In 1950-51, my family lived in Spokane, where I attended Irving and Roosevelt elementary schools. My folks had hoped we would settle there permanently, so they bought a once-grand old house with French doors into the music room, chandeliers—and eight peeling layers of wallpaper. My earliest memory of the place was crouching at baseboard level with a putty knife, scraping down through fifty years of accumulated floral patterns in the room that would be my bedroom. Mom and Dad spent the whole time we lived there reclaiming the garden and scrubbing, stripping, sanding, and painting the house.
I loved that house—the third floor playroom, the second branch up in the maple tree that was my thinking place, and most of all, its location in the same city we had extended family. That's where I met Great-aunt Clara, the subject of my book, The Year We Were Famous. Dad had to follow the work, though. Mid-year of third grade we moved from Spokane to Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island.
When one of my writing buddies, Deb Lund, mentioned she was driving by herself to Spokane to lecture at a conference sponsored by the Inland Empire chapter of SCBWI, I asked if I could ride with her. The conference was held at the Museum of Art and Culture in the neighborhood where Clara worked as a maid while she attended Lewis and Clark High School. The Montvale Hotel we stayed in was built just three years after her walk with her mother across the country. The Carnegie Library from my childhood had been replaced by a shiny new library, though. Irving school had been closed and although there was still a school called Roosevelt, the building I remembered had been replaced long ago. Spokane had grown up while I was gone.
What will I remember most from my trip back to Spokane? The people. I arrived not knowing anyone from the Inland Empire chapter of SCBWI and left with friends. The librarians at Spokane Public Library were welcoming and knowledgeable. The folks at both locations of Auntie's Bookstore were enthusiastically helpful. I look forward to coming back on April 23, 2011, for a program with Linda Hunt and Jane Kirkpatrick!
