Tag Archives: Flip

Car Camping #7: Store of Marvels

3 Replies

Somewhere in my kid-hood, I’m thinking between eight and ten years old, I remember Dad taking me along when he went to Pioneer Tent and Awning. It must have been 1954 or so. The large store was on Main Street at 6th in downtown Boise. 

Pioneer Bldg INT.jpg

I had no idea what Dad was doing there but I discovered three things: One, the building had a very cool white horse on the roof. Two, on entering the shop the smell of leather and oiled canvas opened my nostrils as my lungs drew in as much of that heavy aroma as I could manage. And third, there were wires hanging all over the ceiling. 

It was the strangest ceiling I had ever seen.

Just then a little jar zipped along one of the wires, whipped around a corner, and landed in what looked like an office on the balcony overlooking the first floor. I followed those wires back to the other end where each wire stopped at a different sales desk. Thanks to as much attention as a boy can muster in a new store it wasn’t long before I saw a clerk put papers in a jar, screw the jar to a lid attached to one of the wires, and pull down on a wooden handle attached to the wire with a short rope. 

The jar flew with amazing force and was slamming to a stop in the office in no time! From then on all I did was wait for another paper with payment to be sent whizzing to the office to be processed. Yes, even at that age I deduced the wire system replaced having cash registers being responsible for collecting payments. Who would have thought of such a thing? 

Writing this account, I learned the jars zipping around the ceiling were an early version of the pneumatic tubes banks now use to get cash and payments from our cars to the teller. Called Cash Carriers, the version in Pioneer Tent and Awning was a Wire Carrier. The mechanism the clerks used to send the containers zipping to and fro is called a catapult. 

If you ask me stores should still have wires catapulting jars around the ceiling if only to keep kids busy while mom and dad shop. Like I said, this is for the kids. I promise I won’t be standing in your way gawking at the ceiling.

 _______________________________________

PS – I couldn’t help but give more information on Wire Carriers. Here is the Wikipedia link.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_carrier.

PPS – I tried to find a good video of a Wire Carrier in motion. Alas, dear reader, you’ll have to search for one yourself. 

But I did find this most satisfying homily to The Rise and Fall of the Cash Railway. I am not the only child hanging on to the magic of those flying jars. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Dylan Thomas and many others have paid homage. 

The article also describes a fairly common disaster I had not thought of. It reprints a 1903 article from New Zealand involving a proper patron bringing her “big handsome dog” into a large dry good store during the Christmas rush. The dog had been trained as a pointer and was perfectly behaved. Then the patron’s cash went zipping to the cashier. 

I can only imagine if our completely undisciplined dog Flip had joined my Dad and I at Pioneer Tent and Awning …  

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-cash-railway

Flip 1957 INT.jpg

Sawtooth Kidhood 1955: Snowyside Mountain #1

5 Replies

My dad had climbed 9,363 foot Greylock Mountain in Atlanta when he was a kid.

Graylocks.png

I have a photo of him sitting atop a radio tower on Shafer Butte, a mile above Boise, when he was in his twenties.

radio tower.png

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.

Snowyside.png

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.

Ridge.png

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!

Grandjean to Alpine Lake #5: Heartbroken

3 Replies

When we got back to Grandjean after days in the wilderness, a soda pop at the Grandjean Lodge was a real treat.

Then there was the business of unloading the horses and mule. They were glad to be home, free from the weight of being beasts of burden.

Our dog Flip was scurrying about, excited as ever, and happened behind the mule as it was being unpacked. For whatever reason, the mule chose that moment to get spooked and let out a good kick. Flip was so startled he ran back up the trail from whence we had come.

We called and called. And called some more.

We waited and called.

Flip was not coming back.

flip INT.png

Dad had to be at work the next day, so, reluctantly, we packed up the car, waited some more, and drove the hundred slow, winding miles to Boise.

Four days later we got a call from the Lodge saying they had Flip.

They had seen him three times before that. He would get as far as the edge of the lodge property and look around, then head back up the trail.  Each time he was a little slower to run away when the folks at Grandjean started to approach.

Finally Flip was so tired and torn up and famished he let the folks at Grandjean get hold of him. He had been kept in the lodge ever since. He was eating but he was broken hearted.

The folks at Grandjean figured Flip had run back and fourth four times, covering the entire trail we had been camping on for days, in a desperate effort to find us.

So he laid in the lodge at Grandjean, without the energy or will to move. But they were keeping him inside just to make sure he didn’t head up the trail once again.

Two days after the call, Flip was languid on the floor when an ear perked up. In seconds his head was off the floor, aiming for a better listen. And suddenly he was on his feet, barking and whining and dancing and jumping and wild with joy.

It was another ten minutes before the humans could hear the deep throaty V-8 engine of my Dad’s Cadillac driving up the road. But they knew it was coming.

When the green car was well in sight, they let Flip out the door. As he tore past them and out the gate and onto the road his tail was wagging so hard his back legs had trouble continuing to hit the dirt.

Our dad had trouble getting the car door open and then trouble getting out of the car because he was being so jumped on and face-licked by the world’s most joyful soul.