My Folks #26 – 29th St #10 – Our Playground #6 – Under the Clotheslines

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Thanks to building outside of Boise’s city limits there was no sewer service so every home in our neighborhood had its own septic tank.  My folks did not put in one septic tank for a family of five. They buried two. 

The tanks were laid end-to-end just south of our side door. They were covered with a concrete slab wide enough for six clothes lines, giving a family’s worth of sheets plenty of room to flap in the wind. The lines were so long they needed a post in the middle to keep them suspended. 

Along with no sewer service, our county streets were dirt. That expansive slab of concrete between our septic tanks and our clothes lines was the only large paved section of ground in the neighborhood. Hence, this slab is where my sisters and I, along with many neighborhood friends, learned to stay on top of tricycles, steel-wheeled clamp-on roller skates, and bicycles. Only race car drivers get as good at circling in ovals!

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But a challenge kept us from even more concrete to enjoy. On the far end of our long house three commercial overhead doors took up half the building’s west side. In front of these shop doors a wide concrete slab angled gently away to allow for drainage. It was even larger than the slab under the clotheslines! 

Connecting the clothes lines and the shop was a concrete sidewalk.

This sidewalk around the west and south sides of the house was not a problem for our wheels, folks. The problem was getting up and down the two-foot slope between the level of the house and the level of the clothes lines (see: My Folks #21 – 29th St #5 – Our Playground #1 – Berms.) This slope was covered with concrete pavers. Flat pavers on undulating ground always have uneven edges waiting to catch feet and wheels.

The effects of changing gravity going up and down these pavers on trikes and bikes were soon adjusted to. But the small steel wheels of the roller skates got caught on the rough pavers while gravity was taking effect.. 

The learning curve might have included some scrapped elbows but we soon figured out half-skating and half-walking over that slope and the expanded range of traveling on paved surfaces kept us busy for a summer or two. But vast new frontiers were grabbing our imaginations. 

We did not try the small steel wheels of our skates on the dirt roads of our neighborhood. And trikes were not that useful. But by the time the big wheels of adult bicycles were beneath us those dirt roads opened up vast new opportunities …

To see the movies from under the clothes lines and getting on the streets, CLICK HERE

Burning Questions 1 – Over or Under

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 August 24, 2026

I usually ignore these random whiteboard opinion polls in the hallways of my local YMCA. 

But I didn’t even notice this one had written words. I was too busy looking for the marker so my opinion would weigh in. 

I was glad to see most of we Americans can and do agree on the only sensible approach to an important issue. 

Even so, we do have to respect those independent fools who think it best to go searching behind the roll for the end of the paper. Variety being the spice of life and all that … 

My Folks #25 – 29th St #9- Our Playground 5 – Tetherball

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With the injury of the Davies’ boy our folks thought better of the spinning board that did such a great job of attracting preschool children. (see My Folks #24 – 29th St #8 – Our Playground 4 – Whirligig)

The first casualty was the rear transfer case that let the teeter totter transform into a much preferred whirligig. As I remember the gears in the transfer case got welded together and the same case was mounted in new concrete just to the west of the swings. We three kids pressed our handprints and my folks put their thumb print into the concrete securing the transfer case. A much taller metal pole than the whirligig had been built around was standing into the sky. 

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Tetherball was a new game to us but a some AI research tells me the sport traces back to 1880’s England where it was played with tennis rackets. Striking with the hands and heavier balls were added in the early 1900s. The game was standardized for parks and schools in the 1920s, which also saw the upright pole measuring 10 feet. 

The game is for two people standing on either side of the pole to hit the ball in opposite directions. The ball, tethered to the pole on a long cord, gets wound around the pole in opposing directions until the cord is completely wound tight in either direction. Winning the game means winding the ball in your direction until there is no more cord to wind. 

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Vicky was my older sister by two years and she was always much more athletic and I.  She mastered swinging that tethered ball high in the air so it passed out of reach over my head. It then swooped low on Vicky’s side of the pole so she could smack it with even more energy in a high arch over my frustrated hands. Vicky went on to use  her skills to dominate the tetherball poles at our grade school. 

My strategy soon became keeping that ball from swinging into high and low trips around the pole. 

That might have actually happened. Once. 

My Folks #24 – 29th St #8 – Our Playground 4 – Whirligig

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While barrels and swings kept we kids amused dad got busy with yet another elaborate toy for our playground. He came across a vehicle’s rear transfer case and set it solid in concrete half way between the swings and the house. A metal post stuck straight up from the transfer case with a short bar welded onto the post some four feet from the ground.

Dad then drilled a hole in the middle of a board and placed the board over the upright post so the board rested on the short metal bar. With half the board projecting from both sides of the metal bar it made an excellent teeter totter for we young kids. We soon learned the evil game of jumping off while our companion on the other end of the board was high in the air. 

And we soon learned the price of revenge …

Even more thrilling than teeter tottering was when the board spun around. Dad made sure the gears in the transfer case still ran freely so the board we sat on was free to twirl. In fact, we never called the contraption a teeter totter. It was always “the whirligig.”

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That board was a 2×6 straight piece of lumber. There were no indents for legs nor were there handles to grab onto.

In a home movie dad has placed my older sister on one end of the board with my younger sister and I spaced out on the other end so the board was balanced out flat. While we were balanced above the ground dad is in the center of the board pushing the whirligig as fast as he could. I remember hanging on tighter and tighter to keep the spinning force from throwing me off the end and cascading onto the ground. Even so, while my younger sister and I gripped ever tighter, my older sister experimented with being able to lay flat on her belly and spread her arms and legs out, spinning around the post with only her weight to keep her from being thrown into oblivion. Then dad is shown running like the dickens to get away from the whirligig once we were at maximum daddy-power. 

Unfortunately dad was seldom around. We neighborhood kids were as resourceful as we could be at speeding up the whirligig for one another but I don’t remember ever reaching the threat of centrifugal disaster without adult power.

TO SEE THE MOVIE CLICK HERE

One of Vicky’s neighborhood friends was the Davies boy. They lived across the dirt street and the second door south. They were famous with we kids because their dog was “a REAL WOLF” and their dad called them home by standing in their yard and producing an extremely loud whistle. 

Davies had a little brother even younger than my sister Nyla. One day that younger brother walked absentmindedly into the spinning whirligig. His mouth was just at the right height to get smacked by the board. Rumors of a lawsuit began circulating. A few days later my older sister was playing on the Davie’s swing set when she fell off and broke her arm. 

I was quite jealous of Vicky’s plaster cast, what with everyone signing and fussing over it. Then that 1940s medical technology began to stink and she began poking anything she could between the cast and her arm it to get relief from the itch. An unbent wire clothes hanger seemed to work as well as anything. It went on for weeks.

Rumors of lawsuits faded away and the whirligig disappeared. 

My Folks #23 – 29th St #7- Our Playground 3 – Swings

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After setting up the north half of our property for a trailer rental business and getting grass to grow on the south half, my dad got busy with metal pipes and his welding machine. 

Before long a structure set in concrete towered over our playground. Two swings hung on long chains between two posts. Steel rings on chains hung on the south side of one post and a monkey bar suspended between two other chains tempted kids on the north side of the other post.

Across 29th Street to the west of the swings was a grocery store. Typical of neighborhood grocery stores this family-owned shop was small, in this case a one story stucco building. Also typical, a Coca-Cola signs with the store’s name was displayed over the door. Pumping our tall swings until we could see the flat roof of the store became a popular challenge as every kid in the neighborhood grew stronger.

As we grew stronger and pulled the swings ever higher we became addicted to a new sensation. At the moment of reaching the greatest height and before starting on the swing back, the chains would go slack. A brief snatch of weightlessness hesitated. Then our butts came slamming back onto the wooden seat of the swing as the chains snapped every link together, pulling us into a curve and away from smacking straight into the earth. It was thrilling. 

To this day, when I see astronauts floating in space, I remember that weightlessness. I’ll bet those astronauts have even better view of that flat roof …

Was the salvation of the chains as thrilling as when we jumped off of the seat at ever higher upswings to land on our feet farther and farther out onto the grass? Was it as thrilling as when we laid our bellies on the flat seats and twisted the chains up tight only to pick up our feet and let the chains straighten out by spinning us? The chains separated and dropped us with a thump when they straightened out only to have the momentum that twisted the chains together for shorter and shorter twists before staying at rest. 

Was it as thrilling as swinging so high that we’d go over the top of the towering swings and around to the other side? 

 

Well. That never  happened. 

Try as we might we never got quite up to horizontal with the top of the swing set. But my mind spent plenty of time contemplating the possibilities: Not going fast enough to keep the seat extended. A moment of weightlessness before falling onto the top of the swing set before plunging to the ground. Or succeeding on going so fast I’d keep wrapping the chains around the top, ever closer to squeezing myself into the pipe the swings hung from. Gruesome and gruesomer, my fantasies drew me in.

Call me a chicken but I never got close to swinging over the top of the swing set. But then, neither did anyone else.

TO VIEW ALL PHOTOS AS MOVIES CLICK HERE

My Folks #22 – 29th St #6 – Our Playground #2 – Barrels

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Before long dad figured out empty 50-gallon oil barrels were better at keeping kids busy and active than most playground equipment. One barrel became two. The heavy steel barrels were great for walking on, like lumberjacks staying on top of rolling logs. That could be augmented by one of we kids folded in the barrel, heads and heals and butts tumbling over one another like a dryer drum. No matter how evenly we tried to fold ourselves into the drum one end of us was always heavier than the other. Whoever was walking on top of the drum was challenged with lifting the heavy parts of the inner child  to the top of the barrel only to instantly shif to holding the barrel back while the inner child’s weight sped the barrel out from under them. If the kid walking on top of the barrel should loose control and fall forward the barrel and its occupant would roll over them and walker would instantly be dead. It all made perfect sense to us. 

We all got quite good at walking on those two barrels.  

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MOVIE

None of us got good at walking the barrels down the two-foot slope of the berm surrounding the house, but rolling down it while being inside was a thrill! 

An endlessly interesting science experiment — although we did not know the words “science” or “experiment” — was filling a barrel with water from the garden hose. With great effort against the weight we would push the barrel over and witness a mighty flood fanning over the yard. 

Yep. I learned early that water is heavy and runs downhill …

My Folks #21 – 29th St #5 – Our Playground #1 – Berms

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Our 29th Street half of a block drained to the southwest. To level the machine shop / house building a two-foot infill had been excavated to support the southern house half of the building. With extra room left for a sidewalk around the house, this infill sloped down to the natural lay of the land. Covered with grass, those two feet of sloping ground became an endless source of amusement for we three toddlers. 

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It was heaven on a summer day, rolling down the cool grass. The green blades tingling our skin. The rich, moist smell of plant and soil. 

In 1950, when I was five, the City of Boise built their first wastewater treatment plant two miles down river from our place. A 1947 bond had passed voter approval by 91%  — 25 years before the federal Clean Water Act required keeping our waterways clean for fish and kids. This sewer plant had a gigantic grass covered berm, perhaps to contain wastewater should one of the large tanks burst. 

As a big boy of five, the little two-foot slope in front of our house had gotten to be about one roll. Our folks were soon driving we kids down State Street for extended rolling in the grass.

From one of dad’s 16mm movies I see he took the opportunity to enjoy some summersaulting himself.  I don’t remember the place smelling of sewer, but the berm along Lander Street was on the prevailing up-wind side of the wastewater plant.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MOVIE

And that is how gravity became friends with my sisters and I long before I knew there was a word for it.

My Folks #20 – 29th St #4 – Business Promotions

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The 1950 Statewide article (see last post, My Folks #20) was not the only promotion my folks dreamt up to promote their budding rental business. 

My sisters and I well remember throwing saltwater taffy from one of our trailers promoting Arians Tillers while dad slowly drove one of our Ford tractors along the streets of Boise. It was a warm day and I remember all the kids scurrying for candy as eagerly as I had scurried a year before when watching the 4th of July Parade. Or was it a parade promoting the Western Idaho Fair?

Our displays at the Western Idaho State Fairs would have been in the early 1950s. For several years mom and dad drove a sturdy stake in the ground so the largest of our tillers would forever run in a circle digging the earth into perfect bedding soil.

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A box of glass endlessly kept water from a circling Rain Bird sprinkler from spraying the crowd. Trailers and tractors and implements showed the variety of useful machines that my folks made available to rent or buy. Tables full of sprinkler heads and stands kept one or both of my parents busy demonstrating just how versatile Rain Birds are with their adjustable spray patterns. I have no idea how many sprinklers left that fair on their way to new homes. 

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Meanwhile my older sister Vicky was trusted with some change to take my younger sister and I discovering the Fair. That ground, at the corner of Fairview and Orchard, is now a hole in the ground carrying the 184 freeway Connector into Boise. Commercial Tire and KTVB studios now occupy the Fairview Avenue side of the site. PBS Channel 4 now operates out of the Orchard Avenue corner of the site. 

To this day, having a Pronto Pup with lots of mustard remains an absolute necessity for my Fair visits. Some of the rides Vicky talked us into? I have long since been passing them by.

My Folks #19 – 29th St #3 – Our Business

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By 1950 my folks had secured retail dealerships for Rain Bird sprinklers and Arians tillers. A lot of sprinklers moved through our garage while some Ariens tillers stuck around to be rented again and again. We even had special trailers for getting them to the job site. 

For three years the trailers and tillers and tractor all behaved themselves by staying on the graveled northern half of our property. But in 1950 we kids watched our folks line things up in front of our garage doors while even spilling some over onto the lawn. The lawn was our play place! I was five when my folks started acting funny.

Years later I came across evidence of how this strange behavior came to live as snippets in my memory. 

Thank goodness my folks saved the photos this reporter took of our property as well as copies of his article. It sure gives insight to my mother’s busy life and my dad’s sensitive heart. Here is a link to  a PDF that will open for easy reading or downloading.

OPEN ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

My Folks # 18 – 29th St #2 – Filling Room

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Nothing about building our new home south of State Street remains in my memory, but then I was one year old at the time. I presume most of those days and evenings were spent with my mother at our tiny home on 30th Street north of State Street while dad spent evenings and weekends five blocks to the south, turning half of Mr. Corbridge’s farm into gravel and lawn. 

The block slanted from the northeast to the southwest. A level pad had to be created before construction of a combination machine shop and living space could begin. 

On the north half of the building, this pad left the three large doors of the machine shop essentially level with the gravel lot. The southern half of the building extended onto a two-foot berm that leveled the slopping ground. This berm was soon covered by lawn where we toddlers spent hours rolling down this gentle slope.

If only my folks were still with us so I could ask, but I think scratching the northern quarter of the block into gravel for renting trailers and leveling a pad for an extended building would have been when my parents thought it prudent to invest in a Ford N Series tractor. They soon found the requests to rent the full-sized tractor were as insistent as those looking for trailers. 

By as early as I remember we were watching two Ford N Series tractors driving away in the hands of strangers. Some helped with the large gardens people were still maintaining. Some were turning those gardens and Boise’s surrounding hills into home sites.

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