Looking Down on the Past

Here's another one of Dad's photos of I-90 taken around 1960. Looking from bottom to top (west to east) are the bridges of Lincoln Way (now Hwy 95), Government Way, 4th Street, 7th Street and 9th Street. Yes, things have certainly changed.

Lincoln Way was destined to become Highway 95 but when the overpass was built it just came to a T at Appleway. Government Way was still the main north - south route. But Sherman was still part of Hwy-10 as well. I-90 changed everything.

You don't see the hospital, Shopko, the CdA Inn, Wild Waters or any of the many buildings and businesses that have showed up in the last near 50 years. Looking at Government Way you can see which houses are now that old. Continuing to look east you can pick out a few places that still exist like Borah School and Lake City Lanes (now Lake City Auto Body). Also of note are the dirt streets in the Borah neighborhoods. And there's the house I grew up in.

I'll post more detailed photos in this series soon.

The Best Beer Ever

OK, this blog doesn't have to all be about history. As you may know, I'm a fan of quality beer. And I thought it worthy to write about the best beer I ever had. It was just a couple weeks ago. It was at Xmas in July at Capone's on the 2nd and it was incredible.

It's always fun to have a Snowcap or a Jubleale in July but on this night I was smitten with a very special beer. I will be so bold as to say it was the best beer I've ever drank in my life.

Full Sail Ales has a wonderfully hoppy winter warmer called "Wreck The Halls." A Full Sail sales guy (dude! bring your biz cards) came and brought what looked like a blender about 30 inches tall. On the floor were a keg of Wreck the Halls and a big CO2 tank. Hoses ran from the tank to the keg to the "blender" which wasn't a blender at all but more like a beer compressor named Randle. Filled with fresh hops the beer pressure pushed through the wonderfully fragrent buds before being tapped out through an ice filled cooler. Full Sail called it Wrecking Randle.

This was without a doubt the tastiest beer I have ever enjoyed. I even had my wonderful wife go home and grab a couple of growlers which I got filled before she took me home. I then shared the goodness with friends on the 4th of July. The growlers hadn't been filled properly and the brew lost a lot in about 40 hours. BUT, everyone who tasted it even then was wowed by the flavor.

Thank you Full Sail for what has to be the best bar/beer promo in the world. A close runner-up was Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale that had aged in a burboun barrel. Only a couple kegs of it were ever filled and it was the hit of the 2007 12 Ales of Xmas at Capone's. That was damn fine beer as well.

Hooray Beer!

Rutledge Unit

This is the first of a number of photos I'll be posting that Dad took from Bill Brook's seaplane when I-90 was first completed. This would be about 1959. You can see the wings in a couple photos (which he would crop out where needed).

Dad sold a group of these arial photos, showing the new freeway end to end, to the Spokane Chronicle. The Chronicle was an evening paper, the Spokesman a morning issue. If you're old enough to remember, or have noticed on the newspaper the Old Man reads in A Christmas Story, many newspapers would fill the last page with "photos of the day". Dad's photos took the whole page a few days before the grand opening.

When I got older I got to go along and hold the plane's window open, out and up, for Dad to shoot. That was fun but it about tore my arm off. This is scanned from an 8x10" contact sheet, prints right from the negitives from Dad's 4x5" Press style cameras. I kept the prints, the negatives went to the Museum of North Idaho. Dad had maybe 1,000 - 1,500 of them.

The photos here show not only the new I-90 sweeper into the east end of town, but Potlatch Mill, Rutledge Unit.

The top left one shows the then brand new bridge that everyone now takes to go up to all the houses. Known now as Rutledge, we called it Armstrong Hill in the 70's. Great place to make out up on top. You could drive to the end of the road, turn around and park where you overlooked CdA and had clear vision of anyone coming your way long before they got there. I watched the 4th of July fireworks from there a time of two.

This shot could be held up to an arial promo shot of the CdA Resort Golf Course and new condo for comparison. It's all there. The sawmill has the tall stacks in the upper right. Check out the booms of logs ready to be fed into the mill.

The top right photo looks back at Sanders Beach and Tubbs Hill. Look how small a piece of land the new condos were built on is. In the background you can see the smoke from the sawmills out on Northwest Blvd.

The bottom left photo shows how west bound traffic exited over a bridge and down what is now East Lakeshore Drive and to the Serman intersection. In the background is Big Best, as we kids called it, the Cherry Hill area and the cross-town route of I-90.

The bottom right is all the same from the southwest. It clearly shows how big a mill Potlatch was and how much land it takes for a golf course.

For what must have been decades, a big chunk of boys growing up around here worked at least once in a sawmill, a mine or for a logger, rancher or farmer. I put in a short stint at Rutledge when I was going to NIC. Got a "join the union or else" letter in my paycheck once and figured if I was only going to work until I went to U of I, why should I pay them any of my money. End of job, start of summer.

I did have a couple of the most memorable work days of my life there, though. There were actually 2 of the best days of work ever, and then there were the days I had to work between the head rigs turning slabs. That sucked, hurt my back and bothered me until I finally had surgery 25 years later. But those are stories for another time.

More pics will follow. Stay tuned.