Long before Jack-in-the Box arrived, Halide Patterson lived in a 7-room house on 5.5 acres at what’s now the corner of 196th Street Southwest and 44th Avenue West.
Her family moved to the area from Seattle’s Greenlake neighborhood in 1928, when Patterson, then known as Halide Lobdell, was 6 years old. That was 31 years before Lynnwood became a city.
In those days, 44th Avenue West was known as Cedar Way and 196th Street Southwest was West Trunk Road, Patterson said.
“My folks said they were tired of renting from this person, that person,” Patterson recalled, as she took a break from her volunteer shift at Lynnwood’s Heritage Village.
An only child, Patterson spent those early years living with her grandparents. Over time, the family came to enjoy life in what was then “the country.”
“My dad said he wasn’t going to be any so-and-so farmer,” Patterson said. “That’s what he was in Wisconsin.”
Mother Mabel, the consummate city girl, agreed to the move from Seattle on one condition: the new place had to have running water and electricity, two items that were not standard in homes of that era.
Mother got her wish: the house came with an electric washing machine, garage, pump house, deep well and wash room.
The family quickly got to know neighbors. The mailman lived just blocks away. Mrs. Barrett Scott, the school district nurse, lived next door.
“I always said we were all the same out here,” Patterson said. “We all went to Alderwood Community Church. I went up there to Sunday School for years and years.”
Church was also the place Halide learned piano from Mrs. Holley, who also happened to be the Sunday School teacher.
The family had animals. Halide remembers chickens, ducks and hens running around an area that included what is now the Jack in the Box parking lot and most of an adjacent strip mall.
“Once in a while, we would raise a pig, because my dad loved smoked meat,” she said.
Her father, Dice, built a smoke house just off the driveway.
“One time, some people who didn’t know us very well drove up the driveway and a guy said ‘Lobdell, Lobdell, your house is on fire.’”
Dad worked as a draftsman in Seattle, then during the Great Depression got a job with the Works Progress Administration helping connect workers with employers.
“Dad gave the dedication speech at Paine Field when it opened,” she said.
Halide married in 1942, after studying art at the University of Washington and went on to a career with Pan American Airways. Though she lived out of state for a while, she returned in 1951, the same year she remarried, and has lived in Seattle ever since, maintaining her ties to Lynnwood over the years.
“The other places out of state —- forget it, she said. “This is the place. The people are different, not only the weather. You don’t find a lot of people who are pretending to be something they’re not.”
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