Hoodsport, Wash. – You never know when or where you’ll run into colorful characters. Idaho has its share. I’ve been fortunate to have spent time with the likes of Free Press Frances, Buckskin Bill, Dugout Dick and other unforgettable individuals. In other states, it’s been my good fortune to have met a man who was traveling all the way from England to Idaho for the sole purpose of seeing Hells Canyon, a woman whose pet was an albino alligator, and a man who helped Ernest Hemingway save the manuscript to “A Farewell to Arms” from a fire. And the most recent, “Harley Bob” McFarland. McFarland lives in Hoodsport, Wash, on the Olympic Peninsula. His home overlooking a scenic channel…
Tim Woodward is a longtime Idaho columnist. His columns appear one Sunday a month, often more frequently, in The Idaho Press and are posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays.
Posts by Tim Woodward
Editor’s Note: This is the first of two columns from Tim’s summer travels. The second will run two weeks from today. HOODSPORT, Wash. – The road to Hoodsport, Wash. is so familiar my car could almost drive there without me. I’ve driven it over a hundred times. Hoodsport is the closest town to the Woodward family getaway, a cabin on a finger of Puget Sound. When my wife’s folks were alive, we’d go there to swim, fish and otherwise enjoy ourselves. With their passing, the cabin passed to my wife. Now we go there to weed, paint, replace the deck, replace the flooring … We liked it better when we could lie around like slugs, but there you are. This summer, we…
I was sitting in a hotel lobby one evening when a man in a flowing orange African gown walked up, introduced himself and, over the next quarter hour of conversation, left little doubt that he was a force of nature. His name was Vincent Kituku. Kituku grew up in a mud hut in Kenya and went on to earn a PhD. from the University of Wyoming. You may recognize his name from the occasional Faith columns he writes for The Press. He is also a motivational speaker whose audiences have included, among others, the Boise State University football team. More notably, he is the founder of Caring Hearts High School in his native Kenya. Now, after years of growth and…
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Brad Eells may have been right. “It’s all your fault,” he wrote of Hurricane Dorian setting its sites on Florida and causing the Boise State-Florida State game to be moved from Jacksonville to Tallahassee. His email was one of a number of reader responses to a column of two weeks ago, warning Bronco fans that “Tropical Storm Tim” would be at the game. My ability to attract violent weather while traveling, particularly to BSU games, is well documented. The trip to Florida was no exception. DAY ONE: The trouble begins. A thunderstorm in Dallas, our stopover en route to Jacksonville, delays our takeoff in Boise. Arriving three hours late in Dallas, we’re told that we have ten minutes…
Warning to Boise State football fans heading to Jacksonville for the Florida State game: tropical storm likely. Disclaimer: There is nothing official about this warning. The forecast doesn’t call for a storm. But don’t rule one out. The reason: Tropical Storm Tim will be at the game. Regular readers of this column are well aware of my ability to run afoul of the weather gods when traveling. I’ve been run out of mountain lakes by storms that turned bone-dry creek beds into knee-deep rapids, stuck in blizzards on mountain passes, celebrated Thanksgiving on Puget Sound with gale-force winds, a power outage and a lily white turkey languishing on a hibachi. A group of friends trusting enough to travel with…
Navy Week Brings Events, Memories If you asked today’s teenagers what the draft was, they’d probably say it was a cold air current that made them move someplace else while they were texting. The draft, as in “your life as you know it is over,” hasn’t existed since 1973, long enough that most young people today have little or no idea that it was a call to mandatory military service. Prior to 1973, the draft was something most young men dreaded. Barring a disability or other acceptable excuse, young men of my generation could expect to get “greetings” from the president and an all-expense-paid trip to the war in Vietnam. When my draft notice arrived, my father gave me some…
Dannie Wurtz was watching television at her home in San Diego when a commercial caught her attention. It didn’t make her day. The commercial extolled Idaho’s scenic beauty and other attractions and encouraged viewers to visit. “It didn’t encourage them to move to Idaho, but what’s going to happen?” she asked. “They visit, see how nice Idaho is and some of them move there.” The commercial was of interest to her because she lived in Boise for ten years. A San Diego native, she did the opposite of what thousands of Californians are doing and moved back to California from Idaho in 2004 following the death of her mother, who lived in Boise. “I wanted to go back to…
Will researchers ever make up their minds? Time and time again, a researcher or team of researchers releases a study saying that something is bad for us. Or that something is good for us. Then, months later, another study is released saying it isn’t. It’s happened twice in just the last couple of months. Nothing exemplifies this better than egg studies. Researchers said for years that eggs were bad for us. They were high in cholesterol, would clog our arteries like sludge in a garden hose and cause us to keel over any minute. Eating eggs was Omelet Roulette. Two eggs sunny side up might as well have been twin gun barrels pointed at our livers. Then a…
Living quietly in a west Boise mobile home park is a man whose surroundings give few hints of his former life in the inner circle of stardom. The mobile home is much like those around it – neatly kept, flowers out front. Step inside and you’ll see a spacious living room with comfortable furniture and a big-screen television. The only clue to its owner’s career are two guitars on stands. His name is Bobby Gibson. He’s 84 years old, and though the term is typically used for the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and other pop stars, he is, in his own way, a guitar god. “There’s really nothing to playing the guitar,” he jokes. “After the first 50 or…
The three most popular toys for nine-year-old boys, according to an online site versed in such things, are an Anki Cosmo Robot, a Lego Tech Whack Building Kit and a Nerf Official N-strike Elite Strong-Arm Blaster. I have only the vaguest idea of what any of those things are. No surprise there; I have only a vague idea of how to use most of the things on my Smart Phone. Nor do I have more than even a vague memory of what comprised my ninth-birthday loot. A baseball glove, perhaps; maybe some model-railroad accessories or the gift sure to disappoint all nine-year-old boys – school clothes. Landon Palmer’s birthday gifts included books about American presidents, a presidential trivia card game…