One Tug, Two Moves - Nez

 One Tug, Two Moves, By Nez

LLLN-2 1968 Marc

 LLLN-2 1968

TAK-1 1968 Marc

TAK-1 1968 

Tug It, Move It, Two Times - Nez

 

An idealist might suggest that Lyman was a quiet little river town during the 1940’s and ‘50’s, but there were normally loud logging trucks passing through town so it was actually pretty noisy. And it didn’t matter where you were in town you would hear their noise. It was pretty much a constant yet occasionally we would hear other noises over the drone of the trucks.

So, one day my brother and I were uptown and we heard a loud roar coming from down by the river. Curious, we went to see what it was. We knew it wasn’t a logging truck, it was a different noise. And what we saw was different as well. There was a tugboat very slowly chugging upriver coming around the far side of Hodgin Island. That tug’s engine was working hard and making a very loud roar straining against the strong Skagit River current. Oh, we had seen tugboats before. Sometimes there were huge log rafts floated downriver with a couple of tugs to guide them, but they were relatively quiet. This tug chugging upriver was anything but quiet and it was pulling an obviously very heavy load we had never seen before, a huge barge. And both the tug and barge were pushing up walls of water. To our amazement, the cargo on this huge barge was a house, a whole house, a two-story house, sitting on big blocks of wood and on some sort of trailer with lots of tires. Behind that two-story house was a trailer-house, weirdly just sitting there. We wondered why everything didn’t just roll overboard.

The loud commotion quickly drew a crowd. Soon, it seemed most of the town was there. Comments like, “what in the world”, “holy-cow”, “where’s it headed”, “what is that” were heard repeatedly. Most of us expected the tug and barge to pass us by and navigate on up the river, but it didn’t. It rounded the island like it was going to circle it but instead headed toward the riverbank below Sweeten’s barn. From where we were standing the tug was turning away from us so we hurried toward home where we would have a viewing.

We passed by our street and going toward the river and Sweeten’s barn. Then we saw a very strange sight. We saw the back of the barge with the trailer-house and the two-story, but no tugboat. At first we couldn’t tell if the barge was adrift or not. But the noise was still loud and actually the tug had simply turned around and was pushing the barge backward. It maneuvered the barge into deeper backwater and slower current near the riverbank. Once the tugboat entered the backwater its engine didn’t work as hard and it slowed and grew quieter. When it reached the lowest area of bottomland between Chambers’ and Sweeten’s fields the tug guided the barge over alongside the riverbank and came to a stop. Both the barge and tug were then moored to trees several yards from the river. And we still didn’t know what was going on. But it was pretty exciting, whatever it was.

By then it was late afternoon and apparently nothing else was going to happen when suddenly two men from the tug appeared carrying guns and climbed up onto the barge and took positions at each end of the barge and yelled for everybody to go away and stay away. I guess they were there all night making sure nothing else did happen. The guns scared us so we headed home.

As we came down our own now noisy street we were smacked with another opened-mouth surprise. Here was a crew of men working feverishly on the Holden’s house just two doors down from ours. It was on big wooden blocks like those under the house on the barge. It also had a lot of tires under it and a big noisy truck cab was beginning to slowly pull the Holden house out into the street and turning towards the highway. Well of course, we weren’t going home now, we had to watch this stunning undertaking. Here was a truck moving our neighbor’s house, our friend’s house and literally leaving our neighborhood with it. Oh, and, on top of that, there was another house on a barge down on the river less than two-hundred yards away. We were stupefied. “ What in the name of Harry S. Truman was going on?” we wondered. We certainly had not heard anything about all of this. And even though we were young kids we thought we were usually “in the know”.

As the truck slowly pulled the Holden’s house away from their lot and nearer the highway we could see that the highway was now blocked off and was in the sole possession of the truck pulling the house. But where was it going? We had no clue. Were they going to put it on the barge, too? We were about to follow along when our Mom called out to us from the crowd to come on home. Sulking, we did so. While she prepared dinner Mom told us she just learned about all this earlier that day. Since we were gone she couldn’t share it with us until now. The Holden’s had purchased the Richfield Gas station on the west side of town near Lyman Elementary and were moving their house because there wasn’t one there. And the house on the barge should be moved tomorrow to where the Holden house had been, just two doors away from us. Our new neighbors would be the Hittson family, a dad, mom, two girls and a boy, the kids all in high school.

Exhausted, we went to bed earlier than usual that night but were up early the next morning to watch the unfolding events of the day. We sat and stood for hours and watched the two-story house being moved from the barge onto land and then pulled by the same truck that had moved the Holden house, through fields and up a short steep hill, over the railroad tracks and up onto the highway for about fifty yards and then turn down our street. It was a heck of an undertaking. It passed the recently vacated lot, stopped, and then performed an amazing reverse maneuver backing the two-story house onto the property exactly where they wanted it, and with the front door facing the street. We could tell they knew what they were doing.

By noon, or there about, we were hungry again and ran home for lunch. Mom wasn’t there to fix it, so we improvised with peanut-butter, jelly and banana sandwiches. Taking our lunch with us, we hurried back out to see what else was going on, and to our happy surprise there quietly coming down the street was the trailer-house that we had all but forgotten. Hitched to a wagon it was being easily drawn by two huge horses that we knew, Buck and Major. Old Bill Sweeten and his team maneuvered that trailer-house exactly where it was wanted, unhitched it from the wagon and setting its tongue on one of those big wood blocks and hoofed it back home. Wow! What a mesmerizing two days this had been! One captivating event after another. We were almost giddy.

Over the next few days, a concrete block foundation was constructed under the two-story house and it was lowered off the big wood blocks onto its new foundation. The same was done at the Holden house over by the Richfield Station. Mr. Hittson, our new neighbor, stayed in the trailer-house for a couple of months while he made the two-story livable, installing new plumbing, wiring, straightening doorways, making repairs, painting inside and out, and making sure everything was level. We introduced ourselves and became his friends and helpers.

Epilogue

While this excitement was all new to us, apparently bringing houses into the upper Skagit and other river valleys by barge was not that unusual. I never knew where the houses came from but a widely accepted rumor claimed they came from rights-of-ways where new highways were being built. Apparently, they were very cheap, perhaps even free. They just had to be moved.

Anyway, we had thoroughly enjoyed that amazing new experience, one that, to my knowledge, has never been duplicated quite like that.