This started out to be a story about a neighborhood reunion.

But it became something more.

The neighborhood reunion was last weekend. It was the first get-together in 16 years for the “South of the Tracks Kids.” The neighborhood where they grew up, in the 1940s and ’50s, was bordered by Ninth, 16th, the Boise River and Grand Avenue. It was the only neighborhood in Boise with any significant ethnic diversity, about half black and half white, and one of the poorest.

“We were poor, but we didn’t know it,” said Lois (Petrie) Kerr, one of about 50 who attended the reunion. “All of us kids had a home to go to, clothes to wear and enough to eat. Every house had a hedge, fences, flowers and a garden. People worked hard and were well respected, and we all stuck up for each other.”

“There was no such thing as segregation,” Jack Wheeler added. “If somebody needed help, we all helped them. It didn’t matter if you were black or white. We were family.”

Wheeler remembers swimming the river to ride horses on an island in what is now Ann Morrison Park. Neighbors wistfully recalled the long-gone Pearl Grocery and Grand Avenue Market, the Riverside Softball Park, an open-air dance hall (now the Mardi Gras) and the imposing locomotive roundhouse on 16th Street.

“You had to hang your laundry out early in the morning because a train came by every morning at 11,” Kerr recalled. “If you didn’t bring the laundry in by then, you got cinders from the locomotive all over your clean clothes.”

How much has the old neighborhood changed? Kerr’s family lived near the corner of 12th and River Streets – on an acre and a half where her parents raised hybrid irises. The neighborhood was almost entirely residential, no commercial or office buildings like those there today at all. There were six houses on one side of S. 12th Street, nine on the other. Lots of vacant land, lots of places for kids to play.

Kerr and Wheeler were kids when they fell in love. She was 16; he was 17. She still remembers the day when he asked her to marry him and put an engagement ring on her finger: Christmas Eve, 1959.

“I was crazy about him,” she said. “We were crazy about each other.”

But the marriage wasn’t to be. Her father not only didn’t approve of it; he absolutely wouldn’t allow it. Fathers did things like that more in those days.

“He said we were too young and that Jack was going to leave in the Navy and meet a thousand girls,” she said. “We were heartbroken. I was so mad at my father that I went to Virginia for a year and stayed with my brother. He was in the Navy there and had an apartment.”

Disappointed as they were, the young lovers respected her father’s wishes. Wheeler joined the Navy and served as a radioman and crypto repairman aboard an aircraft carrier. Then he returned to Boise, met and married another woman and spent most of his working years at a tire store and an automotive shop. His wife died two years ago. They were married 43 years.

“But I never forgot Lois,” he said. “For all those 43 years that I was married, I held onto my picture of her.”

Kerr stayed with her brother in Virginia long enough for her anger to cool  and returned to Boise as well.

“You know how it is,” she said. “You meet someone else and end up married.”

She was married twice, had three children, lived in several states. Her second husband died in 2006.

But she never completely got over Wheeler

Her father apparently didn’t, either.

“He told me I had to go to Boise to find Jack and apologize for him for what he did,” she said. “He died 30 days later.”

On May 16 – the 19th anniversary of her father’s death – she came back to Boise and found Jack. And after all those years, the spark still hadn’t died.

“He walked up, put his arms around me and kissed me,” she said. “It went right down to my toenails.”

Then her onetime fiancé did something she wasn’t expecting. He told her he’d loved her all his life, and proposed for the second time.

As you’ve probably guessed, she said yes.

And so, at ages 70 and 71 respectively, high school sweethearts Lois Petrie and Jack Wheeler finally were married. I think it’s fair to say that the wedding, a week ago yesterday, was the highlight of the South of the Tracks Kids reunion. Relatives came from as far away as Hawaii. The ceremony was held in the parking lot of the Humphreys Diabetes Center, which not coincidentally is the site of Wheeler’s boyhood home. He lived at what was then 520 S.12th Street; she lived across the street at 525 S. 12th.

At the reunion picnic last Sunday, he couldn’t stop smiling.

“It took me 54 years to catch up with her,” he said as he posed for a  picture between his new bride and her sister, Pennie Smith. “I got the girl of my dreams and I gained a sister. I’ve always wanted a sister. I couldn’t ask for more.”

Maybe it’s true that it’s never too late. Married over half a century after they wanted to be, the former South of the Tracks Kids have found happiness made sweeter by the long wait for it.

“I couldn’t ask for more,” Wheeler said.

His bride summed it up well:

“We’re recycled teenagers.”

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in the Idaho Statesman and is posted the following Mondays on http://www.woodwardblog.com. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.

 

In music, mistakes or near mistakes sometimes have a way of ending happily. Synapses fire and a forgotten lyric is remembered a nanosecond before it has to be sung. The mind goes blank, but muscle memory takes over and something unexpected and wonderful happens.

On rare occasions in the musical world, even the most frustrating blunders produce gratifying results. So it was with me and the botched Steely Dan interview.

For those who missed last month’s column on that embarrassing episode, Steely Dan is one of my two all-time favorite groups. They played at the Idaho Botanical Garden in August, and I’d gotten myself included in a July  media teleconference that kicked off their tour. To say that I was looking forward to interviewing my heroes is an understatement.

If you did read last month’s column, you know about The Mistake. We were told at the beginning of the teleconference to press *1 to be entered in a queue for asking questions. I pressed 1* – and never did get to ask my questions. As my late mother might have put it, I felt like “two cents waiting for change.”

I was half hoping that Steely Dan’s press people would take pity on me and set up an interview with them when they came to town. That didn’t happen, but some other good things did.

They started, as good things sometimes do, with a bad thing. On the first or second song of the show, the inevitable contingent of fans who think that people would rather watch them dance than see the act they paid to see stood up and blocked the view of the stage. Incensed, my wife asked them to sit down. Miraculously, they did.

For one song. Then a woman old enough to know better not only got up and started dancing but gesturing for others to join her. That was all it took. What began with one dancing dolt ended with hundreds of people standing and dancing in front of the stage for the rest of the night.

You can only look  at the backs of knees for so long. If your chairs have been reduced to obsolescence and you’ve become part of a gyrating throng, you might as well be close to the front of the gyrating throng, where you can see something.

From there, you could get an idea of what it’s like to be onstage with a group of that caliber. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who began and jointly are Steely Dan, surround themselves with ten of the best studio musicians and backup singers on the planet. For someone like me, who has played in local bands most of my life, an evening in close proximity to that kind of  talent was akin to finding Shangri-la.

And we’d get even closer. The walk back to the car after the show took us past a white limousine stuck in gridlock. I was walking with my daughter who had had her Steely Dan license plates turned into a purse (the one pictured with last month’s column). We assumed some fans had rented the limo for a night of partying until a window rolled down and there, close enough to touch, was Donald Fagen – the co-writer, keyboard player and voice of Steely Dan.

“If ever there was a time to get your purse signed, this is it,” I said after regaining the power of speech.

“No,” she replied. “I don’t want to bug him.”

To understand this, you need to know that for us Fagen has almost mythical status. The man is an alien. His intellect is not of this earth. I was proud of her for not invading his privacy.

The story doesn’t end there. The next morning, we were loading the car for a trip when we noticed an unfamiliar cell phone on its roof. My wife, who is better than me with phones I consider to be the digital equivalent of Chinese water torture, checked its directory and called a number. No one answered, but seconds later someone called back.

“You just called me at my home on my cell phone,” a relieved-sounding voice said. “Thank you! My life is on that phone. Tell me where you live and I’ll come and get it.”

He lived in Ontario, Ore. It happened that the route for our trip took us by there, so we met him at a freeway restaurant.

“What did you think of Steely Dan last night?” he asked after thanking us profusely for his phone.

I told him I thought they were one of the best bands in the world.

“What do you mean ‘one of the best?’ They’re the best!”

I liked this guy. He may be even more absent-minded than I am when it comes to hanging onto his stuff, but his musical taste is above reproach.

I saved the best part of the story for last. The next day, an e-mail arrived from Julia Rundberg, the botanical garden’s executive director. It said she had “something I might like.” The purse-daughter all but melted down waiting for us to get home from our trip and find out what it was.

What it was was an autographed Steely Dan poster for her. And a framed, autographed copy of the botched-interview column for me. It’s on a wall in my home office now. If the house ever catches fire, it’s one of the first things I’ll grab.

Thanks, Donald and Walter, for doing that. It beats the hell out of asking you a couple of questions on the phone.

And thanks to Julia and all the folks at the botanical garden for making it  happen. And for all the great talent you’ve brought to the garden in the last few years.

A friend who saw Steely Dan in Portland said the garden show was better,  because the crowd was so into it. Becker and Fagen seemed energized by that, talking  to the audience more than I’d ever seen them do in other cities.

Maybe they’ll come back one day. If so, I have some questions waiting for them.

 

***

 

If you like humor with your music, you might want to put Oct. 4 on your calendar. Antsy McClain and the Trailer Park Troubadours will play a benefit concert for the Idaho Suicide Prevention Hotline (1 800 273-TALK) that night at the Egyptian Theater.

At his previous Boise shows, fans alternated between enjoying McClain’s  and his band’s musical prowess and laughing until they cried. I laughed so hard I hurt myself.

The show will raise money to extend the hotline’s hours to 24/7 and will honor veterans, a high-risk group for suicide. Tickets, $25, are available at the Egyptian and the Record Exchange. Information:  http://www.egyptiantheatre.net.

 

Tim Woodward’s column appears in the Idaho Statesman every other Sunday and is posted on http://www.woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.

 

If you live along the river or in the Foothills – and chances are even if you don’t – you know we’ve been invaded.

They’re everywhere. In our parks, on our streets, in our yards.

No, I’m not talking about politicians (though yet another campaign invasion is also beginning). These invaders are four-footed rather than two-tongued. Our valley has been invaded by mule deer.

Strictly speaking, invasion is the wrong word. The deer, after all, were here first. Its just that there are more of them now.

A lot more. The Statesman ran a photo recently of some mule deer, swimming right alongside humans rafting the river. I’ve been floating the river for decades and have never come within 50 yards of a deer. Now they swim up and ask you for a beer.

I’ve always thought deer were supposed to be wild animals. These days you can’t even frighten them away.

When I opened the front door to pick up my newspaper on a recent morning, a mule deer eyed me casually from my yard. She was busy with her breakfast – my favorite rose bush. I’ve babied that rose bush for years. I love its deep red petals, which were rapidly going the way of Anthony Weiner’s mayoral aspirations.

Because nothing original came to mind, I resorted to the time-honored method people use when they want a pest to go away, especially when it’s bigger than they are.

“Shoo!”

I might as well have sung her a lullaby.

“Shoo. Go on. Git!”

She didn’t stop eating, didn’t even look up.

“Shoo! Beat it!” I said, raising my voice and waving my arms. By this time I couldn’t have been more than 30 feet from her.

She looked up and placidly gazed in my direction. I could almost hear her thinking:  “What’s up with these crazy humans around here? And by the way, what are you doing in my yard?”

We’ve lived in our neighborhood for 25 years and have never seen as many deer as we have this summer. Including two fawns, I counted seven of them crossing the street in front of a neighbor’s house the other day. One   appeared to be carrying something brushy in her mouth as she crossed his lawn, a possible indication that he’d invited them to a potluck.

If this keeps up, it’s only a matter of time before they’re using our grills and lounging in our deck chairs.

The Idaho Fish and Game Department office on Walnut Street has gotten as many as five calls a day this summer from motorists concerned about hitting deer.

“The reason we’re seeing so many of them in town is the drought,” Toby Boudreau told me. “There’s less water higher in the hills so they come down to the lower elevations where they can live.”

Boudreau is a man who knows his deer. He’s the department’s statewide deer and elk coordinator. As long as the drought persists, he sees the urban deer population increasing.

“A mule-deer herd can grow 28 percent a year, so the population can double in three years,” he said. “Every doe has fawns. And some have twins.”

In other words, the real hordes may be yet to come.

You know that spare room you’ve been thinking of renting to make a little extra money …

One of the reasons people enjoy living in Boise, Boudreau said, is the proximity to wildlife. We love seeing bald eagles along the river, Bambis in our parks, squirrels harvesting our tomatoes, crows plundering our grapevines …

“We’ve created a perfect habitat for them,” Boudreau said. “All these beautifully maintained lawns and gardens and ornamental shrubs are very palatable to deer. They love them. Intentionally or not, we’ve created habitats right here in town that are very conducive to growing mule deer.”

In Helena, Mont., he said, so many deer are living in town that the city is attempting to return them to their natural haunts.

“We’re not quite to that point yet,” he added.

Because more and more of us have them as neighbors, it’s important to remember that deer are still wild animals. They only look tame.

“They’ve become habituated to humans. They’re not tame, but they’re tolerant of us. In the wild, you can’t walk up to a deer. In Ann Morrison Park, you can. They’re not necessarily a danger to people, but you need to give them their space. If they’re cornered, they’ll defend themselves.”

The biggest danger comes, as is usually the case, when people interfere with nature. A soft-hearted animal lover sees what appears to be a lost fawn, pitifully looking for the cold-hearted mother that abandoned it in a city park, and takes the poor, helpless creature home for a hot meal and a bedtime story.

“The mothers hide their young while they go feed,” Boudreau said. “Then they come back to nurse the young. The fawns have been told by the mother to stay there, but people think they’re abandoned so they take them home and feed them. Then, when they become aggressive, they don’t want them anymore.

“… There was one instance where a deer raised by humans gored two people. A woman was down and bleeding, and when someone tried to help the deer gored him.”

In 2011, a deer partially raised by humans attacked a cyclist in Sun Valley. In southeast Idaho, one chased a farmer on a tractor.

Moral: admire the Bambis all you want – from a distance. When it comes to taking care of them, mother knows best.

Especially when it comes to food.

“People food is terrible for them,” Boudreau said. “It can kill them. Their stomachs aren’t designed for it. They’re designed to digest woody plants.”

Including roses. Clumsy humans, at least this one, manage to prick ourselves just pruning roses. Deer can nibble the tender petals we love without so much as touching a thorn.

“They have very dexterous mouths,” Boudreau said. “They can eat the petals and leave everything else. After the roses have stopped blooming, they can eat the rose hips that are left behind. They can pick the leaves off of alfalfa and leave the stems.”

Tired of having your prize flowers used as snacks? Malodorous sprays (Deer-Off is a good one) will keep the deer at bay but have to be reapplied if rained on or sprinkled. (You might want to increase the applications during campaign season.) And the staff at any good garden store or nursery can tell you which plants and bulbs not to buy because they’re deer delicacies. I can tell you from bitter experience that tulips top the menu.

Other than that, it’s live and let live. You can’t get away from them – they’re along the river and in the hills for pretty much the length of the valley – and they aren’t necessarily just passing through.

“Some are year-round residents,” Boudreau said. “The climate in the valley is a lot better than it is in places like Council or McCall or Lowman, where the snow gets so deep. The valley and the habitat we’ve created in it is perfect for them. It’s a great place to be a deer.”

Maybe we should be grateful.

At least they’re not skunks.

 

Tim Woodward’s column appears in the Idaho  Statesman’s Life Section every other Sunday and is posted on http://www.woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.