Young at Heart

On Saturday, August 11, the Blaine Senior Center will celebrate its 51st anniversary, so Young at Heart will share the story of how it began. This piece is part four of a five-part series written by the late Evelyn Yarbrough for the Blaine Senior Center: 

Finally, we were ready to turn over the first shovel of dirt. I sprayed my old shovel, handle and all, with gold paint. It was a little tacky and I apologized that I hadn’t gotten all the rust off before I sprayed it. Ken Kellar told me that if I took proper care of my tool, it wouldn’t be rusty.

We had to raze the old building and before it was completely wrecked, we needed to take out the kitchen range so that we could get a few more years of use. The fire suppression system also had to be dismantled.

We were not sure how to do this so I called a friend in the restaurant supply business and he referred me to a man who installed the systems. I sat on the floor in the middle of the rubble, holding the only telephone still connected in the building, steadying the ladder and handing tools to Judy Van Brocklin while a man in Seattle told me what we should do.

We eventually dismantled the fire suppression system and it worked, but our next problem wasn’t something we could fix as easily. The tile around the kitchen sink was made of asbestos and there was no way were going to remove it ourselves. We tried a licensed contractor, but it’s an expensive specialty. Finally, a licensed worker who lived in the area volunteered to remove the offending tiles on a weekend for a small sum and we were free to go on to the next headache.

Even though the building would be owned by the city, it was necessary to go through all the formalities of the various departments. The alley had to be formally vacated otherwise the building would be too close to an existing alleyway. Water and sewer departments had to be contacted and permits obtained. Even the generator, which was required to make the building available as an emergency shelter had to be purchased and decisions made as to where and “how to store it.

Finally, the public works department agreed to take charge of the storage since they would be required to be available if and when it was ever needed.

Part of the soil that was under the building was found to be inadequate and had to be strengthened; it seemed that every week brought some new problem. The seniors needed a place to meet while the center was being built. During the summer months we were allowed to use the school cafeteria where we not only prepared our meals but refinished our furniture and reupholstered our chairs which were covered with a worn and nauseous orange – not a fitting thing for our new building.