You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

“SOAP STONE DON’T SLIDE”

(PART 1)

In the Spring of 1972, after my third year of teaching architecture at the University of Kansas, my wife, Maura, our baby, and I moved from Lawrence to Portland, Oregon. That summer, in celebration of our return to Oregon, my sister, Kappy, rented a cabin in Cannon Beach on the Oregon coast. Our two families headed off for a week of relaxation on the beach. Relaxation turned to boredom by the third day, so I took a walk around town. On an unimproved street in the north end of Cannon Beach, I came upon a man of my age who was building a house. I stopped to talk with him and learned that he had purchased the site at the Clatsop County surplus land auction. This was a revelation to me. I knew little of the process by which the county sells abandoned properties. I thought if I could buy a home site cheaply at auction, I could design and build a beach cabin on it.

The following day, I drove to Astoria. There, on the top floor of the county courthouse, I found the map room and spent the day digging through dusty county maps of surplus land to find a surplus parcel of land. An old man, whom I judged to be Swedish by his accent, was in charge of the map-room. He was very helpful, guiding me to various maps and explaining how to file the papers in order to initiate an auction. He was adamant in his admonition that I must attend the auction to defend my interest against other bidders. At several points in the course of the day, he asked if I would be interested in buying a house. I explained that I was an intern architect and wanted to find an undeveloped lot on which to build a cabin of my own design.

By the end of the day, I had found several interesting lots. All were in an area south of Cannon Beach, called Arch Cape. As I was leaving, I stopped to thank the old Swede for his help. Again, he tried to interest me in the abandoned house. Not wanting to offend him, after he had shown such a fervent desire to find a buyer for that abandoned house, I feigned interest. He launched into a description of the house. “It’s a fine old house, well made”, he said. “It even has a view. He described its location at the end of Grand Avenue. “It has been empty since old man Bishop died,“ he added. When I asked “Why was it abandoned? “It’s in a slide area.” “How much would the county want for a minimum?” I asked. He paused and then said, “Probably around five hundred.” “Five hundred dollars?” “Yup, about five hundred dollars.” He replied.

Despite this remarkably low initial bid, I was not interested. I wanted to design and build a unique beach cabin, rather than take on the reconstruction of an old house. In any case, with such a low initial bid for a house, there were certain to be many others running up the price.

I began my drive back to Cannon Beach. A long line of cars held me up at the stop sign on Marine Drive. While waiting, I checked the time. It was 4:30. There was still an hour and a half before I would be expected to arrive for dinner. I could turn left and head back to help with dinner preparations, or I could turn right and look for that abandoned 500-dollar house. “What the hell,” I said out loud, and turned right, heading to the east end of Astoria, where the old house was located.

Grand Avenue ended abruptly with a steep drop-off. I later learned that the land had fallen about 25 feet in a major land slide 20 years earlier. Standing there at the end of the road and looking where the old Swede had said I would find the house, I could see only large conifers and a mountain of blackberry brambles. I was about to give up when I noticed the cornice of a roof behind a large hemlock. “That must be the house”, I thought, “having come this far, I will take a look.” However, since the road in front of it had slid away, there was no direct route to it. I worked my way through the brambles, down the bank, and along what had once been the street until I could see the front of the house. I crawled up through the thicket, over the remnants of a wooden stair, and into an open space next to the house. From there, I could see it was a sturdy-looking two-story bungalow. The front stair had slid away, leaving the front porch and entry, 9 feet above the ground. Looking for another way to gain access, I found the back door. The stair to back door had collapsed also. The door was about 4 feet above the ground. I piled some of the broken stairs in front of the door and climbed over the debris into the house.

Vandals had ransacked the place. They had smashed a sink, a toilet, and a couple of windows. There were utensils, clothing, and furniture scattered around the main floor. However, the interior of the house was not damaged. It had clear Douglas fir floors and similar trim around the doors, windows, and the archway between the living and dining rooms. The kitchen had linoleum over the fir flooring. I was especially interested to see an old wood-burning stove with a coil for heating water. The hot water would have been conducted by gravity, up into a 30-gallon steel tank, hidden in a cabinet, above the stove.

The scene was more orderly on the second floor. The bedrooms were fully furnished. The dresser had clothes in it. On the dresser were items that looked to have been left when the owner emptied his pockets. Calling cards were there, including one that was a death notice for Mrs. Bishop. It appeared as though the previous owner had suddenly abandoned the house. This was explained when I learned I learned why the house had been abandoned.

Mr. Bishop had fallen two and a half stories, from the roof into the blackberry thicket on the downhill side of the house. He lay there, calling for help until he died about a day later. No one came to his rescue, though the fisherman, who lived next door, had heard his calls for help; he didn’t respond. He told me, “I thought the old man was drunk…had fallen down the hill…would sober up and crawl out by himself. Besides, I was on my way to the dock and was running late.”

Aside from the mess made by vandals, the house was in reasonably good shape. There was no sign of moisture damage. The roof had not leaked.

After leaving the house I found a separate door to the basement, where the remains of a wood furnace and few rusty tools were laying about. Thieves or family had taken everything of value.

“What a mess,” I thought as I worked my way back to where I had parked the car. “No way would I want anything to do with this inaccessible wreck of a house.” I drove back to join the family for dinner in Cannon Beach. I told them about land I had found. I did not mention the old house.

Over the following year, I thought about it. Hearing of Winter storms on the coast, I would wonder how the old house was holding up. I began to feel responsible for it, as if it were an abandoned child. As if I were the only one who could save it. I would wake in the middle of the night thinking of ways to remedy various design problems, such as the tiny kitchen. I wondered why, when all of the houses to the west of this one were destroyed in the slide, this one had survived without damage. I yielded to my curiosity and made a series of phone calls. These led me to an old man living in a nursing home. Mr. Anderson was delighted to talk with me about the “Bishop house”. He proudly told me that, as a teenager, he had helped his father build it. He hated to think of it empty and decaying. I asked him why it had not slid along with all the others. “Oh,” he replied. “That house won’t slide.” How can you be so sure? “It’s built on Soapstone.“ “So what does that have to do with it?” His reply was brief and succinct. “Soapstone don’t slide.” My conversation with old man Anderson convinced me that I did have an obligation to save the old house and, because of Anderson’s explanation for its stability, it was worthy of the effort. His use of the word “soapstone” I understood to be what soils engineers refer to as “clayey shale,” the substrata that underlies much of Astoria. Anderson was correct, clayey shale is relatively stable; it is the soil on top of it that slides.

That was it. Based on Anderson’s assurance that “Soap stone don’t slide,” in the spring of 1973, I filed the paper-work with Clatsop County to initiate an auction. When I filed, I was advised that before putting it up for auction, it was necessary for the county to find all surviving members of the Bishop family and make the house available to them for back taxes and penalties. It would take a year or more to clear the title. In the spring of 1975, I received a card announcing that the house was to be sold at auction in the lobby of the County courthouse at 10:00 AM, two Wednesdays hence.

I computed the costs of rebuilding the house. Given the low rental rates in Astoria at that time, I figured that I could pay no more than $11,500 for it and still break even after repairs had been completed. I could barely sleep the night before the auction. I got up early and drove from Portland to Astoria. My plan took shape on that two-hour drive. I was certain that there would be many others bidding for the house. I had to have a strategy. I decided that I would not enter into the bidding until all but two bidders had dropped out of the competition. I would then jump in with a substantially larger increase than the auctioneer suggested. My hope was that upon seeing my enthusiasm and apparent deep pockets, the other bidders would drop out of the bidding.

Upon arriving at the courthouse, I found more than twenty people in the lobby waiting for the auction. Twelve properties were on the auction list. The Bishop house was the last item on the list. There was a property description but no mention that a house was on the property. I thought this to be strange since the house was the thing that made the property worth bidding on. I wondered if the advertisements for the auction had excluded mention of the house also.

As each sale was completed the group that had been bidding on it left. All but seven people had left the lobby for the last item, the property on Grand Ave. I presumed that these seven were there to bid against me for the house. The auctioneer opened bidding. No one bid. I thought, “The other bidders must be using the same strategy that I’m using.” He said the minimum was $500. Still, there were no bids. The auctioneer looked at his watch, it was past lunchtime. He raised his gavel as he said, “Then, if no one is bidding on this property, we will close the sale.” My hand shot up. With his gavel still raised, he asked, “Are you bidding? ”Yes!” I replied. His gavel came down with a bang. “Sold,” he said. He then turned to his friends, those seven people remaining in the lobby of the courthouse, and said, “Now let’s go get some lunch”. He and all the others filed out. I sat there alone in wonderment. “I now own that old house”. My life had just changed dramatically.

END Part 1