News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
Sorted by date Results 69 - 93 of 469
It was 1962, and the baseball season was over. During the off season, Larry Jackson, a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, joined our sports staff at the Idaho Statesman in Boise. As a baseball player, Larry was not yet a household name, but he soon would be. Larry was born in Nampa, and he still called the Valley his home. In the offseason, Larry would write for the Statesman. Technically, he worked for me, but I knew that my boss liked to talk baseball, so Larry was put on staff. Larry told me that his friend Stan Musial was coming to Boise...
When I was a kid, I sold the Saturday Evening Post. Post officials would come to town and round up a bunch of us kids, and we would go door to door to sell the post. It sold for a nickel. I think it was a national effort to raise the circulation so they could charge more for advertising. Think of it, kids all across America selling the Post. Representatives of the Post would come into town and round up willing kids, provide them with newspaper bags, a little instruction and turn them loose. I remember doing this twice, and was the top...
On a family vacation several years ago, I learned what claustrophobia was all about. We arrived at Lewis and Clark Cavern State Park in Montana and all of the family made it into the opening for the then self-guided tour. That’s when our youngest daughter, Kim, said she wouldn’t go through the underground cavern. She said that she couldn’t handle being in cramped spaces. So she got back out of the entrance to the cavern. I showed her where we would come out, and she went there to wait for us to do the cavern route. I had tried to persu...
When I was in grade school, my best friend was Jon Skovlin. His father ran the local Penny’s store, and sometimes I worked with Jon and put together trikes, bikes, and wagons. The store sold a lot of these. Jon’s dad would pay us for assembling the toys. That’s when I decided that I didn’t want to do that kind of work later in life. That was kind of funny because my dad could do just about anything. Raising a family during the Depression, you didn’t just hire people to do tasks you didn’t know how to do. My dad learned how to do things by n...
We were on one of our vacation trips to Montana, Wyoming and Yellowstone Park and stopped for a time in Cody, Wyoming. We were looking for a place to stay because we wanted to take in the museum there and go to the night rodeo. We saw the sign for the Irma Hotel and decided to try our luck there for a bed for the night. When we asked if there was an available room, the clerk said the Buffalo Bill suite was available. It would afford two beds since our son Paul was along. We immediately took the suite. It was really two rooms along with a...
I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Ruby Mountain isn’t some rugged granite peak. Rather, it is a round-topped mountain in Nevada with a beautiful trail to the top. While it is over 10,000 feet in elevation, you can drive your car up to about 7,000 feet. I was looking in Sunset Magazine and came across a short item on a bed and breakfast located in the Ruby Mountains in Nevada. Looking it up, I saw it was close to Elko, where my wife and I were married. I had been wondering where we should go on a short vacation, so I called and made res...
We shouldn’t need a date on the calendar to remind us to be thankful. I am thankful all year long for my family. While they are scattered from Louisiana to north of Everett, it is like they are with me all year long. On Thanksgiving there were a dozen who made it home to have a great dinner and report on a lot of the things they did since we were last together. They brave the weather to come, and make the long and sometimes tedious drives so we can be together. It isn’t often that we are all together at the same time, but frequent calls kee...
While I was at the Citizen Newspaper in Bothell we were purchased by the Persis Corporation. They owned a number of newspapers and we were placed under the daily paper they owned in Bellevue. It was 1987. It created a lot of problems and opportunities. Instead of printing on our own small press, we started printing our paper in Bellevue. That’s where the opportunities came in. One of the Persis executives, Phil Gialanella, who was headquartered in Hawaii, would come over about once a month and hold a big show and tell time. He was instrumental...
A recent column on my motorcycle days put me in touch with one of the sons of my old friend Joe Emerson. Someone had sent him a copy of my comments about his dad and of our friendship while we were both living in Palouse. He said that his dad was in the Air Force, not the army, and that Joe was not a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes. I had misunderstood when Joe told me of his family’s property along the Columbia River when the dam backed up the water submerging the family home. Joe had said that his family was given land higher up f...
Lloyd Meeds represented Washington’s 2nd District in Congress for a number of years and was a frequent visitor to our newspaper in Bothell. He spent a lot of time in the district and would come by the paper for interviews and to report on what he was doing back in Washington. Quite often, his wife, Mary, would accompany him. I told the two, on one occasion, of my plan to travel to the far east, and they quickly suggested that I include Taiwan as one of the countries to visit. Mary Meeds was Chinese and a personal friend of Madame Chiang K...
Remember when our elected officials represented their constituents? That was before they found it better to represent themselves. Senators Warren Magnuson and Henry Jackson come to mind. Let me explain. When living in Bothell, I bought my youngest daughter a horse and kept it at a pasture nearby that was owned by a crusty old cowboy named Homer. I would go down and stand at the fence and watch the horse and chat with Homer. On one occasion, I met a local attorney who also had become friends with Homer, another cowboy of sorts. He told me that...
I had a few years as a motorcycle nut, riding a BSA. The BSA was built by the Birmingham Small Arms Company, which stopped building motorcycles and built war materials instead during World War II. I and my friend, Joe Emerson, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, bought our bikes the same day. Joe had moved to Palouse when his mother, Bertha, took a job with the Northern Pacific Railroad as a telegrapher. They had moved into a house just a few blocks away and the two of us were constant companions. Joe had an older brother, Guy, who...
My daughter Kim lives in Louisiana. She likes it there, just a ew miles from Denham Springs and on the banks of the Amite River. Two main reasons she likes it there are that most of the storms you hear about go around where she lives, and her neighbors are such caring people. The other morning, the humidity there was over 90%. This allows you to breaststroke from the bed to the kitchen in the morning. After a few minutes, she can go out on the deck and have a bug the size of a half dollar land on her arm, and then looking down, you can see a...
The Thai student we sponsored at the University of Washington while living in Bothell keeps coming back to me. His name is Khien, and I have mentioned him in previous columns. He was a college professor in Bangkok and already had his master’s and at that time was working on his doctorate. He had already written a half dozen books and was considered an expert on issues dealing with Mainland China. When I told him I was going to Thailand, he said he would have his nephew take me wherever I wanted to go. His nephew was taking care of his house a...
My boss at the Idaho Statesman in Boise told me when he hired me that when his reporters traveled, they went first class. True to his word, he would always ask me where I was going to stay when assignments took me out of Boise. If he thought of a better place he would ask the lady who made arrangements to change mine. I remember when I was sent to cover the Rose Bowl he changed my hotel accommodations to the Hollywood Hotel, a small but rather luxurious place near Hollywood and Vine. I came to understand that my boss was talking about land...
We all know the role music plays in our lives. Want to raise your spirits? Turn on some music. I have started to hold nightly concerts for my own benefit that can start by 9 p.m. and last until the early hours. I will come back to that in a minute. While living in Bothell years ago, I used to go down to Seattle to an old book and record store — Filippis, no longer in business. In looking through the old 78s, I found a couple of early-day Sons of the Pioneers music. You know, Tumbling Tumbleweeds and such. I bought them along with comedy r...
My wife and I lived the first time in the coulee back in 1953-55. I was a lumber grader down at the mill located above the dam. A fellow by the name of Kirkpatick owned 90% of the operation, and a fellow who ran the logging part of the company the other 10%. Logs were floated down the Columbia River to the mill site. With winter coming on, Kirkpatick advised the workers that the mill would shut down until spring. Not wanting to sit idle all winter, I answered an ad in the Spokesman for a grading job in Livingston, Montana. I threw a few things...
This is a continuation of earlier comments that education in America is not properly funded. I had pointed out that we need to rethink the value of teachers and the way we fund education, teachers included. I read a distressing article the other day that said many of our large cities in the U.S. will have to relocate by the end of the century because they will be unlivable due to climate change. The writer pointed out that regions will get so warm as to make them too hot for people to reside there. What makes this, if true, so distressing, is...
With covid numbers down, people have resumed long delayed travel interest. My family is no exception. It’s a test to balance caution and adventure. It started with my grandson, William, from Portland, closing out last year with a nine-week trip through Europe. How you can talk an employer into letting you go for nine weeks and still have your job waiting for you is beyond me. But he did. As a caution, William donned a mask when around large numbers of people and made the best of it. The overwhelming interest on the trip, which included n...
There is a national shortage of teachers, leaving some districts short of covering all their classrooms. While current events are creating problems in education, not the least of these problems are politics and financial resources. That teachers are underpaid is pretty well understood and agreed upon nationally. Teachers should be paid at least 25% more than they now receive. Something needs to happen nationally to shut down the vast exodus of teachers leaving. In order to provide new teaching recruits, we should provide four-year scholarships...
I got my desire to take drives from my dad who used to take us for rides all the time. He had an old car from the mid 30’s. I remember when my dad got his first new car, it was in the early 40’s before all effort turned to making things for World War II. The local Ford dealer drove up with a new car, came to the door and handed Dad the keys. He told him to drive it and, if he liked it, to come down and they would make a deal on it. In my earlier days, everyone had a canvas water bag hanging from their front bumper. We often drove up into the...
I have always been taught to give something back to society. For years I tried to do so by volunteering or running for public office. I have held office in park boards, library boards and school boards. Most recently I served 17 years on the North Central Regional Library Board and 10 years on the local school board. But there comes a time when that isn’t possible, so I have been trying to find a couple of charities that cover things I can identify with. There are so many needs in our world that could use some help, and people can choose t...
I recently wrote a column on my Aunt Voe. I am writing this column on my Aunt Lorena, just to show how important family is to help younger members grow up. I was born in a farmhouse on Four Mile Creek, just out of Palouse. My parents and siblings had arrived just months before from Minneapolis. My Aunt Lorena, my dad’s youngest sister, just happened to be at the house when delivery was imminent. My father had gone to town to get Dr. Dart, the family doctor, but I guess I decided to enter this world without Dart. The fact that Aunt Lorena did th...
Jesse Owens is probably the country’s most famous Olympic athlete when you consider the setting where he won his four gold medals. Owens won the gold in the 4x100 relay, the 220-yard dash, the 220 low hurdles and the broad jump, in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. He won more than the four medals, and he won the public relations tug with Adolph Hitler, who was trying to use the games as a way to show the world that the more traditional Aryan athlete was better than anyone else. Hitler had just come to power and was convinced by Göring that he co...
I have taken a lot of fishing tips over the years. Only one was successful. This was in Kodiak, Alaska. I was there to help the owner of the daily paper prepare her newspaper property for sale. It needed a lot of tweaking. I had been up there on several occasions, and on one of these trips the owner of the paper scheduled me to go out on a charter boat for halibut. The day of the trip, she showed up at the dock to introduce me to the skipper of the boat. They were obviously friends, and the skipper said he would look after me. The boat was 50...