Boise has changed so much there are times when I hardly recognize it.
There have even been times when, because it’s changed so much, I’ve gotten lost in my hometown. New buildings, new streets and roads, new everything.
The Boise of today is a vibrant, up-and-coming city. It has more businesses, more opportunities, more things to do than we once would have thought possible. What many who moved here or grew up here in, say, the last 20 or 30 years don’t realize, however, is that in a different way it was a pretty vibrant place before then.
A recent email from groupupdates@facebook.com reminded me of this. Titled “Remembering Boise When,” it contained scores of photos of Boise institutions long gone but fondly remembered:
The first was Manley’s Cafe. Manley’s, on Federal Way, is affectionately remembered for gigantic portions of food. Steaks or a serving of prime rib covered a plate – and then some. Pie a’la mode was a quarter of a pie with a pint of ice cream.
A photo of the long-departed downtown railroad yard on Front Street evoked memories of evenings spent there with my parents and sister, watching the trains come and go. Boise was a much smaller city then. We entertained ourselves with the limited options available.
I’d all but forgotten what the airport used to look like then, a small terminal building with the tower attached and no ugly parking garages blocking the view of it as you approached. It had a wonderful restaurant on the second floor where you could watch the planes take off and land.
A photo of the C.C. Anderson’s store brought equally pleasant memories. Later the Bon Marche, it was a three story building at Tenth and Idaho. Mr. Anderson, dressed to the nines, roamed the store handing out candy to children. The store’s Empire Room, a mezzanine-level restaurant, served some of the best burgers in town.
“Remembering Boise When” was replete with photos of gone eateries. In addition to the aforementioned Manley’s Cafe, they included The Torch, Murray’s Drive-in, the Crow Inn and the Howdy Pardner.
The Torch, in the same building that now houses a strip joint of the same name, was best known for the finger steaks invented by its owner, Milo Bybee. It stayed open late and was frequented by musicians who played till midnight or 1 a.m. I know that because I was one of them.
Murray’s was a classic drive-in, with carhops on roller skates. The Crow Inn was locally famous for serving buckets of clams. The Howdy Pardner’s claim to fame was a disk jockey in a booth on the roof. Customers watched the deejay play their favorite records while enjoying their burgers and shakes.
One of the Remembering-Boise posts asked whether anyone remembered the name of the Spanish Mission-style restaurant “that sat off of Hill Road?”
That would be Hill House. Its cinnamon rolls were legendary; its fried chicken was arguably the best in town.
A picture of the Hip Sing Association building, the last structure in Boise’s Chinatown, recalled my first and worst day on the local government beat. The building was being demolished, it’s last tenant gone to live with relatives in California. I insensitively described his former quarters as messy (the living room housed a towering stack of empty tuna fish cans) and got hate mail about it for weeks.
The photos continued: the 1969 Oxford Hotel Fire, a parade honoring the Boise Braves minor league baseball team, the Fun Spot amusement park, the old Grand Central Store …
Boise’s population at the time most of the photos were taken was about 15 percent of what it is now. It didn’t have a university, a regional medical center, a performing arts center or many other things we now take for granted.
That said, it was still a pretty great place to grow up.
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@gmail.com.
Tim Woodward 