Market tried to be.

But which failed, miserably.

I sort of predicted the Santa Fe Rail Market failure. It was sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. And it was sort of a precursor to Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Boondoggle. Another enterprise I predict will fail. For similar reasons. But on a much more massive scale, with costly ramifications.

Anyway, watch the below video, which I made in 2008, during my hellacious month-long stupid mistake of spending a long month in Tacoma, and you will see the Tacoma streetcar, coming at you, with Tacoma's convention center behind it. With lots of people on board. They are passing through Tacoma's "Cultural District." The building you will see the streetcar pass by is a museum. Then, in the video, you will walk across a Bridge of Glass and see another museum, shaped like a pointy cone. That would be the Museum of Glass.

In the video you will also see a small part of the Tacoma waterfront, yet one more thing Tacoma has in common with Fort Worth. Only Fort Worth's is not yet built, and will be smaller. And likely will float no boats and have no signature bridges, like the one you'll see in the below video...

The Shadow Of The One-Armed Tandy Thin Man Thinking About Returning To My House In Washington

I have yet to tire of taking pictures of the Shadow of the Tandy Hills Thin Man. Today's Thin Man Shadow was across a dry creek bed at the bottom of a ravine. With leaves.

The leaves in the trees on the Tandy Hills have greatly diminished. Large areas of the trails are under a thick carpet of fallen leaves.

Fallen leaves in Texas are much more pleasant to walk on than fallen Washington leaves.

In Texas the leaves stay crunchy and quickly dry up and blow away. In Washington the leaves get wet and slimy and can make walking slippery. I prefer the Texas leaf disposal method.

In Washington my house had flat roofs. Four of them. Leaves would cover the roofs and need to be removed. Over and over again. The house was surrounded by trees, about half of them evergreen, the rest leaf shedders, of the big maple leaf sort that can easily clog a drain.

Go here to visit my house in Mount Vernon, Washington. It is a primitive webpage, made long ago, well before highspeed broadband, hence the little clickable thumbnails. On the webpage you'll meet my deceased cat, Hortense. She died in Texas my first year here. You will see a lot of trees and see why there were a lot of leaves. You will also see pictures of the most snow I ever saw on the ground in my zone of Washington. I was stuck on my cul-de-sac's hill for almost a week.

I had not looked at pictures of where I lived in Washington for awhile. This has put me in a sort of wistful, melancholy mood that fits perfectly with how tired I am feeling from last night's exhausting nightmares. Looking at the pictures brought back remembering how nice it was to walk out the front door, from the kitchen, to the rooftop garden to BBQ and pick fresh tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, basil and other stuff I'm not remembering.

In Texas there is no rooftop garden that I walk out to from my kitchen. Nothing grows on my Texas patio. Not even moss. I'm ready to move back to Washington. But doing so takes a lot of effort and bother. And right now I am tired.