Spokane, Idaho Histories

Historic Merrygoroud Now at Downtown Park

Lloyd Vogel, the inebriated owner of Natatorium Park, said he was planning on moving the merry go round  to Pasco, when I interviewed him in November 1962.  This article for UPI News Service didn’t get released until I was on Coast Guard Reserve training in Oakland, Calif.

TRAGIC '62 PLANE CRASH

SPOKANE — All 44 persons aboard a Strategic Air Command jet tanker plane apparently were killed when the C135 plowed into a fog-shrouded ravine on 5,271-foot Mt. Kit Carson about 20 miles northeast of here Monday.

Thirty-three bodies had been recovered when nightfall halted the search of the 500-yard deep ravine.

"It's the worst sight I've ever seen," said a highway patrolman.

Aboard the plane were 39 Air Force men, all members of the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.; one civilian and four crewmen.

The tanker, based at Ellsworth, was carrying the airmen to Fairchild Air Force Base near here, where they were to stay while Ellsworth runways were repaired. The jet was only 10 minutes from its destination when it crashed.

BOY SCOUT WORLD JAMBOREE, FARRAGUT STATE PARK

Clipping from Idaho Statesman

I was a news reporter for the Idaho Statesman and assigned to report on the 12th World Scout Jamboree, which was held July 31 to August 9, 1967, and was hosted by the United States at Farragut State Park.

I slept on the ground in a tent and mailed my film and stories every day to Boise.  The following year I covered the national jamboree and stayed in a hotel.  It was fun.  Lady Baden Powell, widow of Lord Baden Powell, Scout founder, attended one of those events. 
Farrgut was a Navy base and had been closed for many years.  The press HQs were in the brig for the Jamboree.

Idaho Statesman Friends

left to right: Paul, photographer; Ralph Nichols & Jim Golden; Dave Frazier, Ken Burroughs.

IDAHO FRIENDS

I’ve known Duane Mitchell of Caldwell, Ida. since the mid-1960s when we were boarders at Mrs. Cook’s house in Boise on N. Sixth Street just a short drive from the Idaho Statesman where I was a reporter and he was an accounting clerk for Blue Cross.  He is still in Caldwell and I visited him and his wife Nancy in 2015.

Camp David is Dave Frazier’s mountain retreat in Southern Idaho.  It was 90 something that day and forest fires in Central Idaho.  Fraze was a classmate at the Idhao Statesman where we learned news reporting.  He, the police beat, me, local government.

Hello Frisco, Goodbye.  I had arrived in Idaho at the Statesman, 6th and Bannock, across from a park and City Hall, starting as a night copy editor, headline writer and reporter before graduating to local government reporter where I won a national award for environmental reporting.  I was living in a boarding house a short distance away near what now is the hospital.  I still have a couple of friends in Boise.

Candid Statesman staffers:  Paul (photographer), good friend Ralph Nichols and city editor Jim Golden and going away party at nearby state park, fishing buddy and cop shop reporter Dave Frazier who pursued a succesful freelance photog career, Ken Burroughs, TV editor who took me on my first hunting trip in his Rambler Classic when I arrived in the fall of ’65.  Ken worked in the desk across from me on he second floor.

Mitchell left and center

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, Bundle of Joy

You could buy Tops albums for $1.49 at Newberry's downtown

It was a big deal in 1956 when Mike Todd’s spectacular movie “Around the World in 80 Days” came to Spokane at the historic Post Street Theater, which had seen a mix of vaudeville and movies becoming a full time movie theatre which lasted until it closed in May 1972. It was later demolished.

Owner Joe Rosenfield remodeled the theater for this road show event, moving the projection booth from the second balcony to the first floor and installing a wide, curved screen to accomodate Todd-AO.  (I used to deliver prescriptions to Rosenfield at the theater when I was a Miller & Felt delivery boy.  See Confessions of a Teenage Delivery Boy.)

I attended 80 Days with either family or friends and was overwhelmed.  In fact, my Aunt Dora bought me the soundtrack LP on Decca with Victor Young’s soaring music.  Being in fly over land, Spokane was bypassed by Cinerama so this movie was very special.

I still thrill to 80 Days on DVD with surround sound and the quirky way the vertical images curve in at the borders reminding us that this was a movie made for a curved screen.

  In 1956 while the nation was fixated on Elvis’ hips and James Dean’s t-shirt, RKO premiered a new original musical, A Bundle of Joy, with America’s cutest couple Debbie and Eddie.  It was the wrong movie at the wrong time.

But there’s lots to love in this holiday favorite with Nick Castle’s choreography wherein our Eddie jumps up on a ping pong table and then jumps to the floor without wobbling or twisting an ankle.  They don’t make them like that anymore.

A dreamy department store is the backdrop for this love affair where Debbie has an entertaining duet with Nita Talbot and a great jitterbug dance contest production number with Tommy Noonan, a TV comedian of that era who later enterprised softcore porn films.  Falling in love with the department store heir gives our gal free reign on all ready to wear and furs in stock (or in the RKO costume department.)

Moreover there’s a too-fat Santa and Eddie’s office is littered with the latest hi-fi equipment for sale in the store.  Also the Eddie drives a British import Nash Metropolitan.  Very cool.   

Bill Goodwin, who pitched Carnation canned milk on Burns and Allen, is a very officious manager at the make belive department store.

The opening song, It’s All About Love, with Eddie is a knock out.  Bundle is very sentimental holiday stuff with the romance is fueled by a cute kid with curly blond hair.  Buy the Warner Archives DVD or catch it on TCM this month.

Irishman disappoints; American Factory excellent

In the three plus hour movie, “The Irishman,” the 50s classic cars are a good reason to watch this American history study from the gangster narrative.  The Hudson Hornet, Chrysler Imperial and Lincoln Town Car are among those featured.  What more is there to say about American gangsters, except the one in the Oval Office?

  

“American Factory” documentary on Netflix is an insightful investigative journalism expose of the corrosive management by the Chinese of an automobile glass factory in Dayton, Ohio.  Aside from the physical and mental toll the workers endure, many of them will be unemployed soon because of automation robots. See the Obamas endorsement of this film, also on Netflix.