DIRT ROADS AND MEMORIES
A dirt road east of the ranch
We went out to lunch with friends the other day and one
of the women and I started to talk about when we were young. We were both
raised in Ammon, which was considered the “sticks” back then. To our more
sophisticated urban Idaho Falls friends, those of us living in Ammon were the
“hicks from the sticks.”
As we were reminiscing we got on the subject of the
weekly trips to Idaho Falls to buy groceries. Those trips, in our family, were
on Saturday afternoon with Mother. We lived on Sunnyside which was a two-lane
dirt road. To get into Idaho Falls we would go over to 17th street,
which also was a two-lane dirt road with the pavement starting west of St.
Clair.
Dirt roads can prove challenging as we know because of
driving them all summer to the ranch. If it rains and there isn’t much gravel
on the roads, they become slick with the mud and puddles. During the hot dry
summer days a dirt road gets really dusty except where a farmer has been
irrigating and the water runs into the road.
Back when I was young there were no sprinkler pipes for
irrigation, just flooding the fields. There were barrow pits along the sides of
the road where most of the irrigation run off would go, but sometimes those
would fill and the road would get the extra.
Well, back to our weekly shopping trip to Idaho Falls. We
always shopped at Safeway’s, located just east of the railroad track and south
of the then library, now museum. I remember thinking how big that grocery store
was – but it was nothing compared to our Wal-Mart’s and Sam’s that we have
today. I would help Mother by pushing the grocery cart for her. We didn’t get
the fresh vegetables in the winter like we do now, and I remember always
looking forward to having a green salad by Easter time.
If we needed anything downtown – didn’t have
malls back then – we would leave the car in the parking lot at Safeway’s, walk across the railroad track and into
downtown Idaho Falls. There were lots of stores in downtown then, and I loved
to go wandering through Woolworths and Newberry’s. Penny’s and C.C. Andersons
were also stores we frequented. Mother would stop and visit with friends she
would see who were also doing their shopping.
On our way home after our big shopping day, Mother would
stop at Don Wilson Drug on Boulevard and we could each have a fountain drink. I
always chose iron port and cherry. How I loved that drink and have never found
anything that matches it since. I think it cost a nickel. Then we could buy a
comic book if we had any of our own money. If I had been helping Dad in the
field by weeding potatoes or beets during the week, I could usually come up
with the nickel or dime it took to buy a comic book. If each of us kids purchased
one, we would be able to share them and have some good reading during the next
week.
My friend told how they too would shop at Safeway’s and
then would go downtown to pick up their grandmother. While downtown they would
stop at Woolworths and have an apple dumpling. Woolworths had a lunch counter
in the store, but I can’t remember ever eating anything there.
After the Saturday shopping was done, back home we would
go on the dirt roads. We had to be home to fix supper for Dad and my brothers
as they would have been working in the fields or with the animals while we were
gone.
Yes,
living out in the “sticks” meant dirt roads back when I was a child. We rode
our bikes on those dirt roads in the summer time. Dad pulled us on a sled
behind the car on those snow-covered dirt roads in the winter time. We slipped
and slid on those same roads during the spring when the snow melted and made
lots of puddles and mud.
But
dirt roads made some good memories. What fun it is to visit with friends and in
doing so revisit memories of days gone by.
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