Pinehurst: Fifth Grade (3)

Flood & Native Speak

Oft times in the Silver Valley, about every 10 years - give or take a year, there's a flood. There was a flood in '64, '74, and in the mid-80s - (unsure of the year, but my parents took "movies") and probably one in the 90s. Now the floods in Pinehurst usually don't occur during the "spring run-off" when most floods occur - they usually happen in December or January. Yea. Dead in the middle of winter.

Northern Idaho generally starts getting snow in November (sometimes late October), and the snow continues to fall throughout December and into January. But in certain years, instead of the snow continuing through March, winter is disrupted by a "Chinook wind." A Chinook is a warm wind that comes off of the Pacific Ocean melting a portion of the snow pack. As the snow pack melts, it fills the frozen streams with excess water, then rushes into bigger creeks and rivers. I am not sure if it is because the ground is frozen, but winter floods are the biggest in Northern Idaho.

Now the geography of Pinehurst is such, that the creek (pronounced "crick" by the natives - Pinehurst natives) used to flow through the middle of the present town. My parents bought property on Main St. and the entire back yard was full of river rock. . .You guessed it. Right smack dab, in the middle of the old crick bed.

Of course, we were safe from flooding. Pinecrick crick (yep, that's what we called it - so as not to confuse it with Pinecrick, the town, "up Pinecrick") wasn't anywhere close to the property any more. Years earlier a dike (not to be confused with dyke - which is fairly recent term) was built to route the water around the southern end of town to the western side of the settlement and northward to the lead (led) crick. There used to be a road on top of the dike, aptly named "the dike road." As Main street leaves town on the western border, there is a bridge that crosses the "crick" and leads to the Bauman Addition. Prior to January 1965, that bridge was made of wood and held up by wood pylons ("pilings").

The flood came early that winter. It was a few nights before Christmas, when we got the call from Dorothy Clemens. " The dike broke! You've gotta get out of there!" Mom got us up, and we hurried out to the car in our pajamas, shoes and coats. Dad pulled out of the driveway and headed for 6th street. We went up one block and turned left, but the water was getting so deep that a small row boat floated past the front of the car. So he backtracked to Main, turned right and drove east to Division street. My parents had some friends who lived on "D" Street, which was situated higher than our house, so we went to there.

My sister and I crashed on a couch, chair, or floor to finish sleeping. I heard the adults discussing the possibility that the water could get high enough to flood our living room and destroy the presents under the tree. To avoid further catastrophe, Dad and Stan braved the waters back to our place, and put the packages up on the furniture.

The next day the water had receded enough for us to go home. When we pulled into the driveway, there was a thawed "frozen turkey" in our yard. Mom surmised that someone must have set it out on their porch to thaw the night before. People don't do that anymore.

I don't remember what we did for water. Usually when the water gets really high in the crick, and a Chinook starts to blow, we'd fill the bathtub with water to flush the toilet. (Used a pan to scoop the water and pour enough into the commode to trip the flushing mechanism.) We would also scoop water out to boil for drinking. Maybe we did the same with the flood water that year, I just know we got by somehow.

That could have been the year there was an outbreak of Hepatitis A in Kellogg. From the story I remember, some lady contracted Hepatitis and started getting sick while she was preparing food for St. Rita's Bazaar at the Union Legion. Everyone who had eaten there was urged to get vaccinated so they wouldn't get sick. Unfortunately a number of people who attended the bazaar contracted Hepatitis - including my husband and one of his sisters.

The flood destroyed the bridge at the west end of Main St. The waters were so deep, some of the "pilings" broke and washed downstream taking other "pilings" with them. In fact there were numerous wooden bridges around the valley that were washed out that year. Rumor had it that the "Pinecrick kids" had to cross the "crick" by walking across on a large pipe and holding onto a cable, just to catch the school bus once school was back in session. . (I remember hearing about it from the kids at school, but it has been so many years ago, some of them would have to verify if that information was factual. I know I believed it as a child.)

With the bridge to Kingston wiped out, those of us in Pinehurst were stranded. This was before the freeway was built, and the only way out of town was across that bridge. . .now I could be mistaken, but the other end of town was where slough met the "crick" and flooded the old road, blocking that exit. I think if there had been an emergency in town, we would have needed helicopters to get out.
(I know helicopters were used as emergency vehicles during one flood, but I don't remember which one.)

The bridges were given temporary support as the waters receded, leaving sometimes one lane to drive across. As soon as weather permitted, we got new bridges made of concrete and metal. I "kinda" missed the old wooden bridges. They had a certain quaintness and familiarity that the new bridges didn't have.

In addition to the loss of bridges, the Pinehurst Fifth Grade playground was reshaped by the flood. A once sloping grade up to the equipment, now had a large crevice right down the middle of it, where the creek had raged toward the school. Nevada street also had a fissure cutting a deep gash across it, one large enough that our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Trosch, was inattentively stopped in her tracks when the front wheels of her car dropped into it.

In Pinehurst, the dike was reinforced with gigantic rocks from the freeway construction, so that it held better than ever. And though the Chinook of winter, brings a big flood about every 10 years, I don't think the dike has broken since Dec. '64.

Pinehurst: Fourth Grade (1)

Mrs. Smith was my fourth grade teacher. As I already alluded, I was disappointed that I didn't get to be in Dorothy Caldwell's class, and I didn't have either of my close friends in my room. Mrs. Smith was strict, but a good teacher. I liked her a lot. She read some very interesting stories to us after lunch, which was the practice in those days. One story was about an island that was slowly sinking into the ocean and how the people who lived there were going to cope with the situation. I have always wanted to find and read that book, but haven't any idea of the title. We were also introduced to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and had her first two books read to us that year.

At the start of the day, after roll call, the pledge, and lunch stats, the teachers would typically read a passage from the Bible to us. I remember Mrs. Smith explaining to us, that teachers were no longer allowed to read the Bible to us in school. I wondered why, but being a kid, I quickly moved on figuring "that's just the way things are." (This was Sept. of '63 when prayer and Bible reading were taken out of public schools.) http://www.afr.net/newafr/wekickedgodout.asp

The third and fourth grade classrooms at Pinehurst were in the old building, east of the main building, across the 2nd grade playground, but connected by a breezeway that ran between the buildings. (The breezeway was a covered walkway, that kept the snow and rain off but allowed the wind to "breeze" through.) The one at Pinehurst school overlooked Main street, had 4x4 painted posts and bordered a driveway for the busses to pick up and drop off students. The old building where we had class was sided with "wavy" aluminum, and contained only 6 classrooms, a teacher's lounge, boys & girls restrooms. I was probably the "original" Pinehurst school building. My class was the second on the right coming in the front door, and overlooked the 2nd grade playground. (The old building has since been removed and replaced by a larger play area.)

Our playground area was to the east of the old building in a large dirt area with a few bushes and Ponderosa Pines. We had some swings a little south of the dirt area. We had to share our playground with the 3rd graders. There was also a large cement structure the school used to burn old textbooks and papers. It drew the curiosity of many a student, and after school hours some kids probably climbed inside, and were covered with soot. There wasn't a fence along the side, and the older (Jr. High) kids would cut across our playground to get to the stores during lunchtime.

Along the front of the playground, there was a strange "fence" made of posts strung with wire cable. (The cable was thick, and before and after school we would try to walk along the cable, like we were high wire acrobats). During recess we would swing on the cables. We also played on the breezeway, mainly jump rope and Barbies. And after the 2nd graders went inside, we got to play on their playground.

One of my favorite "games" in the fourth grade was to pretend I was a queen. E. Larson and some other guys would be my body guards and horses (draped with a jumprope for the reins). My castle was in one of the bushes. This particular bush had a "doorway" made from two upright branches and a root that ran across the bottom of the doorway between them. Past the doorway, there was only room for one person - "me". I would stand inside the bush at the doorway, and give instructions to my minions, who immediately obeyed me without question. Since I was a "good queen," I never asked them to do anything bad. (Mostly, they just waited on me.)

I learned a lot of jump rope rhymes that year, and I loved to jump. We did the usual jumping with rhymes and double dutch (with two ropes going opposite directions at the same time. ) I loved to "run in" and "run out" of the ropes & jump along with others. My favorite jump rope game was "high jumping," where we would raise the rope (like you raise a high jump bar), and we would take turns jumping over the rope. If you caught the rope with your foot or couldn't jump over it, you were out. I was usually one of the highest jumpers. (I was also one of the tallest in my classes, until I reached 6th grade, also).

My love for high jumping may have been one reason I went out for the High Jump in track during my High School years. I wasn't tall enough to score points, but it was a personal thing to see how high I could go. (Besides I was a lousy runner and we had to participate in two events.)
But I digress. I made a lot of new friends at Pinehurst, many of them on the playground where the girls mainly played with girls and the boys with boys. (Except for the pretend things like being "queen.")

I met one girl on the breezeway, who had a broken leg. I remember she had silver crutches - something I had never seen before - and she liked to swing those at people like she was going to hit them. Her name was N. Colombo, and I thought she was really mean. But after her leg healed she and I used to high jump together, and she was really good.

Pinehurst again, summertime (1)

During May of my third grade year, my parents bought a house in Pinehurst. It was on the main street, about a block from the school, and was painted "Battleship Grey." I was excited because most of my life-long friends lived in Pinehurst (or the Bauman Addition across the bridge toward Kingston), and attended the Pinehurst School. Originally my parents had considered buying a lot behind the Johnson's in Bauman Addition, and wanted to build a split level home. Apparently this house was more in their price range, so they bought it. I was a bit disappointed that we weren't going to live as close to the Johnson's, but at least I'd be in school with PJohnson.

In addition to being close to the school, we lived close to everything in Pinehurst. The creek was just down the street a few blocks to the west, and the stores were a few blocks to the east. I could walk or ride my bike to the Caldwells, who lived next to the Post Office, or to the Carver's who lived on 3rd St. across from the school, about a block and a half away.

I spend a lot of my summers playing or hanging out at the school yard up through my eighth grade year. It was the hub of socialization for me and a lot of Pinehurst kids. We rode our bikes all over the school grounds and on the breezeway. We sat on the swings, the merry-go-round, the slides, and the curbs on the breezeway talking and sharing our lives.

Of course I related to you the story about KV and her cousin DB straightening me out on who KV liked and who liked her, lest I try to compete for the same guy. So silly now, that we would be so serious about boys when we were only 9 yrs. old! I really didn't care what she said. I knew that he and I were friends first, and that wouldn't change no matter who came and went.

I looked forward to entering the fourth grade, and was hoping that I would get Mrs. Caldwell for my teacher. PJ got her, but I didn't. I think it was because she was like a grandmother to me, and it would have put each of us in an awkward situation. I didn't have either P Johnson or G Carver in my class as I had hoped, but I became good friends with D Hokanson - who's mother was my second grade teacher at Silver King.