Steven L. Smith's Blog

It will not surprise anyone to know that many interested factions are at work here, doing what they can to try to have rules read and work in a certain way. That is not to be interpreted as a bad thing, many of those groups have good ideas and good intentions. It is essential for all interested parties to be heard.

I wish to comment on a misunderstanding that many people have about the Washington State Home Inspector Licensing Board and our authority. Make no doubt about it, the board will have a major impact on the field. The decisions about Standards of Practice, education, mentoring or field training will be far reaching for years to come.

However, a fair number of people who contact us, or come to the board meetings, do not grasp our role. I have heard people say: "You are the board, you can do anything you want. And we want you to do this."  THAT IS NOT TRUE! We do not make ALL the rules. We board members learned quickly that many essential rules were set by the state lawmakers a year back and we cannot tinker with much of that language. However, we are in a position to define and fine-tune some rules and procedures, but we have no authority in other areas.

Let me give two examples. The legislature, in the initial law, stated that training for new home inspectors must be classroom education. There were those who wanted us to include in that definition online or video training. The state had the Attorney General's office look at that one and the decision came back -- no! The legislature said "classroom" in the law and that has been defined by the AG as just what it says -- instructor running the class, live basically. So that rule will be that way unless the lawmakers want to change it. On the other hand, in another part of the law, regarding field training, the legislature said that new inspectors must have "up to" 40 hours of field training. Well, that was an oversight. Even one hour is "up to" 40 hours. They wanted more and not less. That was the intent so, as the board, we were able to define field training as being 40 hours minimum.

This process keeps plugging along and any interested parties should plan to attend the board meeting on January 6. We will will be wrangling out the rules regarding the new standards of practice. That meeting will start at 9:30AM at the Doubletree Inn in Seatac.

To see additional information on home inspector licensing in the state, click on George's head.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

Back at Thanksgiving, I explained that we were adapting one of the kittens. I named him Tigrotto Tartufo, since all of our cats have Italian names and he is a "tiger cub" and looks like a mushroom. A little black kitten, his sister, I caught a couple days later and my wife found her a nice home already. I am paying for all kitty shots, and fixing these cats, out of King of the House. That is an incentive for people to take these whelps.

Well, a week ago tonight, I had the opportunity to catch the third and final kitten of the threesome. I had been waiting and the snow gave me an opportunity. I got a pretty good nip on the hand out of it, but I recovered without being in the ER over the holidays. This next little kitten I caught looks much like Tigrotto but he is a little bit bigger and more orange than brown. Their markings are kind of reptilian. My boy is the one on top (blue collar) pounding the new bigger kitten (red collar).

Tigratto wants to herd him, pound him and be in charge. The first week the new kitten spent most of his time hiding out and I kept him, at night, in a large cage in the basement. Last few days he is out a lot and he is now purring when we hold him and he is starting to play with Tigrotto. However, the first few days, all he wanted to do was escape from his new found brother.

I snapped this last photo a few days ago. The new kitten is hoping to be able to climb the wall and get out of dodge. They played in the backyard, all the time, but he is not so thrilled with being reunited with family. These, as you can tell, are really practical office assistants. As this new kitten becomes more friendly, the wife I will be finding him a good home too. He is starting to turn around, get a better personality, and he is even playing with his bossy brother. 

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

Listening to The End of the World, you probably would have thought that it would only be a country hit. The artist was Skeeter Davis. This lady considered herself to be a country artist and was pretty surprised when WABC in New York City (a legendary rock station) began playing her song heavily and sent it shooting up the top 40 charts. Skeeter (real name Mary) was given the nickname by her granddad who thought she spent a lot of time flitting around like a mosquito when she was a youngster.  

This song is a kick back to simpler times. Ladies, you will love the hair and the fashion attire. This heartbreaker was a monster in March 1963, but this TV show was aired a couple years later.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

That had me thinking back about anything unusual, beyond the unusual things one finds at a home inspection, that has made any one house most memorable to me. There is no question about it that the one that comes to mind is a home that made the national and international news. I inspected it about six months after the big splash in the media. It housed the only known drug tunnel, between the US and Canada, that is or has been identified by authorities. You can read the whole story here at the DEA website, or you can read my abbreviated description below.

This house was in Lynden, WA (a few miles from Bellingham if traveling north on the Guide Meridian) and the residence was very close to the Canadian border. Driving down East Boundary Road on the Lynden side, drivers pass right by Canadian drivers on Zero Avenue on the other side.  The long tunnel ran completely underground from a Quonset hut on the Canadian side to a residence on the US side. This was quite the operation, on the part of the criminals who dug a tunnel that went more than 350 feet, and also on the part of the RCMP and the US law enforcement agencies involved in shutting down the illegal operation.

The tunnel was dug starting on the Canadian side, and it went under the main public road (Boundary Road) that runs parallel to the border. The drug-runners dug the tunnel with hand shovels. Police intelligence, Canada side, had a hunch what was going on but major surveillance took place on both sides of the border. Not much drug traffic took place through this tunnel because, as soon as drugs started going under the border, police stepped in and arrested the parties involved. Cameras and wire taps were in place so police were, at all times, familiar with exactly what was taking place on both sides of the border. I have some official photos that will show you the setup. Most of this was no longer visible to me when the inspection took place. 

This photo above is the entry into the tunnel, on the Canadian side. The dig started here. While I did not see this inside view, I could still see this Quonset hut when I looked across to the other side of the border.

This is the inside of the tunnel. A person could walk in it, if one walked stooped over. The criminals would dig and then put the 2x6's in place for support. Had they been thinking ahead they would have used pressure-treated lumber.

This cart was used to transport the contraband. Drugs were for sure going into the US, a couple times, while police cameras watched it all. The other concern was that the criminals had planned to move guns from the US side back up into Canada.

This is a view of the hole under the flooring at the house on the US side. This entry was in the living room in a corner. They had a bookcase that would slide over it so anyone casually coming inside would not see the hole. When I was there, the whole tunnel had been filled in with dirt and concrete so all I saw, under the bookcase, was a big block of concrete visible beneath the hole in the flooring. I got down in the hole in the floor just so I could say that I had done so. At one point, the hole would have connected to the crawl space but the concrete pour had isolated that area from the rest of the crawl space.

The photo below is what the house, US side, looked like from the front. It had roof leaks and a number of serious problems and my clients decided to walk. At that time, the house had been seized and was owned by the government. The feds were trying to sell it and they probably have by now.

Anyway, that is probably the most memorable house I have ever inspected due to the fame it received the result of illegal activities that took place on premises. For the curious, in this photo, the hole in the floor would have been on the inside, behind the corner that is to the right of the front porch -- just to the right of the column at the right.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

Robbin's label, Columbia, thought El Paso was way too long to ever be a radio hit, so they released the song as an album cut only. Deejays found the cut on the album, were captivated by it, played it heavily, and four weeks after the release of the album, by popular demand, El Paso became a 45 RPM.

How did the complicated story told in the song come about? Well, Robbins knew the area. He was raised in Arizona and he was fascinated with El Paso and the western lore. Robbin's son says that, even as his dad worked on the words to the song, the family knew it was going to be an epic -- the story was so rich and full of imagery.

As someone who spent several years in country music radio, I can tell you that this was not only a giant on the pop charts, El Paso was also one of the most important and quintessential songs in the history of country music.  What a cowboy song it was! The gunfighter songs never get any better than this one. Marty put out a sequel, years later, called El Paso City. It did well but there is no comparison to the original song. El Paso topped the charts in January, 1960.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

One of the earliest songs in that category, that he views as groundbreaking, was by the legendary blues performer, Ruth Brown. Her recording "Teardrops From My Eyes" was a smash in October 1950. At the same time the white audience was hooked on the Tennessee Waltz by Patti Page, Ruth Brown was dominating the R&B charts with her hit.

It is interesting to note that we are lucky enough to have a video of Brown performing this monumental tune. Therefore, even generations later, we can witness this part of music history with our own eyes.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar  

  Steven L. Smith

 Bellingham WA Home Inspections

So am I happy about that -- no not really. I admit it did lead to some extra fun at our Christmas Eve gathering because some people who, usually, would not be around showed up. They were not able to go to their families' houses, due to snow and air travel problems so instead they supped with Nutsy, Tigratto and the rest of my family.

When I said bait and switch weather I am talking about what it did yesterday. All day yesterday the snow melted -- I mean really melted at 40 degree temperatures. I have a couple hose bibbs that are frozen, because I did not get them turned off under ground soon enough. They thawed yesterday, right before the company arrived, so today I was going to go drain them and shut them off properly so I no longer have to think about them. (Did I say I am off to Mexico in two weeks -- more on that later). Wrong as to my being able to shut them off this morning -- today we are getting several inches of snow and the mercury is back down at freezing.

I was expecting a pre-fight handshake from the weather after yesterday and today the weather delivered a hard uppercut to my now glass jaw and it has left me reeling on this Christmas Day. Them is the breaks when trying to second-guess the darn winter weather. I was sucker-punched.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

At the last board meeting we passed the recommended education curriculum and also many elements that dealt with licensing procedures. These Standards of Practice, and I can tell you this as a board member, look to be among the more contentious documents and laws that we will be wrangling with. Even among board members there are some disagreements. And, if you add the public views in as well, there is work to do here.

It is my view that any inspector who inspects to Ashi, Nachi or Nahi standards will find that the proposed new state standards are more specific and more rigorous in some areas than any of those other standards. Probably all of us, realistically, might have to make a few modifications to our Standard Operating Procedures when the new Standards of Practice take effect.

Public input on this document is being sought out by the board, and the State Department of Licensing. If you are an inspector, try to attend the next meeting of the board on January 6 of the new year. Standards of Practice will be the big item on the agenda. It is a morning meeting starting at 9:30AM. It will be at the following address:

Doubletree Inn at Seatac, 18740 International Blvd 

Member Washington State Home Inspector Licensing Board

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

Eric Burdon was the heart of the Animals and a few incarnations of that famous group over the years. Young Eric, from the northeast of England, loved the blues and, as a ten-year-old, he was entranced by a folk song by African-American blues legend Josh White. That old record was called The House of the Rising Sun. The words, about a house of ill-repute in New Orleans, did not make much sense to the boy but he sure liked the sound.

Move ahead several years and we find the Animals recording their version of The House of the Rising Sun. The original words had previously been modified, read that as cleaned-up, by Bob Dylan. The Animals used the Dylan recording as a model. Burdon, who is short in real life, really belted out that vocal.  The song was over four minutes long and deejays were used to playing two and a half minute songs, so the label was reluctant to release the cut. Finally, they went ahead with it and it became a smash in the UK and the USA in 1964, spending three weeks at #1 in the states.

Years later, Burdon had some interesting comments on this classic #1 hit and, in those comments, he threw ice water on the legitimacy of the music charts. He wrote about that in his book, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood. He recounted a story. It seems that the band was in a car with a record executive. The guy, from their label, said (some words censored): " You guys feel like your ---- is gold. You are on the top of the world. Well just remember that we put you there. The record company bought back enough copies of House of the Rising Sun to make it go #1. We put you on top and we can tear you down again."

Burdon went on to explain that he learned, in fifty years in the high-flying music business, that this was done all the time -- record companies routinely bought up their own product to make it chart higher. I saw similar things in my radio days and I think that anyone who puts too much stock in the charts is naive and needs to understand that they are largely manipulated by record companies with the goal of creating hits. The charts and big hits are interesting for me to write about, and they do provide perspective and insight into what was considered to be a hit and what was "made" popular, but that is about as far as it goes. Does it mean that they were all great songs, NOT! Record companies and the music industry are big business. If they want to make a hit, they set about doing so.

If you have an interest in hearing the original version of House of the Rising Sun, the cut that inspired Burdon, click below to hear Josh White.

For more "Stories Behind the Music" click on the guitar

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections