The line begins to form the minute the word gets out. “The burritos are here!” “Hey, everybody! The burritos are here!” They line up with their backpacks, grocery bags and sleeping bags. Some have children; some are in wheelchairs. On the busiest days, the line stretches to the back door and beyond. For some, it’s the first good meal in a long time. At the front of the line is a table with coolers of steaming breakfast burritos, jars of salsa, jugs of orange juice. Richard Jackson and his wife, Sharman, smile as they serve it up. The scene plays out Saturday mornings at Corpus Christi House, a day shelter for the homeless at 525 S. Americana Boulevard. Cooper Court, the tent city that…
Tim Woodward is a longtime Idaho Statesman columnist. He retired in 2011 and now writes a column every other Sunday for The Statesman's Life section and columns are posted here the following Mondays. Additional blog posts will be made when timely.
Posts by Tim Woodward
If you’ve lived in Boise long enough, you probably think you know the story of the iconic Westside Drive-in and its owner, Chef Lou Aaron. You don’t. The story you do know is that the North Boise drive-in has been around forever – it’s celebrating its 60th anniversary this week – and that Aaron gave up being a chef in fine dining establishments to run a drive-in. That story has been told by every media outlet in town and on network television. The story few people do know is actually several stories. One is that the drive-in has become something of a haven for troubled souls. Another is that its owner has battled alcoholism, cancer and the loss of his home and come out…
(Note to subscribers: Sorry this is a day late. The Statesman is now posting videos with my columns, the first of which ran Sunday, and I’m working on posting them with the blog. Hope to post the one for this column as soon as we can work it out. — Tim) The first reward for the feverish activity at my house these days was my Navy watch cap, missing since fall. It was under a pillow on a closet shelf. Next was the case for my prescription glasses. It was under a bed in a downstairs bedroom. Then, the “woo-hoo” moment – the missing recipes: my late father’s spaghetti sauce and buttermilk pancakes, a friend’s killer chili, another friend’s “devil dog egg nog” and…
This is a few weeks late. I was committed to some travel columns when he came to Boise, but I can’t not write about Brian Wilson, one of my early musical heroes. The former Beach Boy played at the Morrison Center on April 6. This isn’t intended to be a review of the concert. It’s too late for that, and other Statesman writers are far more qualified to write reviews. I’ll include some impressions from the concert, but this is less a review than an overcoming-adversity story. Those who struggle with mental illness or substance abuse can learn a lot from the life of Brian Wilson. His is a success story for the ages. Success in the usual sense came to him early. He…
MAZATLAN, Mexico – At one time or another, those of us with even a trace of adventure in our souls dream of chucking it all and living the good life in a tropical paradise. Few are immune. Even my cautious, conventional parents dreamed about it for decades. At one point, they and my cautious, conventional aunt and uncle hopped on a plane to check out the possibilities in Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica for a sun-drenched escape from the routine of daily life at home. It didn’t happen, of course. They came home, resumed their old lives and never looked back. Except for my mother the romantic. Mom occasionally waxed wistful, declaring with a faraway look in her eye that she wished they’d pulled…
Note: Tim Woodward recently returned from Mexico. This is the first of two columns from the trip. MAZATLAN, Mexico – There was a time early in my column-writing days when I was best known for writing about travel mishaps. Readers liked my vacation-disaster stories because they made their own vacations look good by comparison. The Woodwards of those days had a genius for getting sick on the first day of a two-week vacation, breaking down on mountain passes during howling blizzards, pitching tents on red ant hills … On one memorable odyssey, my daughters gave me the chicken pox. A trip to Mexico last month was, to borrow from Yogi Berra, deja vu all over again. At our destination airport in Mexico, travelers were…
His newspaper friends used to joke that he’d live to dance on all their graves, and he almost did. Boise art icon John Collias, one of my oldest friends in more ways than one, was a few months short of 99 when he died Wednesday night. He was of most vibrant, most “alive” people you could hope to meet. He grew up in a Greek-American family, emphasis on Greek. He was fluent in the language and, like many Greeks, he had strong opinions, loudly voiced. He peppered his conversations with frequent, emphatic gestures, was fiercely proud of his family and his work and was passionate about nearly everything, from his artwork to the lunch specials at his favorite restaurant. We met at an Idaho…
How many times had I passed the old building, once so dear, without stopping? It’s graced the corner of Sixth and Idaho streets for over a century. I’d walked or driven past it countless times, invariably with memories drifting back, but always in too much of a hurry to stop and venture inside to see how it had changed. Until now. It was a slow day, no need to hurry anywhere, and the building seemed to beckon. Why not? Now the Eagles Center, it was built in 1912 as the Fraternal Order of Eagles building. It had a beautiful hardwood dance floor on the second floor, which eventually led to its becoming an Arthur Murray Dance Studio. For much of the 1960s, it was…
I’ll be gone a lot this month and won’t have access to my computer to post the columns. I’ll post both of them for March late in the month. Stay tuned. A Woodward travel disaster story is always a possibility! Thanks for subscribing, Tim
It was a birthday party that once would have been almost unimaginable. A reserved room at a restaurant. Tables pushed together, decorated with helium balloons and lined with presents. Pizzas baking in the kitchen, kids playing games in an adjoining room, grownups catching up since the previous get-together a year earlier. The guest of honor took it all in stride. This was his third birthday party, and for him pretty much the normal order of things. For some of the older members of the family, however, it was a case study in how much the normal order of things has changed. The guest list was long and diverse – little kids, big kids, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great grandparents. Conversation topics ranged from Teenage…