Tag Archives: 1950s

Gay Bashed, part 5: Epilogue

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It was in March of 2002 that I enjoyed driving to Alaska, seeing Northern Lights, and celebrating a moonlit shipboard romance. 

In 2009 I came across an internet post saying Scott Pasfield was traveling the United States. He was taking photographs of gay men from all walks of life to include in a large coffee table book. He was looking for stories that would make interesting reading to go along with the photos. 

I sent Scott a synopsis of my kidhood sexual paranoia during the1950s and my subsequent lifelong pattern of opting to avoid confrontation. It became a default to cowardice at every turn. And I told the story of being gay bashed in the parking lot of a bar in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory. I was 56 and driving the Alaskan Highway.

My synopsis to Scott concluded that being beat up is not recommended at all, but the next day the swollen left side of my head made me drive through the next town and toward a dot on the map. 

At that little dot I chanced onto an isolated room above a garage where the owners agreed to turn off their exterior lights. I enjoyed two glorious nights staring at curtains of light silently wafting across the sky. A few weeks later, thanks to not wanting to stay in Watson Lake on a return trip, I caught a ferry on the inland waterway and immersed myself in shipboard sex with a full moon filling the cabin with perfect light. 

Northern Lights and a shipboard romance—two blessings of lemonade being the result of an unfortunate lemon of an experience!

Scott liked my story. On his trip around the US he unloaded a portable photography studio of equipment in my home and found places for me to pose.

Gay in America, Portraits by Scott Pasfield, was published by Welcome Books in 2011. I was one of two Idaho men portrayed in it. 

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Unfortunately there are editors. Editors understand what publishers are looking for and editors have unlimited authority to edit as they see fit. Often that is an improvement. In my case the story shifted from one of misadventure leading to delightful blessings. Rather it was presented as a morality play of realizing “I had confronted my most awful fear …” (Editors. Can’t tell reflections with ’em. Can’t publish without ’em. Go figure.) 

However, I did get included in an excellent display of the vast variety of living as gay men. And I am part of exposing the silliness of stereotyping any human—whether gay or redneck or accountant. With the exception of all lawyers, of course …

My Folks #16: 30th Street #4, Needing Room

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By 1946, with my sister being three and myself having survived my first year, our tiny little house was getting snug. At the same time thelot across the alley had no more room for our expanding fleet of trailers. 

Two blocks north of our house on 30th Street, the block between 31st and 32nd Streets sat empty. It would sure be easy to move to.

It was a fine, flat patch of land perfectly adequate for my folk’s needs. It was in Boise City’s boundaries so was blessed with paved streets, fire and police protection and sewers to whisk our cares away.

It was also covered by Boise City rules, one being that neighbors could express their opinions about a business moving in next door. Years later my folks pointed out the home of the lady who thought the traffic, noise and dust of renting trailers would be too noisy, too much traffic and too much dust.  My folks had to agree but it did end their plans. They found another local some seven blocks away, south of State Street.

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After we moved from 30th Street the block my folks were eyeing for their business was filled with buildings even smaller than our 30th Street house. They were twelve freestanding buildings, made of cinderblock and all identical. Lined up in two rows, six were facing 30st Street and the other five had a view of 31st Street. 

At one time one of those buildings overlooking 31st Street was rented by my dad’s sister Reole and her handsome husband Earl. When I was six or so we visited Reole, Earl, and their sons Rodney and Craig at their home. 

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At the time we were living in a cinder block house and I had a legos-like toy set made up of cinderblock style pieces, so I identified with the life style. I vividly remember those cinderblock buildings standing alone on that otherwise empty city block. Now, in 2025, the buildings are still in use but there are carports, trees, awnings, and other additions making them much more cozy

Sawtooth Kidhood #1

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I was a kid in the 1950s and have always assumed everyone raised in Idaho spent every summer being drug over the Sawtooth Mountains with two or three horses in tow.

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Mom and Dad rented horses for our annual Sawtooth walk-about. Light-weight sleeping bags and cooking stoves and dried food were in the future. To cook in the wilderness we carried iron skillets and a Coleman white-gas camping stove. Food was in cans and bottles — and, yes, fried Spam and cold Vienna Sausages on crackers taste mighty fine in the mountain air, all dusty from the trail. Or at least they did when I was ten.

We did have the latest in air mattresses, flimsy plastic tubes molded together that only stayed inflated if no one was on them. Our bedding was heavy woolen blankets carried over the pack boxes on the backs of the horses. The blankets also served as handy padding for us kids when we got tired and were hoisted up on the top of the horses for a ride.

My beautiful picture

1954 — Vicky (sis), Victoria (M0m), Dean, Nyla (sis)

Tents, made of thick canvas, were too heavy to bother with so a couple of canvas tarps sufficed, one under our beds and one lying over them. It kept the dew off as well as the two inches of snow we woke to one August morning.

Every morning Mom and Dad packed our camp into boxes and loaded the horses and every evening it was all unpacked and set into a camp. We kids were kept busy blowing up mattresses and gathering wood, which was lying all about and easily available by breaking off dead branches from trees. Then it was time to play, often by riding the horses bareback.

My beautiful picture

1954 — Dean, Mom, Vicky, Nyla. Boxes fit on pack saddles.

Summer after summer we were crossing different trails in the Sawtooths. It was National Forest land at the time, not a National Wilderness, and in all our treks we only twice ran into Forest Service trail-maintenance pack strings. And only once did we run into another family. It was so unusual we became friends. For years we visited them at their place on Sunnyslope along the Snake River.

So, folks — that was part of my perfectly ordinary childhood. Now, at seventy years old and starting to tell some stories about it, is the first time I’ve realized just how unique it was. Stay tuned for some highlights…