Some of my favorite news stories are about treasures lost and rediscovered – a priceless painting found under decades of dust in someone’s attic, an unreleased Beatles song turning up in a vault, the discovery of a lost manuscript by a famous author. A lost manuscript by Vardis Fisher recently was found after lying untouched in a folder for nearly 80 years. “Vardis Who?” you may ask. A fair question. All but forgotten today, Fisher was once Idaho’s best known writer. He was brilliant, iconoclastic, infuriating. He wrote 36 books, evoking comparisons with Thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner. He also drove a wife to suicide and alienated both critics and readers with his acerbic observations – which earned him the nickname…
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
Here in Idaho, 3,000 miles away, we don’t hear much about what’s been happening in our hemisphere’s poorest nation. Few countries have known more suffering than Haiti – earthquakes, hurricanes, grinding poverty and, most recently, violent protests that continue to claim lives. Idahoans, long noted for their generosity, are providing assistance through a project that has been helping the people of Haiti for 25 years. Coverage of the violence in Haiti has been scant, sporadic. Political news and disasters in the U.S. – floods, fires, Hurricane Dorian – have dominated the news cycle. That doesn’t mean that nothing newsworthy is happening in Haiti. Protests over rising inflation, lack of basic goods and government corruption have turned streets into battle…
Some towns, even very small towns, are known for having at least one really great restaurant. Albion (population 270) was renowned for the now defunct Annie-Laurie Cafe, which served steaks big enough that, if the legs had been attached, you could have thrown a saddle on one and ridden it home. Mexican food at Kuna’s El Gallo Giro and Enrique’s draws customers from far beyond Kuna. Nampa’s El Charro started out as a taco truck and became a destination restaurant for diners throughout the valley. I was reminded of iconic Idaho restaurants in a recent email from online reader Judy Pray of Medford, Ore. Pray was writing in response to one of my columns she’d found on Google about the late,…
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…
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…