Where we
show up.

Wind off the bay drives salt and rain into the west walls, and the hundred-year blocks off Rucker and Grand hide rot behind their original siding.

Half the county passes through here every day; we're the truck pulling off at 164th, headed for a job.

Anyone who's sat in the ferry line on a summer Friday knows Mukilteo runs on its own clock.

Half of Marysville lives in cottages that went up before I-5 did, and the other half on streets that didn't exist ten years ago; we work both ends and sit in the 4th Street exit backup with everybody else.

Ferry traffic sets the pace down in the Bowl, where the bungalows have been shrugging off salt air for a century; up past Five Corners it's ramblers and splits with moss on the north side.

Most of Mill Creek went up to a plan, from the country club out, and the association still gets a say in your fence.

Part of Bothell pays property taxes to King County and part to Snohomish, with the line running along 240th.

Everybody in Snohomish knows the winter drill: the river comes up, Airport Way closes, and some years even the Avenue D bridge shuts before the water crests.

Arlington keeps its feet dry up above the Stilly, but the valley underneath takes on water most winters.

The weather coming off the mountains gets to Monroe first, and the houses show it, from the early-1900s places off Main Street to the builder fences going gray in the Fryelands.

Damp air off the lake grows moss on any fence within reach, and from Frontier Village out to Machias that covers most of them.