Chapter Two
At Home in Idaho City  

Draft 6.0
June 19, 2026 

 

Idaho City was still a rough-edged mining town when I settled into it. Small enough that you didn’t disappear, and familiar enough that you soon stopped being a stranger.

It was the 1970s, and the town stood on a cultural fault line: loggers and miners on one side, long-haired back-to-the-landers on the other. But I don’t think either group was eager to befriend a bartender wearing a black Greek fisherman’s cap, picked up while bumming around Europe the previous winter.

That was fine with me. A good bartender occupies the middle ground.

I poured drinks for the old guard at O’Leary’s Saloon while keeping one foot in Miners’ Exchange Saloon, where some of Boise’s best garage bands, like Famous Potatoes, held court. Even Doc Watson played there one weekend. O’Leary’s had “Big John,” who had no shortage of country tunes until the night he keeled over mid-set. I never learned what exactly it was that toppled Big John. I just knew it was the end of his musical career at O’Leary’s.

My girlfriend Jenny Laper liked to remind me that when we first met, I told her I had come to Idaho City to write the Great American Novel. Certainly not the smoothest of pick-up lines. But I have always believed in talking myself into things. And I was certain the old mining town held enough raw material for at least a book trilogy.

As a bartender at O’Leary’s, I began to appreciate the authenticity of people who weren’t especially interested in adjusting to Idaho’s increasingly urban tilt. One of my favorite people was placer miner Hank Bertram.

Hank showed up weekly at the saloon with a tiny vial of gold dust, eager to display it to any woman who showed even mild interest. It was his opening line. He liked to pass his gold around to the ladies, but one evening the vial didn’t return. I’m not sure he ever got over that someone was mean enough to steal his earnings.

One afternoon Jenny and I visited Hank at his one-room cabin along Little Muddy Creek, which flows into Grimes Creek. George Grimes and his men discovered gold near there in August of 1862, igniting one of the West’s great rushes and jump-starting a Territory that became a state. Not far from Hank’s place was the spot where Grimes was murdered, some say by a group of Shoshones. Many in Idaho City figured it was more likely that his mining buddies killed him for his share of the gold. 

Within a year of moving to town, I was writing my first article for the fledgling Idaho Heritage Magazine. It was as much an introduction for me to the Boise Basin as for the few hundred readers who might see it. Hank agreed to an interview, sweetening the deal with homemade raccoon stew, on the condition that we talk creek-side.

The stew was sweeter than I preferred, but I cleaned my bowl and, at his insistence, accepted seconds. I snapped a photograph of Hank in front of his cabin. It ran in the magazine, though I doubt many saw it until I gave a copy to Trudy Jackson. She framed it and hung it in her “World Famous Trudy’s Kitchen,” where it remained for more than forty years—a miner immortalized in a place better known for its delicious pies.

Driving back to town, Jenny reflected on Hank’s theology. Her father had been a minister, and she appreciated Hank’s summary of his former calling. “I used to be a religious fanatic,” he told us. “But there’s no future in it.”

Another regular was Earl Bream, who worked diggings above Idaho City. Earl looked mean enough to stop a fight before it started—thick build, bald head, black patch over one eye. In truth, he was a gentle soul.

One Sunday afternoon my parents stopped by O’Leary’s, likely to assess how thoroughly I was squandering my college education. They had my young nephew Wes with them. I thought I would be sociable and introduce him to the locals. Earl ambled over and bent down to eye level with the five-year-old. Trying to be funny, he growled, “I’ve got an eye out for you.” Wes did what most sensible people would do. He burst into tears. To this day, Wes has steered clear of Idaho City bars.

On weekends, it seemed half of Boise made the forty-mile pilgrimage up Highway 21. In those days you could walk from bar to bar with a drink in hand. It was the kind of town that treated rules as suggestions.

One particularly rowdy night, someone hurled a chair through the stained-glass window my friend Kenn Smith and I had built for Pat O’Leary. The big window had spelled SALOON in Irish colors. It was meant to be read from inside. Tourists staring from the street saw “NOOLAS.” We didn’t care. We were appealing to the locals. The others were what I learned to call “flatlanders.”
                                                      
                                                         ***                                                       
                                                        

One of my first encounters with Idaho City's non-drinking crowd came at the Fourth of July parade, a festive occasion where townspeople lined both sides of Main Street to admire what Idaho City valued most: fire trucks.

The theme never varied. Given the town's proximity to the Boise National Forest, it probably never will. Fire engines arrived from throughout Boise County, some lovingly restored antiques, but most looking factory fresh and costing what seemed like a fortune in 1970s dollars. Had a fire broken out on July 4th, at least every firefighter in the county was gathered in one place and ready to roll.

By then I had become the part-time librarian of the Boise Basin Public Library, a tiny 16-by-20-foot cinder-block building tucked beside the post office on Montgomery Street. It wasn't the most impressive structure in town, but unlike the wooden buildings that burned when Idaho City was nearly destroyed by fires in 1865 and 1867, our library likely would have survived both disasters.

The library did possess one distinction: more stained-glass windows than any building in the Basin. Several artistic friends had agreed to create stained-glass panels if I supplied the dimensions. Later, when we doubled the size of the building by expanding upward and backward and covering the cinder block with board-and-batten siding, even more windows appeared. I contributed one myself for the front door, a modest arrangement of blue and white flowers.

When the Fourth of July parade approached, I decided the library deserved a float. My contribution to civic culture was the Tree of Knowledge: a scraggly ponderosa pine lashed to my battered 1966 Chevy pickup. Books dangled from its branches, while several grade-school children sat beneath it pretending to read.

As we headed up Montgomery Street toward Main, it became obvious that I had overlooked a minor engineering detail. The Tree of Knowledge was about two feet taller than the power lines.

The float stopped abruptly. The truck continued forward. I slammed on the brakes. For a moment it appeared the tree, the wires, or both were about to come crashing down. Up ahead, the parade ground to a halt. The shiny fire trucks stood motionless as spectators waited to see whether the library float would become the most exciting event of the day.

Fortunately, I managed to tip the unlucky pine just enough to squeeze beneath the wires, and the parade resumed.

By then the children had abandoned ship. Clutching their books, they climbed out of the truck and wandered off in search of the firemen, who were tossing candy to the crowd. Apparently, they had absorbed enough knowledge for one day.

 It was a short and somewhat embarrassing run for the Tree of Knowledge, as it limped down Main Street toward Highway 21 with no children, fewer branches, and considerably less dignity. I suspect more than a few adults lining the street were also wondering why their property taxes were supporting such a questionable enterprise.

To the best of my knowledge, the Boise Basin Public Library never again entered a float in the Idaho City Fourth of July parade.

                                                      ***

 

 

 

I began building my cabin above Idaho City in my second year in the Basin. My plan was to use materials I gathered myself.

When I was a kid my folks gave me a set of Lincoln Logs for Christmas. I spent countless hours building exotic log cabins, but the structures were horizontal. I wanted something different: vertical logs, that felt like they grew straight out of the ground. One spring a tornado-like wind blew down several acres of eight-inch-diameter lodgepole pine near the abandoned town of Graham. A dozen visits with my truck gave me the walls for my cabin. A massive dead ponderosa near Trinity Lake provided the floor.

I knew I wanted to build something unique to the world, on a shoestring. I also wanted to heat the entire place with a single wood stove, something to keep both my plants and my pipes alive through winters that occasionally dipped to twenty below. The plants did fine. The pipes not so much. It took one frozen winter—and a complete replumbing—to teach me how fast water in copper pipes can turn to ice.

I soon came to think of the cabin as my child. It demanded more attention over the next decade than any teenager ever could. The difference is that children eventually leave home. Cabins stay put, waiting for the next repair, improvement, or crisis. Even so, it has become a place of comfort and refuge.

And, hey, it’s almost finished.

                                                                  ***

In high school I read Our Town and dreamed of acting in it someday. Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer-winning play describes “the record of a tiny New Hampshire village as created by the lives of its most humble inhabitants.” Idaho City had humble inhabitants in abundance. It also had characters. What if we gathered some of them during the long winter, handed them scripts, and asked them to become the citizens of Grover’s Corners?

With two seasoned theater veterans in town—Ed Lonsdale and Barbara McClain—willing to co-direct, we ordered scripts and began reading lines in my cabin. The visqueen had finally been replaced with stained glass, but, as someone observed, it was still as cold as a well driller’s anatomy.

What began as a way to fight cabin fever stayed modest in intent for a while. But by the time snowdrifts crippled traffic and completely blocked the light in my bay windows, we were warming to the idea of an April 1 performance. The date felt right.

“We moved rehearsals to the drafty Masonic Hall, stacking tables for a stage and crowding into narrow hallways as makeshift wings,” remembers Barbara McClain. “Bruce was always our bandleader for fun things. He was the part-time librarian and got the idea to have the library provide seed money. He convinced the library board that we’d pay it back with the ten-dollar tickets we’d charge for admission.”

And the library did receive its money back, with interest. From then on, the little library became something of a civic bank and cultural engine for the town. It helped fund the annual Arts & Crafts Festival, which drew artists from across the state and crowds from Boise and nearby communities. The summer weekend event continued for more than 20 years before it finally outgrew its charm—and, eventually, the patience of everyone involved. By then, most of the town seemed quietly relieved. The extra money for the merchants was no longer worth the effort.

The library also underwrote the entirely fictional Idaho City University. ICU, as we called it, specialized less in academics than in raising money and spirits. Jake Hoffman and I served as “Administrative Assistants to the President,” whose identity was, conveniently, unknown.

At our inaugural event, historian Dick d’Easum praised our official seal and its Latin motto: “Semper Ubi Sub Ubi.” Always Wear Under Wear. The learned Mr. d’Easum had written books on Idaho history, including Sawtooth Tales and Fragments of Villainy. We assumed he would fit right in with the spirit of the evening—and he did.

Dick spoke glowingly of ICU to the hundred people packed into the bar, where the larger concern was whether the dance floor would hold the crowd. He went so far as to suggest that ICU deserved a place in Idaho’s university system—perhaps more than some institutions—because it made no pretense about itself and required no public funding.

The dress code was Idaho City black tie: tuxedos with caulk boots, sequined gowns with fur hats. By the time we held ICU Prom Night, half the town had somehow become faculty. For twenty dollars, you could receive a calligraphed diploma. Mine still hangs in the bathroom.

Not all of our humor landed. At one event, I made fun of the State Board of Education in my prepared remarks. My point was that the Board would never accept ICU into the state system, even though we were clearly learning things and not charging anyone tuition.

That same evening, Jake and I appointed Idaho Public Television general manager Peter Morrill as ICU Dean of Censorship. The station had recently been caught in a fight with members of the Idaho Legislature over airing a program about gay teachers in the classroom. Some legislators wanted Peter’s scalp. Personally, I found the program dull and notably short on mountain scenery.

I discovered too late that several attendees at the dance worked for the State Board of Education. That Monday, Jake and I made a hurried trip to Boise to apologize in person to the director of the Board. Fortunately, he wasn’t in. Someone said he was at the Legislature arguing for more money. We apologized to his secretary and headed back to the mountains, chastened but intact.

                                                                   ***

On opening night of Our Town, the hall was packed. The old Masonic Temple, built in 1865, was perfect for the occasion: a wood stove, gas lights, wooden benches, even frogs croaking in the nearby pond. It felt less like a set than a continuation of the play itself. Our town was coming to life in Our Town.

Everyone who wanted a role had gotten one. Instead of a single narrator, we had two women who looked vaguely alike. We decided one person shouldn’t be asked to memorize that many lines, so we simply split the job in half and called it a feature. My role was Doc Gibbs, one of the central characters in the three-act play. Boise attorney Byron Johnson also joined the cast. The soon-to-be Idaho Supreme Court justice had no lines, but his assignment was crucial: during intermission between Acts Two and Three, he would head down to the bars and retrieve musician Johnny Thomsen, who was usually holding court at the Miners Exchange Saloon. Johnny played the town drunk in Act Three. He had no speaking part, but no one questioned his qualifications.

My girlfriend Jenny played Emily. The emotional peak of the play comes in Act Three, when young Emily dies and enters the afterlife. Still new to being dead, she longs to return to her old life. The other spirits caution her, but she insists.

Soon, however, she sees what they cannot. The living are too absorbed in themselves and their small concerns to notice the beauty of ordinary days. Her excitement turns to disillusionment. She returns to her grave with the realization that life, once lived, cannot be reclaimed—that it is fleeting, and therefore precious.

And through her tears Emily delivers the play’s most famous line: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?” The answer comes back quietly from the onstage narrator: “No. The saints and poets, maybe. They do some.”

Act Three is a real tear-jerker. Through a slit in the curtain I could see men who had faced wildfires and bar fights quietly wiping their eyes. It was that kind of night.

“It was a spectacular endeavor,” said co-director Barbara. “Everyone in town attended and raved. Of course, some may have been unduly influenced by the heavily spiked punch provided free by Mayor John Brogan and his good friend Bud McDonald. And the cast party afterwards—what I remember of it—lasted several days. At least it felt that way.”

The next week’s headline in The Idaho World proclaimed the play a success. Perhaps a bit self-serving, but as editor of the oldest continuing newspaper in the state, I felt it was entirely appropriate. We had experienced something few rural towns ever get to witness.

The reporter from the Idaho Statesman, the state’s largest newspaper, agreed and gave it a favorable review. Even a reporter from Boise could sense what had happened in that old hall.

Afterward, Mayor John Brogan presented me with the key to Idaho City: a twenty-inch wooden key that opened absolutely nothing. It still hangs on my mantle. There was no question, however, that everyone in the play deserved that key.

After Our Town, our Idaho City theater group decided to stay together. We moved to the community hall, which doubled the size of the audience. Our forte seemed to be melo-dramas, and I did my share of playing the villain. Occasionally we would branch out. One play, Frankenstein allowed us to use my friend Jerry Lansing. We told him he didn’t have many lines to memorize as the monster. In fact, when he would forget a line, he fell back on his favorite: “What happiness can there be in my life?” That usually happened several times in each performance, and it always elicited a smile backstage. I enjoyed telling him that the real reason we cast him as the monster was because we could save money on makeup. He never knew how to take that.

                                                             ***

The Pioneer Cemetery a mile outside town reminds visitors that Idaho City has always lived close to the bone. Bar fights fueled by alcohol and Civil War disagreements, cholera and tuberculosis, mining accidents and murders—all took their toll. Few early residents died gently. On one headstone are the words Dum Tacet Clamat. Though silent, he speaks.

After Our Town, we decided to mount a melodrama to capture another side of town: The Death and Life of Sneaky Fitch. It was proof that high art and low comedy could share the same drafty stage. Our Town had won a Pulitzer Prize. There were no awards for Sneaky Fitch. It was its own counterpoint.

In the little town of Gopher Gulch, Sneaky Fitch is the obnoxious town drunk. No one sheds a tear when he falls ill and is presumed dead after a dose of suspicious medicine. But when Sneaky returns from the grave, the townsfolk are horrified—and he quickly becomes sheriff, mayor, and town banker. In other words, he becomes insufferable.

After Doc Burch returns from his travels and assures everyone that Sneaky was never actually dead, it’s curtains for the town drunk. It’s a comic play with a happy ending, a crowd-pleaser in the simplest sense of the word.

I had invited Idaho Statesman columnist Tim Woodward to the performance. My friend drove up from Boise to experience “culture” in one of his favorite towns. I was surprised when he devoted his next column to an evening with Sneaky Fitch.

“The thing that made it special, to my way of thinking, was the town spirit that went into it,” Tim wrote. “Roughly a fourth of Idaho City was involved, in the cast or behind the scenes, and the other three-fourths was in the audience. It wasn’t Broadway, but it was contagious. Whatever might have been lacking in professional expertise was made up in enthusiasm and community pride.”

Tim attended the Saturday night performance, when afterward everyone was brought onstage—especially those behind the scenes. The directors, set designers, and volunteers received flowers. No one was getting paid, so flowers seemed entirely appropriate.

“I’ll be hanged with Sneaky’s rope if there weren’t tears in the crowd as well as on the stage,” Tim wrote. “It was something to see, a whole town pulling together like that. You can always travel to see ‘sophisticated’ productions, but the other part is hard to come by. I’ve never enjoyed a play more.”

He was right. It seems what we were building in Idaho City wasn’t just theater, or a tongue-in-cheek university with diplomas and ICU sweatshirts, which, incidentally, are still available for purchase. We were learning how to shape a community moment, how to tell stories together, how to frame experiences so people might recognize themselves in it.

And I was learning skills that were quietly preparing me for a very different stage: how to gather people around an idea, how to find stories worth telling, and how to convince others that they mattered.

I just didn't know yet that those lessons would soon carry me far beyond the Boise Basin.