Voices of Bellevue: Duckie Ulrich | Heritage Corner

Published 8:29 am Monday, January 27, 2014

Eastside Heritage Center’s oral history collection contains over 200 interviews. In the following excerpt from her 2001 oral history (edited for clarity) Duckie Ulrich talks about the process she and her new husband went through to purchase land for a home in the early 1930s.

Interviewer: When we talked before, you mentioned some property that you wanted to buy when you first came back to Bellevue. Tell me about that.

Duckie Ulrich: “Well, we had lived with the folks for a year. And the baby was a year old. And I wanted a house for my own, and my mother thought that was fine. My dad thought that was very foolish that we should move out, and that the same heat and the same lights and the same water and all that sort of thing would house us all.

Well, the main thing was he didn’t want us to take that baby away. I don’t think he thought we knew how to take care of it. [chuckles] Anyway, we finally decided that we’d like to buy a house. And Dad said, well, he thought the ideal would be for us to buy a lot. And at that time, you could buy any lot in town for $100. And so, he said, “Where would you like it?” And I said, “Well, I’d like one right across the street,” which is where Kay Lumber was built later – a good deal later. [chuckles]

So he said, “Well, Mr. Ditty owns it, and we’ll have to go and talk to him about it.” He said, “Well, you could buy the lot, and then continue to live here. And then you’ve got the lot paid for, and then you could probably borrow money through Shinstrom at the bank.”

So we went over to see Mr. Ditty – we already knew him from years before – and he was delighted. It was fine. He’d be glad to sell us the lot and everything. We talked about what we would do and all, and he thought that was just – really, he was just very up-and-coming about it. We asked him how much he wanted for it, and he wanted $300. Well, that was just a real shock. [chuckles] And we came home, and my dad said, “What did Mr. Ditty have to say?”

And I said – you know, my dad was not a man who swore or anything – but the first thing he said when we told him he wanted $300 for it, my dad said, “What in the hell has he got buried over there? Gold?” And we later found out he had gold buried there, all right. The whole block was gold! So, we didn’t buy a house, or even a lot. And that’s about the time that we rented that little double house that was down off of Main Street, and lived in that. I think we paid $12 a month rent for that.”

To learn more about Bellevue and Eastside history, contact the Eastside Heritage Center at 425-450-1049 or visit www.EastsideHeritageCenter.org.