Clinging to a dream...

Accepting this job in the Tri-Cities area of Washington was a pretty big move.  More correctly, giving up a federal job at a Shipyard where I was virtually immune to firing and looking forward to a decent retirement package someday for non-union supervisory position where I can be fired for cause, and while there is a better 401K but NO pension per say, was a pretty big move.

Obviously, prior to said decision to move, my wife and I had many discussions about the goods and the bads such a move would bring.  One of the things that came in pretty high on our my list of the goods was the chance to purchase a house with a few acres for a price considerably lower than one would find it in the Kitsap County area.  We weren't looking to 'leave it all behind' and be homesteaders, per say, but we both thought it would be nice to have a place where we work to increase our self-sufficiency: grow a garden, maybe have a goat or two, and a few Campbell-Khaki ducks.

Since making said decision, reality has changed some of our options. Prior to accepting the job, all of my dealings with the company were conducted at their administration building, located in Richland.  The Hanford site starts some 20 miles north of Richland, and access is limited to two gates, which, once I started making the drive everyday, rapidly caused my wife and I to narrow our acceptable areas for a house by about 50%...and that 50% of total area included about 75% of the available acreage lots. 

In addition to this reduction in acceptable inventory, I am fighting another factor: my wife has developed a very strong affinity for the older part of North Richland and it's 'Alphabet Houses'.

The year is 1943, and the Federal Government, having taken over the Hanford, White Bluffs and Richland area to start making plutonium for the bombs, needed a place to house it's research scientists and skilled technicians.  Showing rare brilliance on the governments part, it was realized that these are mature folks with families and that their morale(and hopefully, progress) would be far more rapid in nice accommodations with their families than if they were sequestered in pre-fab Quonset huts, a building program was undertaken.  Some 3600 houses were built('only' about 1500 actual buildings,since many were duplexes, and they counted for two houses) based off 13 or 14 different floorplans, which were labeled by the letters of the alphabet, hence, Alphabet Houses.

I'm not sure by what mechanics these house were then released into the general housing market, since during the war the occuppants where charged a token 'rent' by The Man, but now a great number of the houses in Richland's more 'mature' neighborhoods are these Alphabet Houses.  Because of the time they were built, the styles preferred at the time, and the age of the neighborhoods, this area of town has a lot of nice trees, and a very New England feel to things.  There are some nice houses...there are also some neighborhoods that have been allowed to fall into sad states of disrepair.  The biggest issue I have with these houses(other than the fact that due to their age they are potentially chock full of lead paint and asbestos) is the lot size...in an attempt to fit the most people in possible, the houses are usually 8 to an acre....not too bad I guess, but the burbs I grew up in we usually had 1/4 acre lots.

I think I would be very satisfied with one of these alphabet houses, plus, they are cheap enough that it would free up enough money each month that we could spend money on other things: vacation/get away land, and things to use on that vacation land, like a camper, and 4-Wheelers, and guns!  But...

But...moving to Richland to live in an Alphabet House did not make the list of Good Reasons to move.  I was initially way more excited by the idea of a couple of acres than the idea of ending up living in town.  Yesterday, we did a little bit of driving around outside of town, looking at the few options that are out there for land...and once again reality is what it is...most of the land related options out there are double-wides on 1.5-3 acres, with one 5 acre lot thrown in.  In the end though...I am not really sure if a double-wide on 2 acres of sagebrush is what I want either.

We did see one house with potential...an older, stick built 2100SF house on a hillside looking over the Yakima River, with 1.8 acres of land.  Most of the land is nicely fenced in, with sprinklers already run through the 'pasture' part of the land.  My wife is also intrigued by this property, and has said that if it is still on sale when we start looking in March, she wants to look inside it. 

On the other hand...20 acres of vacation land bordering some federal or state forest might not be bad.