It isn’t really Pinto Bennett’s last Saturday night. But it’s close enough that he can see it coming. “The Last Saturday Night” is the country singer-songwriter’s newest album, his fourteenth. The newest and probably the last. “I figured the one I made before it would be the last one,” he said. “When my producer asked me if I wanted to do another album I said, ‘aren’t there any young people out there who want to record an album?’ He said ‘yeah, but I want to make a Pinto Bennett album.’ “I called it ‘The Last Saturday Night’ because it just felt like it. I can’t do this any more. My health and my brain won’t let me. I…
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
If you’ve driven the desolate stretches of desert that comprise much of Idaho and its neighboring states, you know something about boredom. The highways are straight as a string, the scenery monotonous, the nearest towns so far away you wonder if you’ll ever get to them. There was a time, however, when signs dotting the West’s sagebrush immensities brought humor to some of the most desolate places imaginable. Those who remember them know exactly what I’m talking about – the Fearless Farris Stinker signs. Now, for those who never knew the iconic signs as well as those who remember them fondly but would like to know more about them, there’s a new book. “Fearless,” by Idaho historian and author Rick Just, tells…
My wife had a milestone birthday recently and chose to celebrate it by taking the kids and grandkids on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise. I was in favor of taking them on a rail trip – less expensive and no seasickness – but it was her birthday. We looked first at cruises from California to Mexico, thinking they’d be cheap. Surprisingly, Caribbean cruises were less expensive. And they left from New Orleans, one of our favorite cities. Cheaper and New Orleans as a bonus? No contest. There was just one problem. Mardi Gras. Our travel agent warned us to reserve rooms right away because hotels would be filling up quickly. This was in December, almost three months before Mardi Gras. She obviously…
Two Idahoans have made cartoon history in one of the nation’s prominent publications. They did it by winning a contest. There are contests, and there are contests. Winning a karaoke contest or the office March Madness pool is one thing. It’s quite another to win, say, the Pillsbury Bakeoff, an essay contest, the National History Day Contest … Or the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. The New Yorker, for readers unfamiliar with it, is a weekly magazine that publishes, among other things, commentary, journalism, essays, fiction, poetry and cartoons. Indicative of its range, its contributors have included John Updike, James Thurber, Joan Didion, Annie Proulx, Phillip Roth, Ogden Nash, Garrison Keillor, Joyce Carol Oates and Groucho Marx, to name a…
The guest of honor had to be coaxed into opening his birthday presents and blowing out candles. He was having too much fun playing on the cargo nets at Planet Kid. The guest of honor was my great grandson, who was turning five. I was not ready to be a great grandfather when he was born any more than my daughter was ready to be a grandmother in her mid-30s. We were too young – no canes, no hearing aids, no long white beard. But there he was, ready or not, and life hasn’t been the same since. Nothing like a new kid to shake things up. As he opened his birthday gifts, it struck me how different life is…
The poltergeist that haunts my house has a new name now: Casper, after the protagonist of the “Casper the Friendly Ghost” cartoon series. A recent column about the poltergeist that inhabits the Woodward residence cited instances in which keys, a cell phone, a robe and other common items vanished for months, even years, only to reappear in plain sight. It asked, only half jokingly, if readers could recommend a good exorcist and encouraged them to share their own poltergeist stories. I didn’t really expect much in the way of responses. How many people, after all, even believe in ghosts these day? And how many would actually have stories about them, let alone be willing to share them? Well, let me tell you…
Anselme Sadiki knows what it is to be a refugee escaping a life of horror in his native country with little hope of being welcomed in a new one. His story is an object lesson for our times. For the last three years, Sadiki has been the executive director of the Idaho Children’s Home Society. He has a good life in a city and country he loves. What it took for him to get get here, however, is a story that most of us with comfortable lives have trouble just imagining. A native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, then Zaire, he was a university student when the country’s dictator launched a campaign of terror against intellectuals. His thugs…
(Note to subscribers. Sorry to be posting this a couple of days late. As you’ll discover from reading it, I tend to be a bit absent-minded. — Tim) Wanted: exorcist. This is not a joke. My house is haunted. Not haunted in the sense of a horror movie – no apparitions, spectral voices or things that go bump in the night. My house is haunted by a harmless (well, relatively harmless) poltergeist. It’s been happening for years. One exasperating incident after another. Things simply disappear. Some vanish for good; others reappear in plain sight after weeks or months of looking for them. The latest casualty was a Costco Cash Card. I laid it on a dresser, left the…
Quick, what’s the longest it’s ever taken you to name something? A dog or a cat, maybe? My wife and I took weeks to name one of our dogs. A car? A child? Most states require babies to be named before they leave the hospital. Some states allow a bit longer, but the idea is pretty much the same everywhere. Give the kid a name. Now. What’s the longest it’s ever taken a kid to be named? Good question. But it’s a pretty good bet that Eagle resident Tamara Scribner would be in the running. She wasn’t legally named till she was 16. And she’s not a dog or a car. How did this happen?…
This week, for the first time in most of its residents’ lives, Boise will not have a Sears store. When its doors closed last week, the store in Boise Town Square joined one of 142 closing nationally – casualties of Sears bankruptcy. A once unthinkable demise for a company that made history as the largest and most innovative retailer in the world. The rise and fall of Sears began in 1888, with the Sears Catalog. There was a time when virtually every home in America had a copy of the famous “wish book.” Customers used it to order everything from socks and sweaters to sewing machines and saddles. Sears and Roebuck opened its first retail store in Chicago in 1925. In…