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. Quirbridge’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.