Beloved Things Now Gone By Linden B. Bateman Photos Courtesy of Linden B. Bateman “My Town, Idaho” is the 2019 theme for the Idaho Day observance held in the Idaho Capitol in Boise and statewide each year to
A Soccer Fan Gets His Wish By Nathan Davis For millions of people, soccer isn’t just a sport, it’s a way of life that sometimes can border on near-religious devotion. Throughout most of my life, I’ve loved soccer
World War I Veterans By Linden B. Bateman Photos courtesy of Linden B. Bateman Each year, Idaho Day commemorates the creation of the Idaho Territory by President Abraham Lincoln on March 4, 1863. This year, the observance at
Before the sun is up, I muster all the strength I have to walk into the room, which is full of confusion, people going in every direction. What am I doing, again? I ask myself. The doctor wants to know where the patient’s family is, a nurse yells for me to hold an airway, another yells at me that someone is ready to be checked in. Continue reading
What in the world am I doing? Am I crazy? Did you hear that smack? Am I hurt? Is this a midlife crisis? Such questions crash through my mind as I lie loose-limbed on my back looking at the metal-beamed ceiling above me through a metal-barred cage across my face.
The cage is the front of my hockey helmet. The ceiling is the cover over the ice rink in Idaho Falls. I’m back-bound because a new skater who doesn’t know how to stop just took me out from behind. I dropped as quickly as an icicle unhinged from a roof’s raingutter.
It’s week one of hockey season for the Idaho Falls Youth Hockey Association. Dozens of chilly-faced children are at the city rink for their first hockey lesson. They pile through the gate onto the ice like chips poured out of a bag. They sort themselves into a single layer and try to stand. They scramble for footing on finely-ground skate blades, find no steady stance, and pinwheel their limbs until they’re laid out on the ice again. Continue reading
Forty-two art benches grace downtown Idaho Falls and the Snake River greenbelt. Each one has a story. But how they got there is the story I want to tell.
Downtown Idaho Falls has been called a lot of things. The old timers once referred to it as “Alcohol Falls.” My husband Jerry, a retired sheep and cattle rancher, fondly remembers driving sheepherders and camp-tenders into downtown from his family ranch right after they collected their six months’ of winter and trail wages. It was the early 1950s. The first stops were always the Bon Villa and Jack’s Club, two notorious bars sometimes called “blind pigs” by the locals. Recognizing the windfall delivered to their establishments, the bartenders would allow Jerry, the underaged teen chauffer, to belly up to the bar for free while the hired hands bought rounds for the house.
During the ‘60s, the downtown’s hurly burly persona began to fade. The department stores and movie theaters fled to suburban shopping centers and malls, which offered bigger buildings, bigger parking lots, and bigger crowds. The exodus continued when more downtown professional firms and restaurants moved to the east side of town, where the new shopping centers, malls and hospital were now located. In the early ‘90s, downtown Idaho Falls had about hit bottom—too many vacant storefronts and too few shoppers. As local developer Larry Reinhart told me back then, “I am tired of Idaho Falls being called Jackson Hole’s ugly stepsister.” Continue reading
Even in the final moments of my last evening as a student in Montreal, as I sat in a park down the street from McGill University, where I’d spent most of the past five years studying physics and working on the student newspaper, somewhere very far away was on my mind. “Idaho Falls.”
Continue reading
A New Nest in the Neighborhood Story and Photos by Kris Millgate February The wind is down, the temperature barely up. The road is clear of ice and traffic. My eyes linger on the landscape as I drive
Before nightfall on April 18, 2011, most of Phyllis Hand’s family arrived home in Boise, gathering in the way families do under the circumstances of a death: with laughter, tears, shared angst for our surviving father, and the knowledge that we needed to plan a wake and a funeral. Though she was seventy-nine and had recently experienced health problems, her death came as a shock.
Each of her six children acted according to their gifts and instincts. The eldest, Kathi, envisioned a funeral mass for our “cradle Catholic” mother while her sisters, Karen and Kris, focused on bringing comfort to Dad. My brothers, Dave and Marty, became hosts and took steps to make sure everyone experienced solace amid bits of levity. We quickly realized that because of the Easter calendar, Mom’s funeral would be delayed, which also meant everyone would be home together for the week, Mom’s final triumph.
I volunteered to draft her obituary and found comfort in my home’s isolation and from a book, If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, Heather Lende’s story of life (and death) in Haines, Alaska, her adopted hometown. Heather writes obituaries in the local paper and her words helped me craft a meaningful (if quite long) summary of Mom’s life. Dad and my siblings made a few changes but liked the obituary. At that moment, their opinions were the only ones that mattered.
But this story is not about an obituary or a funeral. It’s about a scroll. Continue reading
