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 Boise sometime, but it’s not the same any more,” she said. “It’s sad to hear about all the traffic and other changes.”

  Sound familiar? It’s hard to get through a day any more without reminders of how much Boise and other cities in the valley have changed: gridlock, long lines, short tempers.

  I was slowing down to stop at a red light last week when another driver passed me on the right. Zooming past at well over the speed limit, he shouted something unprintable before cutting back in front of me in his haste to stop at the light before I did.

  In the same week, one of my daughters lamented an hour-long, stop-and-go drive to take her daughter to a piano lesson. It used to take 20 minutes.

  While I was writing this, my wife called to say she’d be late getting home because she was stuck in traffic.

  “I’ve been on the bridge on Emerald Street for 15 minutes,” she fumed. “The light turns green for about ten seconds and stays red forever. It’s insane!”

  One of the television news programs recently ran footage of a packed parking lot at Barber Park. So many people were floating the river that no parking places were left at the put-in.

  It hasn’t been that many years since that wouldn’t have happened. And, going back more years, the valley is so changed that it hardly seems like the same place.

  When I was growing up here, most of the land between Nampa and Boise was farmland. Boise was a city of 34,000, Nampa, 18,000.   Meridian was a sleepy farm town of 2,000. Eagle was so small it isn’t even listed in some reports for that year.

  Now, according to 2019 figures cited in World Population Review,  Boise’s population is almost seven times what it was then. Meridian’s is 108,000, Nampa’s 96,000. The once bucolic, blink-or-you’ll-miss-it berg of Eagle is 28,000 and has some of the highest housing prices in the state.

  Home prices have risen so much that many first-time buyers are priced out of the market. One of them is my granddaughter who just received her bachelors degree at Boise State and can’t even think about buying a house. Another granddaughter and her husband had to move when a woman in California bought the house they were living in and nearly doubled their rent.

  When I was in college, you didn’t have to worry about finding a parking place at Barber to float the river. You could float it on a weekday and not see another soul. You could drive across town in a few minutes. We used to fish and hunt ducks in a wooded, rural area that’s now a busy shopping center skirted by major arterials with non-stop traffic. 

  That’s not to say that all the changes are bad. The Treasure Valley’s cities aren’t just bigger; they’re more vibrant, attractive and interesting. We have cultural, educational, entertainment and business opportunities we once wouldn’t have believed possible.

  Newcomers have helped make that happen. Many of the newcomers have brought needed skills, given back to our communities, made this a better place to live. They aren’t all jerks who drive like lunatics and disrespect our way of life. 

 Californians included. Californians are famously resented, not just in Idaho but in other states where they’re moving, because there are so many of them. A recent New York Times story reported that last year alone 20,000 Californians moved to Boise (which also has a video pitching its attractions).

  No wonder it’s taking longer to drive anywhere.

  That said, should we hate Californians? Hate doesn’t accomplish anything. It would make more sense to look at why they’re moving here and ponder it as a cautionary tale. 

  “People from California are jumping ship left and right,” Wurtz said. “They’re moving to Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Arizona. The policies, prices, fees and taxes in California are pushing people out of the market. In Idaho, I paid $58 to register my car. In California, it’s $600. Our power bill is $250 to $300 a month, and we pay $8,000 a year in property taxes. We have sales tax, property taxes, luxury taxes,  retirement taxes … People can’t afford to live here so they’re leaving.”

  “… Idaho has always been 15 or 20 years behind California. Fast forward 15 or 20 years, and if things continue the way they are you’ll have what we have now.”

  When she first moved to Idaho and still had her California plates, “some guy tried to send me a message by trying to run me off the road at Lucky Peak. Another two feet and I’d have gone into the reservoir.”

  That’s appalling. Most Idahoans are known for being friendly and welcoming.

  But should we be doing things that encourage people to move here?

  At a time when we’re spending more and more of our time stuck in gridlock, our housing and infrastructure can’t keep up with the demand and home prices and taxes are at record levels and rising, maybe it’s time to rethink the time-honored idea of promoting growth. 

  Instead of doing glossy commercials telling people how wonderful Boise and Idaho are, perhaps we should be telling them about the things the best-cities surveys don’t mention: low incomes, the rising cost of living, traffic jams, winter inversions, summer air-quality alerts  …

  My guess is that a majority of the people who live here have had enough of being one of the fastest growing places in the country and would love it if we slowed down and let our infrastructure catch up.

  A late Boise Chamber of Commerce director was known for coining the phrase “Greater Boise.” These days, “Lesser Boise” sounds pretty good.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.

 

  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 study was released saying that eggs weren’t so bad, after all. We could eat a few eggs a week and be just fine. The ink on the study had hardly dried when another study was released saying that eating any eggs at all would shorten our lives.

  So which is it?

  The answer, of course, is that no one really knows because whatever the latest study says is almost certain to be refuted by the next study.

  The chicken study, for example.

  The chicken study, published several weeks ago in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, reported that white meat from chickens is just as bad for our cholesterol levels as red meat from cows.

  It’s an understatement to say this came as a shock. For those who have been eschewing rather than chewing red meat for health purposes, it was a little like saying that fruits and vegetables are as bad for us as doughnuts or lard.

  Though not a vegetarian, I’ve been cutting back on red meat for years. Not because of a dislike for it, but because the so-called experts who study these things said it was bad for us. While my wife happily consumed bacon with breakfast, a burger for lunch and steak or pork chops for dinner, I made a prolonged if not always successful effort to stick with chicken or fish.

  If you think that’s easy, try watching everyone else enjoy a juicy steak or a burger with all the trimmings while you’re opening a can of smelly sardines.

    It will be interesting to see how advertisers react to the chicken study. Will Chick fil-A switch from cows telling us to “eat more chickn” to chickens telling us to eat more cheeseburgers? Will pork go from being “the other white meat” to being “the other pot roast?”

  Red wine used to be good for us. Then any alcohol at all was bad for us.

  Butter was bad for us, until the researchers decided that margarine was worse for us.

  Coffee was bad for us. Until it was good for us.

  It isn’t just food, either. Even something as basic as walking, once universally thought to be a healthful form of exercise, has come under the skeptical eye of a researcher.

  My father walked every day of his life and enjoyed good health until he died at almost 84. I’ve tried to follow his example, and nothing has been a better incentive than the Fitbit received a few years ago as a Father’s Day gift.

  Until recently, the benefits of Fitbit’s 10,000 steps a day mantra were unquestioned. Dr. Oz, among others, repeatedly told us to walk “10,000 steps every day. No excuses.”

  Some Fitbit junkies were neurotic about it, which wasn’t great for their mental health, but for millions of people the goal was an incentive to avoid becoming a couch potato. I hit the target a couple of days a week, came reasonably close other days, lost weight, felt better.

  Then I-Min Lee came along. A Harvard epidemiology professor, Min Lee is the lead author of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It reported that the previously accepted goal of walking 10,000 steps a day is little more than a marketing strategy.

  The conclusion was based on the premise that the Japanese figure for 10,000 looks like a man walking, and research claiming that 4,400 steps were enough to lower the mortality rate for elderly women.

  So what about the rest of us?

  If 4,400 are enough for elderly women, how many are enough for elderly men? 

  And how about everyone else? Do young, fit people need to walk more or less than old people?

  Or should we all just settle for a stroll around the block and a nice nap?

  My wife has a Sleepbit. I call it that because she uses it to track her sleep rather than her steps. She walks in moderation and eats pretty much whatever she wants.

  I religiously walk thousands of steps every day, try to avoid eggs and red meat, have increased my intake of fruits and vegetables – and still have to take a statin drug to lower my cholesterol. She doesn’t do those things and her cholesterol numbers are perfect. 

  So maybe the researchers are right. Maybe we should throw away our fitness trackers, increase our intake of eggs, meat lover’s pizza and pork rinds and wash them down with Singapore Slings.

  It might not improve our numbers, but it would be a lot more fun.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.

 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 60 years, it’s easy.”

  He started playing at ten. Like many great players, he grew up in a musical family. His mother taught him his first chords. An uncle who played the banjo taught him to accompany him. He made his first money playing music when he was 11, earning three dollars to play at a barn dance in Ridgefield, Wash. 

  When he was a teenager living in Vancouver, Wash., he met a young man who was working as a disc jockey at the local radio station. He played guitar, too, and so began a lifelong friendship. They played together at Grange halls and barn dances. The young man, then in his early twenties, was Willie Nelson.

  “He went by the name Texas Willie for his radio show,” Gibson said.

  Gibson spent his teens playing in the Vancouver area with whoever he could wherever he could for whatever he could make. His first job at a dance hall paid $17 a night. Then as now, local musicians were exploited.

  “We played at a packed Grange hall one night. It was so crowded you could barely move. We said, ‘Boy, are we ever gonna’ make a lot of money tonight!’ They paid us $3 each.”

  Young but talented, Gibson was destined for bigger things than playing for a few bucks a night at Grange halls. He went on to own a recording studio, front his own band and play with well-known musicians in Nashville, Los Angeles, New York and other cities.

  One was the late Merle Haggard, recipient of a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award and a member of Country Music Hall of Fame. They were drinking wine together one night when they decided to record a song at Gibson’s studio.

  “When we got to the studio, the drum kit that was usually there had been taken out for a gig. We improvised by using a microphone case and a toilet brush instead.”

  How did the song turn out?

  “It was beautiful.”

  When a talented but relatively unknown black country singer lost some work because of the color of his skin, the leader of the Bobby Gibson Band had him sit in for a few nights to help him make ends meet. Charley Pride went on to have 40 number-one hits on the country charts and be a part owner of a major league baseball team.

   Gibson opened for Johnny Cash. Among his memorabilia is a letter from Cash, thanking him for loaning him money for a set of tires.

 He played with Buck Owens, who sat in with the Bobby Gibson Band one night in Portland.

  “His whole band was sitting in the front row.”

  I asked him if that made him nervous, having all those musicians watching him.

  “No,” he replied “I’ve been doing this so long and had so many people watch me play that it doesn’t bother me who’s in the audience.”

  His guitar hero is the late Chet Atkins, whose influence can be heard in his playing. Atkins was known for playing base, rhythm and melody at the same time. Gibson does the same thing, so he’s as comfortable playing for audiences by himself as he is with a band.

  Atkins’s name was all but synonymous with the Gretsch brand of guitars. Gibson is a Gretsch-endorsed artist, which is a pretty big deal. There are only about 20 of them. 

  Gretsch guitars were favorites of the Beatles’ George Harrison.

  “Mr. Gretsch told me sales increased so much because of George Harrison that they couldn’t keep up. They couldn’t make them fast enough.”

  At an annual gathering of the Chet Atkins Appreciation Society, Australian  Grammy-nominated guitarist Tommy Emmanuel filled in as Gibson’s drummer. Gibson has a picture in his photo album of Emmanuel learning a guitar lick from him.

  He played for years with the late Nokie Edwards, a founding member of the Ventures.

  “In all that time, we only played one Ventures song,” he said. “I forgot which song it was, but I didn’t know it. I don’t care who you are or how good you are, you have to have at least a basic idea. I had to ask what the chords were.”

  In addition to names previously mentioned, Gibson either played or spent time   with Patsy Cline, Merle Travis, Jim Reeves, George Benson, Brenda Lee, Les Paul, Conway Twitty, Glen Campbell and some I’ve probably forgotten.

  Because he seems to have played with just about everybody who’s anybody in the country music of his generation, I asked him whether there was anything left that he’d still like to accomplish.

  “Yes,” he said. “I love playing beautiful melodies. I’d like to play with a symphony orchestra someday. That’s one thing I’ve never done.”

  Six years ago, he moved to Boise to be closer to a daughter and her husband. Last year, he was inducted into the Fingerpickers Hall of Fame along with Duane Eddy (famous for the twangy guitar sound in “Peter Gunn,” “Rebel Rouser” and other hits). Past inductees include his hero, Chet Atkins, which is as good an indication as any of what an honor it was..

  I asked him how hard he had to practice to be that good.

  “I’ve never practiced,” he said. “I got paid to learn my whole life. As the jobs progressed, I was able to play five or six nights a week and didn’t have to have another job. I’d play some nights in a cowboy outfit and some in a tuxedo. I learned everything on the bandstand. I didn’t have time to practice.”

  Never?

  “Never. There just wasn’t time for it.”

  With that I thanked him for the interview. Then I went home and smashed all my guitars.

Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him at woodwardcolumn@hotmail.com.