A Wonderful Life . . . .Family Milepost

Our family's North Boyer Farm during a past winter and before the road was rerouted to make way for the Sandpoint Airport runway.

Pretty much all gone now, 'cept the land and the memories. 

Snow continues to fall.  Bill is headed to town at 5:30 a.m., no less, to get some diesel for the tractor. The Kubota with its plow has been busier than usual these past few days; so has the snowblower.

No worries this morning about a White Christmas.  I have a feeling people will be remembering the Christmas of 2015 just like yesterday when the mail carrier was recalling the winter of 1996-97 while dropping off some boxes. 

Anyone who was around here remembers that winter very distinctly.  Moreover, anyone who taught at or attended the high school especially remembers when the auditorium roof of a relatively new school caved in, due to a heavy snow load.  

We enjoyed an extended vacation that year.

Then, most folks who were alive at the time and dealing firsthand with the situation remember the winter of 1968-69 as definitely one for the books when an intense blizzard after a whole lot of other snow shut pretty much everything down around these parts for a full week.

We lived on North Boyer when there was an established road past a home at the time. Both are just memories now.  

North Boyer changed course a few years later, and this year, the last remnants of what was our home have disappearing by the day as a logging operation has taken out most of the trees in the woods behind our house, which was demolished several years ago.

Well, anyway, back in 1968-69, when there was a house and a road and a whole lot of huge drifts down that road and around our house, we sat up and took note when we saw a Thiokol going past the house.  

It was a big snow machine that had come down from Schweitzer headed for town and the only mode of transportation we saw pass by for several days.

During that time, while peering out our living room window, we also saw a cross country skier or two slide by----maybe even Harold Andersen, the forest supervisor who lived at the fairgrounds north of us. 

That was the year of the "rotary plow," which was eventually brought in from Spokane to cut out pathways through deep, solid drifts that had plugged county roadways for days. 

That year we also enjoyed an extended Christmas vacation, a fact I remember distinctly because I was home from the University of Idaho to student teach.  

We were housebound for so long from the storm that the relief of finally getting to go anywhere besides the kitchen, the living room or the barn pretty much drove away all my butterflies

I don't know how big or dramatic the snow stories will be from this year's already exhausting but pretty winter, but for now, they're notable.  Soon Bill will return from town and finish plowing the driveway. 

While I'm on a Christmas nostalgia track, I must note that tomorrow marks a significant anniversary for our family. The only person now alive among the bunch of us who may have a slight memory this anniversary is my oldest brother Mike from DuPont, Wash. 

He played a part in a familiar anecdote that I have mentioned numerous times over the years about the family's first presence in Sandpoint.

Christmas night, 1945:  our mother, 24-year-old Virginia Halter Brown, steps off a train from Chicago at the Sandpoint depot, along with soldiers returning from the War.  

With her are a 15-month old son and a pretty English setter named Peggy.  The trio walk across the bridge over Sand Creek (Cedar Street), turn south, passing lively bars, and find a room at the Rolands Hotel on First Avenue and Church Street.

It's a drizzly, miserable, slushy night. She thinks she has arrived at the end of the Earth aka Hell. 

Well, she stayed.  

Seventy years later, three of her daughters still live in Sandpoint and, unlike our mother on her first night in Sandpoint, we're generally happy to be here.  

Mother eventually ended up liking Sandpoint enough to purchase a farm on North Boyer in 1950 where, by that time, the family had grown with Kevin and Marianne joining the original trio. The 40-acre farm grew a bit over the years, and its original plot stayed in the family until the early 1990s.  

Virginia had come here on that Christmas night, 1945, from the Midwest because our dad, Mike Brown, had found logging work in the Central Idaho woods at the time. She had also come to Idaho, according to her cousin Bud from Chicago, to raise horses. 

And, that she did, purchasing a Saddlebred-Morgan filly named Adare's Countess Largo a few years after her arrival.  She joined the local Sandpoint Saddle Club and became fully involved in horse activities until the end of her life in 2013.  

When an unhappy marriage ended in 1953, she found happiness with a local cowboy, our stepfather Harold Tibbs whose family had come to Idaho in the 1920s, settling in Bonners Ferry, where both parents were school teachers. 

Eventually Harold's mother Iva Tibbs moved to the Sandpoint area, and Harold followed, working for a time at Farragut and then spending a career with the Sandpoint Water Dept. as water filter operator 

After Harold and Mother's marriage in the mid-1950s, the farm thrived, and so did the family which eventually included a Batch Two aka Barbara, Laurie and Jim.

Our simple but happy life on the North Boyer farm where we had Hereford cattle and horses, consisted of disciplined but sensible parental guidance, a continuous inspiration to aspire to high goals, impish adventures typical of rural kids, a solid work ethic and, more than anything, a strong sense of the family unit. 

We watched our parents work hard and give of themselves day after day in a variety of ways for the benefit of their neighbors and for the community.  

We saw their generosity, their willingness to go the extra mile on any project, and we adopted many of their principles as we have moved on through our lives. 

We remain a proud family, and are, indeed, proud of each other. 

Our parents left a positive mark on Sandpoint.  

Sandpoint and our parents did the same for us.  

That spirit follows us wherever we go, and on this Christmas Eve, one day before that notable anniversary, I can say with a deep sense of emotion that it's truly been a wonderful life. 

I thank my parents, whom I miss dearly, and I truly appreciate everyone in this community who has supported us or walked alongside us, cheering us on with the turning of each page in our family history. 

Merry Christmas to all.  It's nice to have spent a lifetime in Sandpoint.  Thanks, Mother and Harold for the best gift ever.