Member-only story
The House on the River
Living on a houseboat was but a five-year dream
We were just passing through Portland. My secret husband and I (it’s a long story if you care to read it here) were unsettled. We’d left England and spent about nine months visiting friends and family in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. We housesat and worked odd jobs in Los Angeles and Mendicino. Our good friends in Portland and Seattle invited us to visit and we imagined, after zig-zagging across the entire USA, we’d have a good sense of where in this country we wanted to live.
Portland was just another pit stop.
But then our friend picked up a hitchhiker — hitchhiking still seemed safe in 1978 — who wanted to sublet her houseboat for the summer. We jumped at the chance. This despite the fact that I had no concept of a houseboat so imagined we’d be squeezing into the hull of a sailboat for three months.
The houseboat floated on the Willamette River that flows through the city center. It was rickety, not much more than a shabby shed floating on enormous logs covered in bright green moss. That first summer was like a vacation. When a neighboring houseboat became available, we dove into the deep end.
Renting a houseboat was dirt cheap. And, arguably, fairly priced at that.
