New home helps Darrington woman stay independent

Published 10:11 pm Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Barbara Colleen Adams no longer spends rainy days covering her roof with a tarp.

She’s moved up in residential status.

When I wrote about Adams 10 years ago, she was living in a dilapidated fifth-wheel trailer on rental property behind a home in Darrington. The door didn’t close. The floor was crumpled. The furnace and refrigerator were on the blink.

She was living on about $600 per month on a disability. She couldn’t move away, because she said she couldn’t take her dog and cats with her.

When one cat had to be euthanized, the $25 fee took a major chunk of her budget.

How wonderful to visit with Adams, 70, where she now lives, in a subsidized apartment in the town of Darrington. She doesn’t have to worry about how to get up to cover the roof with tarps the way she did in past winters.

It’s nice she can recuperate from abdominal surgery in a warm living room. Coffee bubbled in the adequate kitchen. Her one cat had toys to play with on a clean carpet.

“My family said I had to get out of that rat trap,” she said, smiling. “But I’m independent and stubborn.”

She said she wasn’t on the verge of poverty in the trailer. She was below that. But no matter what, her pets came first. She fed them a good brand of food, because they couldn’t digest cheap chow.

These days her Social Security income is a bit higher, at $740 per month.

Her rent is $206.

She waits until she has full loads of laundry before she drives to the laundromat in town. She stuffs the oversized washing machines.

“Can you imagine?” she said. “It’s $1.25 to wash and $1.25 to dry. If I’ve got a clean fence, that’s what I use.”

Yes, she has family, but Adams doesn’t like to ask for help. Her daughter-in-law, Robin McCaulley, said for years they wanted to move Adams from trailer.

Finally, the animals died off and her mother-in-law agreed it was time to upgrade.

“She made her own choices,” McCaulley said. “I couldn’t bear the thought of her living like that anymore. She likes to be in control. She does things herself.”

They found the apartment in Darrington some two years ago. Adams misses having room to plant vegetables, but the flowers in front of her house are thriving.

“She’s a wonderful gardener,” McCaulley said. “She has a wealth of gardening knowledge.”

On one shelf in Adams’ home is a stack of record albums she considers classics, such as hits by Glen Campbell. She found a record player in a thrift store, but it didn’t come with speakers.

She is hoping to find used speakers so she can hear the music.

Shopping is always for used goods. Adams will call ahead to thrift stores to see if they have what she seeks, before she “goes down below” to the big city. It’s only reasonable to make use of her old truck and gas when errands can be combined.

“I’m not cheap, but I’m frugal,” she said. “Oh what the heck, I’m cheap.”

Adams has a raft of health problems. She’s had back trouble all of her life.

“There have been times I’ve been depressed,” Adams said. “You have a sense of humor or (you) go down.”

If Adams was younger, she said, her wish would be to get out to the back country, climb on a horse and fly like the wind. She said she knows that won’t happen. For now, keeping her cat fed and healthy is a great life.

She treats herself now and then.

“I grab one chicken strip at the Shell station.”

Kristi O’Harran: 425-339-3451; oharran@heraldnet.com.