News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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What couples spend on weddings is mind boggling. I was in Southern Idaho, and my future wife, Dorothy, agreed to marry me. I didn’t know anyone except the family, and she wasn’t interested in planning a wedding, so we did the only thing left: we eloped. Spending a lot of money to get married seems ridiculous. Some families spend a lot more than the down payment on a home. The amount you spend has nothing to do with how long the marriage will last. We spent a couple of hundred dollars and our marriage lasted 69 years, until I lost her because of...
When traveling abroad, you meet a lot of people, most of them casually. Not the case with the Fujimotos from Tokyo. It all started here in the U.S. when we got involved with a student FIUTS organization. We were sponsoring a student from Thailand, and sponsors and students were having a get together to get acquainted. In chatting with a student from Japan, I mentioned that I was going there. He said if I would give him my itinerary, he would have his sister show me around. I arrived and was staying at the Okura Hotel, at the time one of the...
Al Berro had the most successful tavern in Boise. I’m sure he made a good living with it. But Al had other interests. Mainly, he was known far more as a boxing and wrestling promoter. Al carefully developed fighters, two of them eventually being rated by Ring Magazine, the bible for rating boxers. He carefully got them fights they could win, building up records. It took a long time. Roque Maravilla and George Logan were rated by Ring Magazine. Maravilla was fifth in the light heavy division and eighth for Logan in the heavyweight division. A...
While living in Boise, we decided to drive up to Payette Lake, about a two-hour drive. At Cascade, we drove around and ended up on a dirt road that headed east. We kept going and ended up in what is called the Stanley Basin. Stanley is a town of maybe 500-600 people. The town has a two-room schoolhouse with kids from all grades. But the little village houses a gigantic view of the Sawtooth Mountain Range. Its ragged rocky mountains reminded me of the Teton Range in Wyoming. It was our first discovery of the Sawtooths. Stanley is about 65 miles...
Everybody has favorite places. Some are lucky enough to live in them. For me, I have been lucky enough to live near some of them. I guess a favorite place is a place that captures your imagination and at the same time makes you feel good. I know of places I’ve been that didn’t do that. My travel agent in Kirkland called me one day while we were living in Bothell and said he had come across a special trip. Well, it turned out to be the Cayman Islands, where the water is clear and the sun bears down on you from midday on. We went for a week and...
It’s said that a dog is man’s best friend. Not always. I’ve had a couple that wouldn’t qualify. I had a dog when I was in high school in Palouse. It was a shepherd, black, brown and white. We lived about a half mile from the school and no bus service so I had to walk. Every afternoon when I was walking home the dog would sit in the front yard and watch for me. When the dog could see me, it would race down the road to greet me. I really liked that dog. Later, someone shot it. When my wife and I married, she had a dog. We moved to Wilbur and ren...
While I have never been firmly hooked on fishing, I do have a history of trying my luck. I don’t own rod or reel. I have owned several but the interest of family members has made them disappear. My first experience was when I was a kid in Palouse. The Palouse River was not far away. In fact, it flowed through the center of town. Our family lived above the river. It was only a couple of blocks away. My first gear was a cane pole with some line tied around the end and of course a hook. At the time I could dig a few worms, grab my pole, and I w...
The spring runoff will offer the brave whitewater rafting. I’ve had a number of exciting whitewater runs, my last the best. We signed on to a two-day raft trip on the Salmon and Snake Rivers. Most of the time we were in deep canyons, barely able to see the sun. It was in May, and the water was ice cold and the temperature hot. The plan was to do the Salmon first and then take on the Snake. An arrangement was made for us to stay in a log cabin near the end of the Salmon run. My wife and I had taken a number of whitewater trips on the Snake, b...
I have flown several thousand miles in commercial jets, but small planes are my preference. My first small plane ride was here in Grand Coulee and my last was also from here. In the mid 1950’s I was a lumber grader in the planing mill above the dam. I worked for a man named Kirkpatrick. Only the old timers will likely remember either. I worked with a guy who claimed to be an Alaska bush pilot, and he had his own plane here. He told stories of landing in berry patches that stained the underside of his plane. When he invited me to go flying w...
While a member of FIUTS (Foundation International Understanding Through students) I met a young lady from Saigon, who when she learned I was going to Vietnam asked me to visit her parents. My wife and I sponsored two students at the University of Washington under the program. One was from Thailand and the other from Hong Kong. While in the program we met dozens of students who had been sponsored by others in the area. The young Vietnamese lady asked me to look her parents up and convey her greetings if I had the time. I took down their address...
Atlanta is known for the number of streets with the word “peach” in them. Thankfully, there’s more to Atlanta than peaches. We were there for a newspaper conference, and in the evenings there wasn’t anything going on. So it became a time to explore. In the afternoon one day we went to the church where Martin Luther King preached on Sundays when he was in the city. It was an old church and there were signs out front so you could tell you were at the right place. I guess the reason to go there was to say you had been there. The evenings were fu...
It had always been my interest to go to Santa Fe. A couple of things happened to make that possible. First, friends of ours from Woodinville invited us down to Phoenix where they had a second home. It ended up as a week-long vacation. And my wife had her gift shop and design business in Bothell Landing. She had ordered and sold some items from a firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She had a couple of interior designers that worked big jobs for her. Those jobs included rooms of furniture, floor coverings, etc. She sold wallpaper and stocked about 40...
When we lived in Nampa, Idaho, we got the urge to go camping. So we had to pick a place to camp and get a ton of costly gear. We always liked the mountains, so we drove north of Boise to a place called Lowman. It was a place, not a town. There was a meadow there with a small stream running through it. This was when you could camp most anywhere. So we picked our spot and started laying in some gear. The first thing was a tent. We purchased an umbrella tent that had a pole in the middle. It was pretty good size because at the time we had three...
The Bigfoot I am writing about roamed the hills in Idaho’s Owyhee County in the 1850s. He was born to a white man and Cherokee woman and was named Starr Wilkerson. He later got his name “Bigfoot” partially because his foot measured 17.5 inches. He was given the name by native people at the time. He initially got in trouble while traveling a wagon train west when he took a liking to a woman on the train. Nothing wrong with that except another man had the same desire and the two had it out. As a result, Starr left the wagon train and came under t...
I pick the Grand Teton National Park as one of my favorite places. The scenery, the animals and that wonderful range of mountains make it a grand place to visit. The biggest attraction is how the mountains make you feel. On one visit, I took the raft float trip through the park on the Snake River. It was dirt early in the morning, scheduled so you could see the sun illuminating the snow-capped mountain range. It seemed to change color as the sun had its way with the view. It was cold – bitter cold. There was just me and my oldest son, Paul, t...
S Last week I commented on my least favorite place, the entire state of Texas. This week I am commenting about the Hagerman area, a small town with under 1,000 population. The interesting part includes the area within five miles of the town. I first was drawn to Hagerman when I was a college student back in 1956. I had heard about the fossil beds, and a couple of friends and I drove east from Boise some 100 miles. The fossil beds are in a gravel-packed hill above the Snake River. At the time there were no restrictions on digging in the area. So...
Everyone who has traveled much has his favorite and least favorite places. Texas, all of it, gets my nod as my least favorite place. I have been to Texas on four occasions, but my brother David, was the convincing factor. He like me, got his start with Potlatch Forests, Inc. I worked at Potlatch and he worked at their plant in Lewiston. Along the way he accepted a position with the compliance arm of the outfit that checked construction ptojrcts to see if you were using the lumber quality that was required. They sent him to Texas. My brother...
My wife and I took a temporary job in Livingston, Montana back in 1953. It was temporary because I planned to return to Grand Coulee when the mill where I worked was ready to open up in the spring. I graded lumber at the planing mill above the dam for a guy named Kirkpatrick. They closed down in late fall when they ran out of logs. I saw an ad in the Spokane paper that Downer Lumber Company in Livingston was looking for a lumber grader. I promptly answered it. I got a quick response and we packed a few necessary items in our car and drove to...
The Lucas family had a logging operation during the Great Depression near Bovill, Idaho. My oldest uncle, Ralph Lucas, was in charge, but the crew was full of members of the family, including my dad. It was all virgin forests then and had never seen a saw nor work crews. The logs were so large that you could only get three on a truck or railroad car. Only a few mills had saws large enough to cut the logs, so they sold to the mill at Potlatch, Idaho. There wasn’t much machinery in those days, so timber was cut by crosscut saws with two men on t...
Nothing is more rewarding than making a new friend. Sometimes the circumstances are unusual, as I was in this case. I had gone to the restaurant here in Electric City for breakfast, and when I entered it was apparent that the tables were full and there was no place to sit. When I was about to stand and wait for a table, a little boy sitting at a small table for two caught my attention and offered the spot at his table. That was the beginning of a new friendship. The boy’s name is Daxton, and he is 6 years old. Dax, as he likes to be called, s...
It always seemed I ended up with a fry cooking job. It started in high school, quite by accident. A friend had the fry cooking job at The Oasis in Palouse, one of three restaurants in town at the time. One of the owners, Ellen, asked me if I would come in and help out for the evening. I would be washing dishes and peeling spuds for 50 cents an hour while she filled in as fry cook. My friend didn’t show for the second night and Ellen asked if I would like the job. I said yes and she assured me that she would stay with me until I was ready to go...
The Great Depression was a great teacher. You’ve read about it, but few of you experienced it. As a youngster it wasn’t as bad for me as many others. I credit my parents for sparing me the suffering that hit America. It didn’t hit and then change. It hit and held on for my entire childhood. I still remember the fun I had growing up, more so than my three older brothers and sister. I don’t remember any of them who expressed any fond memories. Along came the war and suddenly I was cast into the real world. First, my oldest brother Richard...
My son Paul is finally returned from Alaska. I had written about his “once in a lifetime” camping and exploring trip to Alaska. He left his home just north of Everett on May 15 and got back Oct. 4. He described it as his retirement dream. Paul drove 16,996 miles, went through a new set of tires, and cooked a lot of meals. His goal was to see a lot of Alaska. He did! Paul said he was on all major roads and a host of minor ones. He retired last year and spent the better part of six months planning the trip. A return trip is being discussed. Pau...
I have been in the writing business almost 70 years. It started under difficult circumstances and almost ended the same way. I took a couple of journalism classes early on and my prof, Helen Wilson, took a liking to my work. When an opening came up on the staff of the small daily paper in Nampa, Idaho, she arranged for me to go in for an interview. I talked with the editor, Jack Scudder, who sensed my hesitation. He explained that as sports editor I would be following and writing about sports events in the area. After I said I didn’t think I wa...
At 94, I am still not old enough to answer what I think I owe my present age to. I suppose I could say that I drank sparingly and quit smoking when I was 20 years old, or more accurately when I met my wife. I was born on a farm and lived there until I was 6. My parents often told me that we moved to town so I could start school. That was in 1936, in Palouse. I never was comfortable on the farm. My siblings and I always were wondering what was going on in town. We lived four miles out. So we moved to town, and I started what some might call my...