On the Move Outdoors

Story and Photos by George Currier

Lewiston people never sit still and are seldom indoors. That’s the main thing my wife Betty and I have learned since we moved here from St. Maries long ago. Days and evenings, we practically live on our deck.

The city operates twenty-three parks on about two hundred acres of developed land. This includes pools, picnic shelters, seven slide-and-climb play structures, and eleven baseball, softball, and Little League fields full of kids and parents. In summer, baseball fans watch the college NAIA World Series at Harris Field. Cowboys and rodeo fans from all around come for the Lewiston Roundup.

There are twenty miles of trails used by hundreds of runners, walkers, and bikers. For many years I went downtown daily to volunteer at the Habitat for Humanity store, and we often eat al fresco at the sidewalk cafes.

Almost a half-century ago, singer and songwriter Charlie Ryan of “Hot Rod Lincoln” fame was with my fellow St. Maries Elks in spirit as we drove past the old Spiral Highway and its seven miles and sixty-four turns that his song helped make famous (see “The Spiral Highway,” IDAHO magazine, April 2023).

Instead we took the newly opened Lewiston Grade bypass on the last leg of our team’s trip to the Lewiston Elks Club. Thirty years later, Betty and I moved here and settled in Lewiston Orchards, where we’ve lived for seventeen years.

Not long ago, we sat in the dining area of a broiler pit restaurant as we planned a walking tour of downtown. The restaurant is within the popular Lewiston Historic District, which we first visited years earlier while I attended emergency management training sessions provided by Nez Perce County.

We ate at this same place and attended the movie The Way We Were at the old Liberty Theater down the street. It’s closed now but is being renovated. On this day, nostalgia drew us back to the eatery, hoping to indulge in the wonderful old feelings that are always stirred whenever we hear Barbra Streisand singing the movie’s signature song, “Memories.”

The restaurant, which opened in 1951, has an old-timey bar upstairs and a dining area downstairs. It’s part of Morgan’s Alley Mall in the Goldstone Building, built in 1896. The old commercial center of Lewiston at the west end of Main Street is now the compact historic district, which features buildings of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

On the eastern corner of the Goldstone Building is a barbershop in the same spot of another such establishment when the building first opened. The present-day barber believes her shop’s mirrors and possibly some of its trim might be original. That earlier barbershop went one step further than the typical offerings of haircuts, beard trimming, and warm shaves by providing hot baths in the basement.

Forty-five years ago, when I lived in St. Maries, my barber was a fellow named Sam Knapp. I recall Sam telling me his daughter was going to barber school. I asked the current barber how long she had been in this shop.