The True Meaning of ‘Fubarrio’
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So, I’m back in the USSA and looking over Redfin.com’s real estate site and notice that some of the neighborhoods in Seattle, WA are still in the fantasy leagues with regards to asking prices on used houses.
As the real estate crash has hit other regions, it typically moves from the bad neighborhoods, and works its way into the better ones, so by way of comparison I decide to check out my old hometown, Longview, WA.
Before I get to the killer listing I found however, I need to share an enormous amount of background with those of you unfamiliar with Longview, WA — and those of you who’ve repressed the memories. 
While it’s true that Longview has some nice older/established neighborhoods with tree lined streets and some McMansion developments in the hills that overlook this gritty industrial town, there are also some very modest blue collar dwellings built around the paper mills in the late 20’s (when the town was founded) and into the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s to house the growing population which was brought in to work in the timber and paper industry.
The planned community was built with a very distinct blue collar neighborhood, and a very distinct white collar neighborhood. As the mills have fallen on hard times financially, the blue collar neighborhoods have turned into a section 8, welfare, meth-riddled, sketchy area of town (for the most part) with pockets of young families desperate for affordable housing attempting gentrification in certain pockets.
The town has two middle schools & two high schools, and two little leagues (baseball) for the kids roughly drawn between the old/sketchy part of town and the newer/shiny more expensive homes (with a few exceptions for some more rural kids). My home and fate would find me on the border of those two worlds, but marginally in the ’sketchy’ middle school & high school, and more importantly (for this story) within the sketchy little league.
I was perhaps the least gifted little league player in modern history and my career spanned one full season (at the age of 10), but I remember it well….that far north, early season games were often scheduled to allow parents to attend. While kids, struggling to find the strikezone would ‘walk’ the bases full, and subsequent runs would be forced in by additional wildness, the little league coaches were not keen on using relievers — perhaps because none of the other kids could do better (?)
Six inning games would become marathon events as 3rd and 4th graders milled about in the field waiting hours for their once a game chance to boot the ball and extend an inning for another 8 batters.
This far north, early season games would stretch well into twilight and a bike ride home through the ‘highlands’ (ironically the lowest part in town and some feet below sea level in many parts) would creep a kid like me out.
As I whisked past dilapidated clapboard depression era rental home after rental home, I would get especially creeped out feeling when passing by stretches of the ‘hood where no one had bothered to mow the lawn in months and the grass was growing chest high…I would start out riding casually trying to feign indifference, and as my adrenaline took over, I would be riding faster faster, lungs burning, until I reached the fringes of what I considered a ’safe’ neighborhood.
Sketchy characters with shockingly low tooth to tattoo ratios would sit on old sofas and upholstered chairs left out in the pacific northwest rain all winter, on their front porches, drinking Lucky Lager, Malt Liquor, or the occasional Rainier (for the very discerning tastes).
The occasional industrious soul would work on one of the muscle cars or broken down ford/chevy pickups parked in their front yard in the prerequisite wife-beater.
I imagined marginalized intoxicated pedophile drifters sitting in their yard watching all the kids stream by after a late game, like a so many bears watching a salmon run in a mountain stream.
It’s with that background that I found this fabulous deal. For the sad day that link goes dead, I decided to embed a few pics:
Nice Curb Appeal, Huh?
I love the curb appeal of this place. In some weird way it reminds me of these places in South America where they are taxed based on what the assessor can see from the street. Everyone puts up these very dated, unpainted fronts (facades) to their home, hiding the opulence, luxury, and ‘old world charm’ within.
To get an idea of what the highlands was like in the late 70’s, imagine the whole house looking like the front. I love the description on this listing touting the ‘covered porch’…brings up visions of southern mansions, rocking chairs and mint juleps.
So, where is this gem located? Here is the view off of that front porch:
beautiful view of the baseball fields
Your typical ‘park-view’ home in Longview, WA .
I hope you enjoyed this post, and the definition of the true meaning of ‘Fubarrio’.
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