National Idaho Day 2023

I have many fond memories of Blackfoot, Idaho. My daddy was in the Navy teaching at the Nuclear Prototype at Arco about 30 miles away.

When we first arrived we lived on Meridian Street for a while. It was there that my daddy took a large buck while hunting in the Sawtooth Country in 1961. I was six years old. It weighed 247 pounds. That rack now hangs in a place of honor in my living room.

Then we moved to a duplex on Center Street where I began the first grade with Mrs Ilene Rowe at Irving School on Judicial Street and resided with my family in the apartment to the right in the picture. There was ample room and lots of roaming area as well. I did a lot of arts and crafts with clay and drawing and such. I recall walking the ditches and picking the wild asparagus and witnessed the efforts my dad did to irrigate his garden from which he harvested a seemingly unending supply of Whetstone beans. I recall eating those beans daily for what seemed like forever. They simply wouldn't stop growing.

During those times we took trips to Pebble Creek and I remember the immense trout. Other trips included Craters of the Moon which was a volcano bed with fantastic lava formations and nearby sand dunes. My mama worked on the potato combines and we had some rather exciting excursions throught the dense dust returning from her job. The highlight of those years was our trip to Yellowstone Park and the excitement of everything we saw and all the places we went in between.

As was the nature of Navy life we moved abruptly and one day daddy and mama came to school in a new automobile all packed up and ready to go. We moved back to their house on Lavender Lane at Aragona Village in Virginia Beach. Still, Idaho is one of those places to which my thoughts return periodically when I'm thinking of "what was" and I have always hoped to return if only for a visit.

Today is National Idaho Day. Each year on May 17 it celebrates the 1890 statehood of Idaho in the nation.

So Idaho is a place of nature. A place of beauty. Likewise a place of farming and a place of technology.

Happy National Idaho Day !