Joe Rantz is left behind by his family in Sequim

Joe Rantz is left behind by his family in Sequim when Harry and Thula Rantz drive away in 1929 with their other children. The departure divides the family into two lives: Joe remains apart from them, while the household that left him struggles through poverty in Seattle without his knowing where they are. Years later, learning that they have been living there all along, Joe goes to see them with Joyce. Their brief encounter does not repair the separation; Thula closes the door and tells him to stay out of their lives.

The Separation and Its Delayed Discovery

Joe learns the crucial fact from his brother Fred, whom he finally asks directly where their father is. Fred hesitates before telling him that Harry, Thula, and Joe’s half siblings are living in Seattle. They have, in fact, been there since the night in 1929 when they drove away and left Joe in Sequim. The revelation changes the meaning of the intervening years: the family had not simply disappeared from Joe’s life, but had built another household within reach of the city where he rowed.

The account makes the separation stark through its chronology. The family’s move is recalled as a definite night, but Joe’s knowledge of their whereabouts comes much later, after he has gone to Fred for an answer. The interval between departure and discovery is therefore part of the action. The family’s presence in the same broad region does not mean that contact has continued; when Joe eventually finds them, the distance between them is still intact.

The Household Left Behind in Poverty

The family’s life after leaving Joe begins in a deteriorated waterfront shed on the edge of Seattle Hooverville. Six people share two rooms: one, containing a toilet and sink, serves as both kitchen and bathroom; the other, with a woodstove in one corner, serves as living room and bedroom. Trucks pass only inches from the front door, while rats move through the rooms and prostitutes and toughs gather beneath nearby streetlamps. Harry cannot find the job that brought the family to the city and goes on public assistance.

Their next home, an old house on Phinney Ridge west of Green Lake, offers only a marginal improvement. Built in 1885 and unrepaired since, it has one electrical outlet and a single woodstove. The stove is of little use when the family cannot afford firewood, and the house catches winter winds blowing down from the Arctic. Thula goes to local soup kitchens and a neighborhood commissary run by the Unemployed Citizens League, which distributes food and firewood to people in need. Its supplies are limited: meals for the children are mostly thin stews of parsnips, rutabagas, potatoes, and chipped beef. Without fuel for the stove, Thula turns an electric iron upside down and uses it to cook the stew.

The material details make the family’s displacement concrete without suggesting that hardship itself reunites them. A cramped room, scarce food, and an iron pressed into service as a cooking surface define the life Joe does not share. The household’s struggle continues after the move from Sequim, but the text gives no indication that Joe is told of it during those years.

A New Address and a Difficult Visit

After Thula gives Harry another ultimatum, he finds work as head mechanic at the Golden Rule Dairy and Bakery in Fremont. It is a fiercely nonunion business, and the wages are low, but the job allows the family to move into a small, respectable house at Thirty-Ninth and Bagley. The address is close to the bakery and to the north end of Lake Union, where Joe rows nearly every afternoon. Fred eventually provides it, and Joe finds the family there in the fall of 1934.

The visit is small in scale and tense from its first gestures. Joe and Joyce drive over in the Franklin, park on Bagley, take deep breaths, and climb the concrete steps to the porch holding hands. Someone inside is playing the violin. Joe knocks on a yellow Dutch door; the music stops, a shadow moves behind its lace-covered upper half, and Thula opens it only halfway. She appears unsurprised, as though she has expected him, but does not invite the visitors in. Joe notices her careworn face and red, chafed fingers. Even as she speaks to them, she keeps her eyes lowered toward the porch.

Thula acknowledges that she has heard about Joe and says that his father is proud of him. She asks Joyce about her parents and expresses regret when Joyce says her father is ill. These exchanges are civil, but the half-open door remains a physical boundary. When Joe asks to come in and see his father and the children, Thula says Harry is at work and the children are visiting friends. Joe then asks whether he and Joyce may return another time.

The Door Closes

Thula’s answer makes the visit a refusal rather than a reunion. She raises her eyes and says, “No. Make your own life, Joe. Stay out of ours.” She closes the door gently and slides the deadbolt into place. The soft metallic click gives the encounter a finality that contrasts with the hesitant approach up the steps and the tentative questions at the threshold.

The separation thus has two decisive moments: the family’s departure from Sequim and Thula’s refusal of renewed contact years later. Joe has learned where his family went, and he has made the effort to approach them with Joyce, but neither discovery nor return restores their place in one another’s lives. The door’s closing leaves the family history open as a wound rather than resolving it through reconciliation.