Yes, Boise Was My Dead Horse But I love It Now

It was the 60s, a revolution and a war were underway, and I was stuck in Boise, Idaho, capital of famous potatoes.
I was quite proactive in getting off the dead horse I was riding in Boise for 4 years when I contacted universities and applied to graduate schools in 1969. By September 69 I left my own private Idaho where I was a reporter for the Idaho Statesman.
But it was my coworker, Ralph Nichols, who suggested I go to graduate school, because that’s what he had dreamed of but never accomplished. Maybe that was his way of telling me to get out of town. So with a clear goal in mind I was able to endure the craziness of my supervisor Jim Golden, the city editor. It wasn’t long before I would take the graduate entrance exam at the College of Idaho in Caldwell with an upset stomach.
My Statesman job was not always a dead horse; in fact I had researched and written comprehensive reports on pollution, urban renewal, city planning and zoning as local government reporter. What more was there to do having written the story on Hot Cha Hinton the 300 pound go go girl (that was Betty Penson’s assignment, not my idea). It was the 60s.
I look back wistfully at my Idaho years but I was isolated, lonely and I had virtually lost my close friend Ralph when he married and moved to nearby Nampa. Quoting a line from the movie The Graduate, I told Ralph I was drifting. I had no social life although I beat that dead horse to death, dating women who really didn’t interest me. I was inching loser to 30.
I was to be in a major metropolitan area with a large Jewish community, a decent university and a host of urban issues. It was Los Angeles or Minneapolis and having lived n LA for two years I knew I didn’t want to do that again. With my undergraduate dubious scholastic achievements, I was lucky to get into grad school.
In Boise I was living in Mrs. Cook’s boarding house with four other young men and her grandchildren. For about 13 years, I had very limited access to a TV set I could call my own. Mrs. Cook’s daughter in law when born again and made vain efforts to convert me to Christianity when she would visit from Mt. Home. When the Ladies Circle would meet at Mrs. Cook’s house I would disappear which wasn’t easy when I was working nights and trying to entertain myself during the day.
As Fagan told the boys in Oliver, I needed a change of scenery. In September of 69 I packed my Magnavox radio and my typewriter into my Plymouth Satellite and headed east. Farewell Boise.

Beach Blanket Bingo Film Here in '65

MALIBU -- At a beach near Malibu named after actor Leo Carrillo (Poncho on The Cisco Kid TV show) I am tracing the foot steps of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funichello who filmed the classic, “Beach Blanket Bingo” 44 years ago for American International Pictures (AIP) here.
Visible in he background is the rock where an aged Buster Keaton (or his stunt double) fished in the movie. “Sink your toes in the sand and get ready to rock and roll” with Frankie and Annette is the hype that an AIP publicist wrote but as you can see there wasn’t much barefoot action here on this December day with temperatures in the 50s.
I was living in Glendale when AIP made history with the beach movies but I might as well have been in Bangladesh for all I knew about surfing and the Beach Boys then. In recent years as I try to cope with Minnesota winters I have been drawn to anything that relieves the winter blues including beach movies. The movie is full of “fun, frolic and song” with Don Rickles, Harvey Lembeck, handsome John Ashley, Paul Lynde and a very young LInda Evans included in the star studded cast.
As luck would have it, Angelinos this day were experiencing what a Barbie doll reporter on KTLA cooed was “bitter cold” which translates to a low of 40 or a summer day in Minneapolis. Hearty Southlanders testified on Channel 5 regarding their brave efforts to stem the threat of frostbite which included firing up all appliances that emit heat.
Later I was on the patio at our Mailbu beach motel collecting my thoughts when a fellow traveler joined me, barely visible through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke with his portable radio blaring gospel music. All this was jarring my serenity until I learned that I was in the company of an erstwhile Hollywood screenwriter recently transplanted from England who was fairly confident about his chances to break into the movies or TV at the very least. Hope springs eternal.
So it was no surprise that when we stayed a night at the LAX Marriott no less than the frenzied followers of sci fi and horror had gathered to commune about their mutual obsessions at “LosCom”. I was invited to join the festivities. I repeatedly asked the attendees of all ages dressed as characters in a Hammer gothic horror movie if they were professional writers. Not a writer in the crowd but many I suspect have turned the pages of a few comic books. To be charitable, this event looked like a lot of fun with the Horror Film Festival featuring such luminaries such as Patrick Kilpatrick and possibly Sean Young who star in “Parasomnia” -- a cinematic effort about a psychic serial killer who invades the mind of a distressed damsel. Hasn’t this been done?
For those who worship at the altar of bad movies, this must be the place. I plan to return soon.

Spirit Lake's Fireside Lodge in '48 Recalled

Mom, who is 95 years young, remembers summers at Spirit Lake Idaho and Fireside Lodge in 1948.
Fireside Lodge was probably at Settllemeyers resort on Spirit Lake and was basically a beer hall in 1948. I have fond memories of that time, going with my cousins to the beer hall on the resort and playing music on the jukebox. Later my Aunt Dora (shown in downtown Spirit Lake) and family stayed at nearby Conklin's resort which had a convenience "grocery" store where we shopped. We could walk between the two resorts and there was a burnt out cabin along the path which was quite spooky for little kids.
The July 4 hydroplane races were a huge event at the Lake and we watched. This attracted a lot of out of town beer drinkers as I recall. I stepped on a broken beer bottle in the lake and had to be taken to town where the doctor stitched me up and gave me a tetanus shot. Still have the scar on my foot.
We would go to the downtown movie theater (Auntie Dora standing in front of theater) where they showed "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" which Mom wouldn't let us see. The theater was quite primitive with folding chairs instead of theater seats. But that was before TV in post war times. There was a cafe in t own and no doubt a grocery store.
Spirit Lake is a short distance from Twin Lakes where we went by school bus for swimming lessons. Twin Lakes was more swimmer friendly with sandy beaches and a very gradual drop off.

Oh Canada: Niagra Falls Plus Health Care

Richard Halliburton wrote about Niagara Falls in his book about the seven wonders of the world. I got that book for my bar mitzvah and now 56 years later I am up close and personal with Niagara. Here I was with the Prime Timers convention last Saturday. Other trip highlights were the gothic castle Casa Loma. Equally fascinating was the photos of Alex Trebeck and Lorne Michaels at the CBC broacast museum when they were much younger. Several current CBC series look interesting but unfortunately not available on Netflix, like “Little Mosque on the Prairie”.
Neil Diamond when he was in his 20s was revisited by a young performer at the convention and this was exciting. I also enjoyed touring the many ethnic neighborhoods in cosmopolitan Toronto.
Under 65, Canadians have $2 copay for prescriptions; over 65 no copay. Oh Canada!

Leaving Idaho September 40 years ago

It was 40 years ago this month that I left the beautiful snow capped mountains of Southern Idaho for the flat, flat, flat prairies of Minnesota in my ‘67 Plymouth Satellite loaded with all I owned in the world. That would have included a Magnavox portable radio, Smith Corona typewriter and a rather meager collection of clothing.
As someone remarked this summer: “You are a Minnesotan.” I resemble that remark but I cling to the fiction that I am an Idahoan, born in Spokane, scant minutes from the Idaho border where the men are men and you know the rest. Famous for their libertarian notions, Northern Idaho is a far cry from the more straight laced Mormon dominated Boise where I was a boy reporter for the Idaho Daily Statesman, a Federated Newspaper, for four years, Local option gambling was popular in Northern Idaho.
I had exhausted my possibilities in Boise, having won a national award for my reporting on air and water pollution. I was a member of the Capitol Jaycees, a post frat drinking society, where I produced a slide presentation with audio on pollution that I showed to community groups. (Lon Dunne at KIDO NBC Radio did the audio track). By the time I reached the four year mark I was researching a story on pop culture , interviewing the program director at KFXD Radio, which boasted a Sunday night underground rock extravaganza. I can’t believe that Jim Golden, the assignment editor, gave me time to do this. Nothing came of that story.
I was massively bored by this time and when my friend at the Statesman Ralph Nichols suggested I get a master’s degree I jumped on that, researching universities and getting valuable insight from Gene Byrd, a Marquette University journalism professor who later transferred to the University of Minnesota to initiate a urban affairs emphasis in the School of Journalism. Byrd soon ran into a brick wall and left for the University of Texas. It was clear that the U of M faculty disdained anything as faddish as urban affairs journalism. So that was my first mistake.
It was a gorgeous sunny fall day when I drove into Minneapolis on Highway 12 with AM radio tuned to KUOM where they announced a seminar on the Urban River at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, sponsored by the University. I had a wonderful supportive supervisor, Vern Keel, at the Agricultural Journalism Department where I worked as a graduate assistant. So Vern got the University to pay my way to the Urban River seminar where I floated down the grossly polluted Mississippi with Star columnist Barbara Flanagan and other community do-gooders. It was a super introduction to Minneapolis.
So as Jim Gilligan of the Statesman observed: I had “returned to the womb” at the glorious U of M, a graduate student in journalism taking inter-displinary classes related to urban and regional affairs. I was the right guy for Agricultural Journalism because economist John Hoyt was heading an initiative on regional development, a controversial issue supported by Gov. Harold Lavander, a moderate Republican unlike the strident ideologue Republican who now holds the office. My student days at the University were all I dreamed they would be and after graduation I was hired by the U, based on my great efforts as a graduate student.
Bottom line: It’s better to be a student at the U than faculty where you bump up against petty egos, back-stabbing and other drama. In 1981 I returned to the University staff at KUOM radio for a one-year temporary dreamy job as an assistant producer on a radio documentary series on psychology with Vickie Lofquist. I cherish those memories of KUOM where I used broadcast tools I learned at the University of Washington.

Jack Malone Reunion, Spokane News

I recently wrote my grade school, high school and college buddy Jack Malone of Spokane and now Longview, Wash. for making the a mini-reunion last week in Seattle great and we need to do this again before another 50 years slip by. The fact that he could remember the names of all those Roosevelt teachers is remarkable. The aging Southern Belle spinster Lou Eckhardt was my favorite in third grade and she abandoned us for a mink coat, Cadillac and diamond ring to marry a decrepit former governor named Martin. Never forgave her.
Jack recalled that his family was one of the first to get TV in 1952 since his dad owned a hardware store. It was an Emerson and like most kids at that time he watched the test pattern on KHQ with easy listening music providing audio. On the other hand our family may have been the last to get TV and it was an Arvin (Google that one). Jack’s brother, Jerry, who lives in the family’s Spokane Wall St. home, is planning a Roosevelt Grade School reunion, although the school was torn down and replaced with an ugly modern building.
I hoped that his daughter Jennilee wasn’t too bored with our tripping down memory lane but she is a treasure with her super electronic devices, like the GPS that talks to her from the heavens. How creepy is that but it sure eases travel anxiety. It’s a given that young people are on the cutting edge of everything electronic. On the other hand Jack doesn't do computers or DVDs. I can’t use an IPOD, detest my cell phone and still have a turntable and LPs that I bought in Spokane at the Music Box or the Crescent in the 50s.
In the 80s after Mt. St. Helen’s erupted, Jack produced and was a creative force behind an LP that paid tribute to Harry Truman who did not leave home during this catastrophe. I can identify with that because moving is way too much of a hassle -- bring on the flood or hot lava. I have played his wonderful LP and the music is reminiscent of Garrison Keilor’s show. I have framed the album and it is now on my living room wall.
Former Spokanites will be happy to know that the historic State Theater is being restored and renamed the “Bing” after Spokane’s favorite son, Bing Crosby. Twin Cities film archivist and historian Bob DeFlores is my authority on this and Bob is helping Gonzaga University with its Crosby collection and will be on hand for the State’s grand reopening.

50 Year Perspective: High School Was Fun

After 50 years, I finally came to terms with my hometown, Spokane, and my teen years. In the 50s, I thought it was life in hell. Reading the Lewis and Clark High School “Tiger Tales,” the 50-year reunion book, I came to the realization that I had friends and fun at LCHS for the first time in my life. I dithered over the trip to Spokane for the reunion but decided against it. I wrote the best biography in the reunion publication. It would have cheered my freshman English teacher Mrs. Watrous who probably thought I was an idiot when I showed up late on the first day of class (lost in the hallway).

Here’s the names that jumped out at me as I became totally consumed by the book:

Judy Eash, who along with her sister Margy, lived across the street from the Zarkins on 29th Street. Her grandmother, Mrs. Koss, was our baby sitter and we looked forward to her visits because she would always leave candy for us. Judy’s mother hosted a Halloween party one year for the neighborhood kids which was the only time I ever bobbed for apples. Quite messy but a Halloween tradition in the 40s and 50s.

Jack Malone, who listed his complete work history, was a Roosevelt grade school buddy and the most wonderful kid on the planet, at least I thought. I once went to his house. He writes poetry now and he apparently played the piano at one time. I recall running into Jack at the University of Washington where he was involved in the College Republicans. Aging comic actress Zsa Zsu Pitts gave a rather uninspiring endorsement for Tricky Dick at this event.
GO TO COMMENTS TO READ THE REST OF THIS STORY

Trini Lopez, Me Party in Palm Springs in '05

It's been almost three years since my trip to La Quinta to visit cousin Jan but I need to thank her again for inviting me to Ruth Gibson's 85th birthday party where 60s pop star Trini Lopez sang "Besame Mucho" and Jan took our photo.

Ruth, like all the other matrons in Palm Springs looked great and no doubt avail themselves of some nips, tucks here and there. Save your pension checks for Palm Springs retirement.

Interest in River Rewarded

Beautification of the urban landscape was a goal of the Johnson Administration when I was a local government reporter at the Idaho Statesman in Boise in 1964-69. As an eager boy reporter I was quite committed to the cause and reported extensively on urban renewal and plans for a Boise River Greenway that came to pass years later. It’s beautiful unless the river floods and then it’s every man for himself. A year ago my former Statesman reporter comrade Dave Frazier took me to the river interpretive center that provides an educational experience on rivers.

As I drove into Minneapolis from Boise in 1969 on my way to UM Graduate School, I heard on the car radio tuned to KUOM that the University was offering an Urban River symposium at he Minneapolis Art Institute. During the symposium we took a boat trip on the mighty Mississippi where we witnessed the sad state of affairs including junk yards and other blight,

The river over a period of years has become a crown jewel in our Twin Cities landscape as you can see from the photo above with the new park at St. Anthony Main that actually extends into the river and offers a breath taking panorama of this magnificent body of water, On the south side near the Guthrie Theater, a beautiful green park is the latest addition to the river renewal story.

With the river drives in both cities that extend from the University campus to the Ford plant in St. Paul you could get close to the river. Now that Ford is coming apart, the land will probably be marketed for high buck condominiums overlooking the river.

Sadly access to the river is difficult since it is many treacherous feet below street level. That didn’t stop a group of us from hiking to the river’s edge every year for a summer solstice late night gathering. With the new parks in downtown Minneapolis, the river is now quite accessible.

Post War Beer Hall Babies Recall Spirit Lake, Idaho

(Cousin Jan and me)
SEE COMMENTS FOR GOOD STUFF FROM THE BARERS AND ZARKINS
In post World War II America at an Idaho Lake near Spokane, the Zarkins and Barers would gather for a week or more of fun in the sun, sharing magic moments as five year olds in the beer hall at Settelmeyers Resort amidst the stench of stale beer and cigarettes. Collection bottlecaps from Olympia, Rainier and Bohemian bottles was a favorite pasttime.
Spirit Lake was the start of the lake adventures and the memories linger today.
Feeding nickels into the Wurlitzer jukebox at the saloon we would listen to ”Rum & Coca Cola” or “Beer Barrel Polka” with the Andrew Sisters or the annoying Woody Woodpecker song. "Across the Alley form the Alamo" by Hoagey Carmichael was a big jukebox hit (remember this was before Top 10 radio was known. "My Happiness" by Connie Stevens and Jonny Raye and
"The Little White Cloud that Cried"are other lake jukebox favorites but from other lakeside beerhalls Spirit Lake marks the start of my life-long fascination with cars and I could tell a Chevrolet from a Plymouth, even then.
There ws a guy named Kenny who was either retarded or drunk who swigged Pepsi continuously but it may have been at Loon Lake.

Recalling My Week at UPI Hollywood

Whatcha Gonna Do, Kiddie-Boos cos You got a Date with David Cassidy

Side splitting hilarious is the 1971 teen fanzine “Spec” which must be short for spectator. My friend Babs gave me this rag last night and it brought back memories of my very short stay at the UPI Hollywood Bureau in 1963 in the Los Angeles Times-Mirror Building.
UPI frankly didn’t know what to do with me so they shuffled me off to the Hollywood desk where I worked with a young woman who was a student in broadcasting at USC. One of her instructors was John Thompson who she referred me to and that bit of kindness landed me a job as a go-for editorial assistant at NBC News where Thompson was news director. (He was later fired for some improprieties; the details escape me.)
Working on the Hollywood desk got me out of firing range of Vernon Scott’s paper torpedoes.
I definitely was not up to the challenge of fabricating a piece on Ricky Nelson who was recently married to Mark Harmon’s sister and they were expecting their first born. These features were distributed by mail to newspapers worldwide. Since the Nelsons did not allow interviews, I needed to make up something benign out of thin air. I had difficulty rewriting a news release let alone make up some garbage about them shopping for strollers and diapers. As if I really cared. I did a quick count from the marriage date to when the little cherub was due and said to my coworker, “there’s our story.” She was not amused. I did not last long at Hollywood UPI, but here’s an example from the esteemed “Spec” on what was expected of me, I am sure:

“FLASHES!! Starting next September, you’ll be able to spend each and every weekend with Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy on ABC-TV! The great, grand, glorious and good news is that Bobby Sherman will have his own half hour show each Satruday....Of course darlin’ David Cassidy will continue to star in the “Partridge Family” ... you don’t have to worry about watcha gonna do, kiddie-boos, cos you got a date with David Cassidy every Friday night and Bobby Sherman every Saturday night!”

This hilarious cutline displays self-contempt by the writer and a loathing for the readers of this dreck. You couldn’t write this stone sober, but it paid the rent for some poor bugger. No way, kiddie-boos.

Boise Boy: Return of the Native

Where’’s Boise?” my friend Floyd asked as I gushed on about my triumphant return to the Capital City after leaving my job as local government reporter at The Statesman from 1964 to 1969.
“It’s in the same place it was 38 years ago,” I responded. Boise like Minneapolis is in fly-over-land underneath the clouds as the silver bird wings it’s way to Seattle or LA. Now that’s sad and more needs to be done to let the world know that Boise is a great destination and should not be overlooked. It speaks to our provincialism that too many Minnesotans don’t know Boise or think its ground zero for white supremacists. I am here to say they are full of crap.
I never leave Boise even though I live in Bloomington, MN because of the recurring dreams wherein I am on the night copy desk writing obituaries or else Gordon Peterson is breathing fire down my neck as deadline rapidly approaches for the City Council story way too late at night. You never outlive that stress and adrenaline rush. A sense of accomplishment is followed by nagging doubts about your facts or grammar.
Dick Hronek (then night editor) and Sandy Klein, managing editor, gave me a break when I was an unemployed green reporter with only eight months experience at UPI in Spokane and Los Angeles before I joined the Coast Guard. It was super on-the-job training from that great Statesman staff in the 1960s and I wish I could say that I went on to a stellar newspaper career but that would be a huge lie.
Klein held my hand as I nervously wrote my first big story for The Statesman in 1964, a steamy tale of sex and murder where handsome drifter Billy Butler strangled a college coed with her bra after meeting her on a bus. That was my page one baptism under fire as a news reporter working the weekend night desk. (For more on this case see Arthur Hart’s book, “Echoes from the Ada County Courthouse.”, p 65).
Another memory from the night desk was the short bit on police Sgt. Vern Bisterfeldt nabbing a shoplifter at Welles Department Store while he was moonlighting as a Santa Claus. An angry mom called the news desk the next day and screamed that we were destroying the Santa myth for her small children. I was only too happy to conspire on that. I will argue that Boise has changed cosmetically for better or worse but it’s still the same accepting city it was when I was an Idahoan 38 years ago.

Boise Madness Continued

It was a gray depressing day when I drove into Boise in October 1964 to start a job as a cub reporter on the night desk at the Idaho Statesman on Bannock Street across from a small park, City Hall, the Capitol Building and Ada County Court House. I bought a copy of the Statesman and searched the wantads for a boarding house. Two were advertised: Mrs. John Cook’s home and nearby John Martin and his wife had rooms for rent. As I drove up to Mrs. Cook’s I had all my worldly belongings which included an Arvin portable radio, a Smith Corona portable typewriter and a few clothes in the back seat of my 1961 Plymouth Fury two-door which coworker Jim McLaughlin would describe as a going 20 miles per hour when it was parked.
Mrs. Cook had only a basement room that I would have to share with her grandson and I didn’t want that so I moved into the basement of the Martins’ house which was probably interesting. John Martin was a 50-ish big blue collar redneck homophobic middle aged man. The Martins had both been injured on the job -- she when her knee ran into an open refrigerator door in a restaurant where she was a waitress. He when a caterpillar he was driving on a construction job tipped over and took a chunk out of his ass. He would drop his drawers in the living room and show off his half-ass which was a defining moment in my life at Martin Manor. Homophobia may have sent John scurrying from gay-friendly California in the 60s but I guessed that they were ill-equipped to compete in the job market and the cost of living was cheaper in Idaho.
They moved to Idaho with their disability settlements to enjoy a simpler life as proprietors of a boarding house. A month or so later all that would go up in smoke like what they created with the constant haze from their Marlboros.
Probably to piss off his wife, without telling her he traded in their beloved Ford Galaxie 500 convertible that the disability settlement bought on a junky old Ford station wagon and a pickup truck for reasons that only he understood.
A deep chill settled over the Martin household after that incident and I think the marriage was probably doomed. Shortly thereafter they sold the house and presumably went their separate ways. I did enjoy some adventures with the Martins including a fishing trip to Lucky Peak Reservoir on a cold November morning and shlepping around town on errands. Later I would do a hunting trip with Ken Burroughs in his Rambler Classic with a loaded gun and then a weekend fishing trip with Statesman night editor Dick Hronek and outdoor editor Walter Johnson in the scenic Idaho mountains, catching trout. I got into the Idaho scene at warp speed. One highlight of Boise Madness was fishing trips with Dave Frazier, the Statesman police reporter. Who can forget beer for breakfast?

At Friend's Central Perk Set

Roger, me, Alan and Scott on Feb.9, 2006, a wonderful tour of the Warner Bros. lot and our tour guide was most generous in giving us access to delightful memories such as the couch in the Central Perk set from TV show Friends. Did Brad Pitt's butt ever rest here? One wonders.

Tab Hunter at Richfield book signing 2006

As I approached Tab Hunter for the book signing I did a stream of consciousness and asked if the movie "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter" was inspired by him and then asked if he knew Tony Randall and of course he did.