"Mr. and Mrs. Pillip Bilancia, New Yorkers who recently moved into a houseboat, found it took them and their cat a while to get their sea legs. Guests of the couple occasionally get seasick from houseboat rocking. Like all houseboaters, Bilancias have become confirmed bird watchers. Particularly entrancing are the water-fowl whose squabbles are almost as interesting as those of humans." Photo from Seattle Post Intelligencer, 1964.
Last spring I got a call from Leslie Bilancia who lives on the east coast. Leslie and her husband, Phillip were transplanted New Yorkers when they lived on a houseboat in Seattle in 1964. Phillip was at the UW working on a grant to translate a Chinese legal dictionary into English and other languages. They had never forgotten their experience of living on the water. The Bilancias were featured in a Sunday PI pictorial on February 16, 1964 and also in an issue of Seattle Magazine around the same time.
Leslie wanted to let me know that her daughter and family were coming to Seattle for the first time and wondered if their old houseboat was still afloat. After some questions, I figured out it was the floating home owned by longtime houseboater, Jonathan Ezekiel located on the end of one of the Tenas Chuck docks. I called Jonathan who was happy to show his place to the Bilancias' daughter and family.
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Lexie, David and Lily Hautau with Jonathan Ezekiel. Photo by Jann McFarland. |
Several phone calls and months later, Lexie and David Hautau and daughter Lily met me on a lovely sunny summer day and we visited Jonathan and his houseboat.
The place hadn't changed very much so it was fun for Lexie to get to visit and take pictures to show her parents. Lexie wrote after she returned to her home in Georgia, "We really appreciated your kindness during our trip to Seattle. We loved seeing my parents' old houseboat and we all fell in love with your lifestyle on those houseboats. Now as soon as we win the lottery we will be back to buy one!!!"