Staples

I've only been to Idaho in the summer. The opportunity to join my dad and close the cabin, a job my brother usually does, came about only a few weeks ago. Charles is buying his first home and I am working a flexible schedule for the first time in years and so the convergence of timing was in my favor and I said a Holy Yes.

After a summer of watching loss surround me it seemed that this moment was a gain. The time is now to spend a weekend with my father. The time is now for Henry to spend a weekend with his.

Arriving yesterday afternoon we passed the Lightening Bar, our neighborhood's joint that has been here as long as I have been coming here (1971). The yellow sign with the changeable letters and flashing arrow outside is usually comic, and changes weekly. Some of our favorites are 'Live Bartender', 'Coldest Beer in North Idaho', 'Working Toilets.' Now whether they mean to be comical, well who can tell? This week's sign says 'Lavina stories 1pm Saturday.' Lavina was a neighbor who lived on our lane for many years. Her husband was at one time a bar tender there. She passed the other week and the memorial service is at a church in Rathdrum in the morning. Then at 1pm neighbors will undoubtably walk to the bar and share their stories.

We drove down the main street by Twinlow the Methodist Camp. "Oh the Hogan's leveled their house and are rebuilding," Dad said. Sure enough, turning down our lane there were tractors and a foundation in the clearing. "Maureen has a degenerative joint disorder that's hereditary and she can't do stairs. Apparently, lots of the kids have it so this will help everyone. Shame, Maureen's a young woman, only a few years older than you."

I noticed the Bosch house a little white frame cabin, more New England than Wild West Log, right next to Hogan's was unchanged.

"You know, that house was the grocery store when I was a kid," Dad said.

Then Dad told me the story of a British couple who came here after World War I. He was former British Army and they bought the white frame house and lived there and sold staples and canned goods. In the summer the kids from Twinlow would run down in the afternoons to get bottles of cold soda pop or an ice cream.

"Twinlow was a camp in the '30's & '40's?"

"Oh yeah," he continued, "Twinlow's been here a long time. In the winter this old British Army guy would go out and cut blocks of ice from the lake and store them in the cellar cut into the hill just here. He'd pack them with sawdust, then in the summer he'd sell each of us on the lane a block of ice every week for a quarter. A quarter was a lot of money in those days and a quarter times 40 people, every week with no overhead? That's pure profit!"

I'll never look at that little frame house again without imaging a British couple using these surroundings to replace the memories of World War I. Getting out at our drive, instead of the smell of sweet summer grass, the yellow maple leaves covering the damp ground gave off the unmistakeable smell of autumn. A scent we don't have in Florida.

Tomorrow, after we clean we're going in to Spokane for a hockey game. Sunday afternoon when the rain hits we're going to see a movie in Coeur D'Alene. When I was 10 years old my Dad and I drove from here to Virginia and he told stories the whole way. It was a traveling history show about the different tribes who populated the plains, the cowboy gangsters, the settlers, and of course the monuments like Rushmore.

It's always time to take the time for a story from my Dad.