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.
Screenshot
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.
Screenshot
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 useher 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.
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 neverhappened.
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.
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 childto 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.
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 …
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.
Screenshot
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.
Screenshot
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.
Since Boise City kept my folks from opening a trailer rental business within city limits, they looked five blocks south of our tiny one-bedroom home on 30th Street.
Those five blocks meant they were looking for property in Ada County. Where the streets were dirt. Crime prevention was handled by the sheriff. Septic was in individual tanks. And fires were put out by the Collister Fire District, a county entity that was “really very good.”
My folks found a block of pasture and garden land surrounded by 28th, Jordan, 29th and Gooding Streets, owned by a George and Chloetta Corbridge. It seems the Corbridges were ready to slow down and took my folks up on an offer to buy the western half of their farmland. The deed is dated July 3, 1946.
The Corbridges kept the eastern half of the block. Their cow mostly stayed in the pasture on the south side of his half-block. He continued to plant a thick garden that threatened to outgrow it’s northern quarter of the block. And he kept his chickens that didn’t seem much interested in wandering further than the rickety fence that surrounded their entire half-block.
And that, my friends, is how I spent fifteen years growing twenty-one blocks from the Capital Building of the State of Idaho. On roads that were dirt until after I graduated from Boise High School in 1964.
I don’t remember the day, but my Mother sure did. April 25, 1945. Five days before Hitler murdered his newly married bride and then shot himself. At 6:25 in the morning, despite Mom’s hard work and interminable efforts, my fat head just would not get beyond crowning.
Finally the doctors decided to take drastic measures by placing a contraption with three suction cups on what was showing of my head and yanking all 9 pounds and 5 ounces of me from her body.
Babies skulls are soft, an essential part of our getting through the birth channel. It is why the three suction cups that pulled me out left three very prominent black and blue lumps crowning the fat glory of me.
Somehow, after all that, my beautiful mother generously still loved me!
Years later Mom told me how excited Dad had been, running along the line of new dads looking through a viewing glass to see their newborns for the first time. Cigars were passed out and lit up as he made sure everyone looked where he was pointing while he exclaimed: “That’s my boy! That’s my boy!”
It was then Mom looked at me and confided, “But Dean — you were the UGLIEST baby I had ever seen!”
The grownups had no sense at all come Christmas Eve. Or was it they just loved to torture little kids?
I well remember the huge dinners at our house. Uncle Jake always brought the special full-sized Hershey’s candy bars that had to be frozen before eating so they went right in the top part of the refrigerator. Obscure aunts and uncles gathered. Cousins we barely knew showed up and it was fun to get under everyone’s feet chasing and screaming with them. Tall people with strange odors milled about chatting as if they owned the place.
Then we were all called to dinner.
I was old enough to know the big dinner table had been extended with extra “leaves,” although to me they looked like boards that matched the table. Even so we kids often got shuffled to card tables. But there were times we would sit with the adults. I loved seeing all the colors and shapes of the food and the glasses and the plates and knives and spoons and forks. I remember the clinks of metal on china and the big plates and bowls of smelly food that passed from right to left and sometimes from left to right. It was taken for granted, listening to odd stories from near strangers who did different things than I had ever imagined—stories from farms and construction sites and offices. And it was a thrill to see these people listen when I worked up an interesting adventure to blurt out.
It never seemed long before the platters of food had stopped being passed around for refills. Chewing slowed and more of Mom’s silverware that came from the special box with soft lining was laid on empty plates. The magic time was near, when somehow everyone stood up at the same time. Then, as soon as that magic coordinated exit from the table had been executed, the torture began.
It was, after all, Christmas Eve. Presents had been under the tree for days, each pawed and shaken and dreamt about. Each bright box had been checked and checked again to see that our name was on the tag. And even more gifts had been brought by folks who had come by for dinner. It was time at last! It was fine some of the older folks were slow finding a place to sit but it was time and we kids knew the bright paper was screaming for us to liberate it from whatever burden it was carrying.
In past years our sensible pleas and arguments had been denied but surely this year the grownups would listen to the voice of reason.
But no. Every year it was the same. Why be so crazy? It was obviously just to torture us!
We knew why adults sometimes talked about how resilient kids are—we had to be resilient to survive the horrors we suffered, dealing with unreasonable adults. The lame excuse to put off opening the presents was always the same. The moms and aunts couldn’t relax and enjoy opening presents until the dishes were done.
The agony. Did they have to laugh and talk so much instead of just getting the dishes done? Why take the time to wipe off the table and put away the leaves? Why can’t all that be done after the presents?
Well. The agony and the torture were soon forgotten. And soon after that so were the toys. The underwear, though used for months after the agony, was forgotten before Santa got down the chimney that night.
It’s been some seventy years since we waited so impatiently. During those seventy years I’ve never found any of those special Hershey’s candy bars that need to be frozen. Could it have been Mom was saving our appetites? No way. Uncle Jake found those bars special for us and we loved them snapping from the cold.
I am writing this on Christmas Day, 2020, the Christmas of Covid19. Between the pandemic and those seventy years my sister is not hosting the large Christmas gathering I’ve enjoyed the last several decades so I am sitting alone, finding myself writing about memories.
I’ve always been a bachelor and don’t mind the solitude. For one thing, it has let me reflect and come to realize the greatest gift of those youthful agonies and forgotten gifts—the greatest gift is the echo of those beloved women’s laughter rising above the clattering of washed plates.
Dad had spent months harping about the the fifty-two lakes that can be counted from Snowyside Mountain. He also had spent months harping about this bit of wisdom from experienced mountain climbers:
People don’t die going up mountains.
They die coming down.
This wisdom was a variation of our parents’ instructions that we kids were free to run up all the hills we want, but don’t let them catch us running down!
Whether it be a hill or a mountain, going down is when people are tired. Gravity is making it ease to get going too fast. And if you fall you do not fall a few degrees into the ground and rocks in front of you, you fall well over ninety degrees, through space, picking up speed until you hit the ground and rocks sloping away, where you keep sliding, scraping off skin and perhaps hitting your head on a rock to stop you.
Climbing Snowyside Mountain there were saddles between the smaller peaks before we reached the final summit of the mountain. One of these saddles was very narrow, with loose shale rock sloping steeply away from a path that was only a foot wide. The shale on both sides formed long slopes of scree that would not stop sliding out from under us should we slip onto it.
I remember this narrow path as some six to ten feet long but it might have been four.
Dad paused when he first saw this dangerous path, but his determination to get to the top of Snowyside let him judge Vicky and I as old enough to understand the danger. We three sat down and, legs dangling on both sides of the path for stability, inched our butts along until the danger had passed.
After reaching the summit and counting fifty-two lakes we headed down and again came to this narrow path.
Not one of us hesitated. We walked right across it!
Need I say more about how mountain climbers perish?
Dad boosted my sister and I up the last four-foot vertical rock and we covered the final few feet to the tippy top of Snowyside Mountain. Dad then got right to work counting every one of those fifty-two lakes he had heard about and making sure it was true—you can see through the crystal clear water to the bottom of every single one!
My sister Vicky and I set right to work on the most important task of reaching the top of any peak in the Sawtooths — finding one of the boards that were always scattered about, getting out our pocket knives, and leaving our mark at the top of the world.
Some folks marked their arrival at the top of the world with an initial and perhaps a date or their age. Some made sure their name was complete along with other pertinent information like where they were from. I scratched a bit at my initials before putting that aside and checking out all those lakes. Vicky made sure her carvings were dug deep and would pass the test of weathering at ten thousand feet. But even she had time to check out the lakes before we headed back the same way we had come.
I doubt Vicky’s 1955 effort at permanence is still hanging around at the top of the fifth highest peak in the Sawtooth Mountains, so I’m passing witness here, in our modern means of recording our life’s summits.
~ Here are a few more of Dad’s slides from Snowyside Peak in 1955 ~
My dad had climbed 9,363 foot Greylock Mountain in Atlanta when he was a kid.
I have a photo of him sitting atop a radio tower on Shafer Butte, a mile above Boise, when he was in his twenties.
He had something about getting up and looking around.
In the 1950s he found out that from Snowyside Peak in the Sawtooth Mountains you can see right through the clear waters to the bottom of fifty-two lakes. Yea, there were some “difficult spots” on the climb to the top. But from what he heard the peak was easily reach by following the ridge that rises from the Alice-Toxaway Loop Trail.
At 10,651 feet, Snowyside is the fifth highest peak in the Sawtooths. In 1955, when I was ten, our family of five broke camp at Toxaway Lake, loaded up the pack horses, and set out for the day’s adventure of checking out those fifty-two lakes.
Mom and my little sister made it to where the faint trail up Snowyside’s ridge gave way to rocks, bigger rocks and then boulders. Mom never was comfortable with heights and my sister’s legs were too short to get over the increasingly large stones so they decided to hunker down out of the wind.
My big sister Vicky, dad, Flip the dog and I pushed on.
I remember approaching the top of several peaks only to have another, higher peak appear just ahead. Those jagged high points before Snowyside Peak were a source of great disappointment and consternation.
Then we came to a vertical wall that stopped us. Dad considered a way around but the slopes were too steep and covered with dangerous scree. Yet looking through fifty-two lakes was calling and soon Dad was pushing from the bottom and Vicky and I managed to scramble past the obstacle. Dad was tall enough and reached the scramble spot on his own.
Unfortunately Flip was a dog who never did follow instructions. And, to be fair, his lack of opposable thumbs for scrambling made his lack of obedience mote, so poor Flip was left behind. We were sure he’d be in the same spot waiting our descent.
The wall turned out to be part of the final assent to the summit of Snowyside Mountain. Soon our eyes were watching the slope in front of us give way to every increasing open sky without another peak taunting “not yet you haven’t reached the top.”
And right there at the top of Snowyside Mountain was a slobbering, smiling, tail-wagging Flip imploring us to come look-see!
Deans Great Wahoo 