My dad’s plan on marrying my mother was the same it had been with his first wife — to move in with his folks at the farmhouse out on Horseshoe Bend Road. 

It was a large two-level house with the latest in modern counter-balanced windows that offered good circulation in the summer months. It also featured an outhouse, chicken coop, hay barn and milking shed, all of which guaranteed a rich “bouquet” that permeated the entire premises. In that department I’m sure it was no different than any barnyard. 

Years later my mother assured me she was having nothing to do with that plan: “He was not moveing me into that smelly old house to take care of his mother and aging brother and sister.” 

And he didn’t!

Instead they rented a small place in Boise until they bought a single lot on 30th Street. It was and remains at one block north of Lowell Grade School’s baseball backstop.  

Soon they were building a small one-bedroom house. Three years after their wedding on June 14, 1940, my older sister joined the few pieces of furniture that were crowding that space. I joined them two years after that.