When I was Just New

The first home I remember living in was a green shade house at 602 South Latah in Boise Idaho. I did not know what “ green shade” meant but I knew that if I were lost I was supposed to tell the finding person that I lived in the “green shade house on Latah next to the canal. I lived in this house from 1951 to about 1956. The house had a main floor two bedrooms and a utility room which acted as a bedroom for my brother when he was in town. Then there the “downstairs” an unfinished basement made up of a furnace and coal room and food storage area. In the later years at the house on Latah my dad finished a bedroom downstairs for my brother Ross and me. Perhaps one of the best features of the basement was the whole back end was unfinished and when I say “unfinished” I mean unfinished. The whole rear of the basement was dirt!. Ross and would spend hours down there when it was either too cold or went to play outside. We built road and small communities. When our mother got a new washer and dryer from Sears we got the huge boxes and made great forts out of them. I remember we hid in the boxes and threw clods at the one light in the ceiling until we broke it and screamed until our mother came downstairs to see what the problem was.

I think our house sat on two lots. We had a huge yard with two huge trees on the South side of the house and further South were some sheds and a more land, undeveloped about half the size of the yard round the house. There my dad had goats and beehives right on the banks of the Ridenbaugh canal. A bridge crossed the canal just south of our property and in the summer teenagers would hang round the bridge to swim and more then once the teenagers toppled my dad beehives into the canal. My dad one year build my brother and I a playhouse. The playhouse was a good sized structure and later the playhouse was changed to a woodshed. We filled the shed with wood my dad would bring home from his shop. Dad would bring home wood crates furnaces were shipped in. We would knock the crates apart pull out the nails and dad would then saw up the wood for firewood.

Today was cloudy buy still warm and pleasant for February. I remember on days like this mom would pack a lunch, peanut butter and jelly and I remember mom would pour milk into some bell canning jars with lids and put the whole lunch into a knapsack and send me off to the field South of our green-shade house where I would have a great adventure.

I was the baby of the family when we lived on Latah. My big sisters would make great dishpans of popcorn and watch TV with me when TV was brand new and so was I. My oldest brother was in the Air force and had a great motorcycle. My other older brother had a great gass-mask he kept on the post of his bunk-bed in the hall way. This was a magical time for me.