One act of kindness. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Just ask the drive-through miracle woman. That would be Valerie LaChapelle, a subject of this column in March. LaChapelle works the morning shift at the McDonald’s drive-through window at 1185 S. Vista Avenue. Her “drive-through miracle,” as she calls it, was an anonymous donation from a customer to pay for dental work she needed. She estimates the cost at $10,000. The March column The March column attracted a lot of attention and activity on social media. It wasn’t long before customers at the drive-thru began sharing their own miracle stories with her. “One woman told me she had four kids and was walking everywhere she needed to go with the kids because she didn’t have a…
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
Art Jackson finally got the respect he deserved. He had to die for it to happen. A World War II Medal of Honor recipient, Jackson was honored with tributes at the White House and a ticker tape parade in New York City, but made a mistake that haunted him for the rest of his life. He was dismissed from the Marine Corps for it – by President John F. Kennedy – without a chance to tell his side of the story. He died last month at 92, seemingly forgotten by the country he served. Until his memorial service. Several hundred people, representing the military, veterans’ groups and police and fire departments among others, turned out to pay their respects at the Idaho Veterans…
One of the things I was known for writing about early in my time as a columnist was Maintenance Manor, a scene of ongoing misadventures in home improvement. Maintenance Manor was a 90-year-old house that the Woodwards, displaying poor judgment of colossal proportions, purchased in hopes of turning into a North End dream home. Nearly everything about the place was a nightmare. It had one bathroom, accessible only from the back porch. The front porch was sagging. The roof, the plumbing, the wiring, nearly everything needed to be replaced. It had an oil furnace dating to Herbert Hoover, zero insulation and zero charm. In our defense, I can only say that we took the real estate agent’s “location, location, location” advice too seriously. The…
I’m writing this one day before increased flood insurance on my house became effective… And one day after reports that the flood threat had all but passed. The Woodward timing. It turned out that we didn’t need the increased flood insurance – and didn’t need to do any of the other things we did to prepare for the flood. We could have left the coverage at its former level, or, for that matter, had no flood insurance at all. We could have left all the furniture where it was instead of moving it to a storage unit. We could have done absolutely nothing and been just fine. That’s okay, though. The flood that didn’t happen wasn’t without an up side. Flooding did happen in…
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…
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…