Weston, Population 437

Dayton, Idaho has a fresh, new face--A first rate auditorium/concert hall and a couple more new structures across from the high school on main street!  With our brief business meeting finished, and our walk-thru of the new buildings complete, the crowd began to thin out.  A few of us--Ione, Ruth Ann, Kent, their spouses, Dave and I--sat on the front steps of our Alma mater, comparing stories and savoring just a little more time together.  My girls had retreated to the comfort of our air conditioned rental car.  I said my final goodbyes and slipped my class ring off my finger.  I couldn't help but wonder if this could be the last goodbye for some.

"Let's take the West Side Highway and find our way to Weston", I suggested.  The car had barely moved before I cried, "Wait!  Back up!  I have to have pictures!"  The scoreboard announcing, "Home of the Pirates" and bleachers were new additions since I attended high school football games.  White, WS letters were still arranged high on a nearby hill.  The girls were underwhelmed.  My plan for getting a reaction out of Jessi as we drove along this two-lane roadway took a detour.  The thrill hill was gone!  You know, that dip in a road that takes your breath away when you drive over it fast.  It was a good one, back in the day.  I caught air in the Merc in that spot at least a time or two and wanted to surprise Jess and hear her squeal!  The road's been smoothed out.   Highway markers announcing locations have been added.  "Entering Weston, Population 437".  I had to have a picture of that!  When I was growing up, a person knew where they were via familiar landmarks--the homes and the fields, what was growing--Kohler or  Buttars' grain, Tingey's potatoes, my dad's sugar beets and peas--or loosely stacked alfalfa vs baled hay, red barns and ditch head-gates. Seeing Maughn's plum thickets could have meant you made a wrong turn when you really meant to go the other way past the pea silage weigh station and along the Linrose road, maybe up over the railroad tracks or down past the Thompson place, under the canal flume and over the Bear River bridge.

Jenn parked as close to the edge of the road as possible but there was no shoulder, just a ditch with a bit of water in it and the barrow pit.  I walk like a teetering toddler much of the time but I made it the short distance from the car, through the tall grass on uneven footing to stand beside the sign.  Photo Op #1--me and the sign post.  Then Jessi joined me.  I urged Jenn to try more phoneography and include herself in the shot.  "Do you want me to take a picture of all three of you?"  I didn't recognize the voice but without hesitation, I agreed and invited the stranger to join us.  There was no mistake that he was a local farmer, sweaty, covered in chaff and dust.  A large combine and ton-truck filled with grain stood idling in the field across the road.  "I'm just waiting for someone to come help me unload," he said.  Coming closer, he asked, "So, who are you?"
"Who are you?" I answered.
 "Paul Campbell."
"That's doesn't ring a bell.  I grew up in Weston but I don't remember you."
"How about Roger Campbell?"
"Oh my yes, I know Roger!  I played 'White Cliffs of Dover' on the organ at his mission homecoming!"
"I'm Roger's brother!"
Paul took our picture standing beside the Welcome to Weston sign and we took his picture.  "Don't forget the 37!  They're important!"  Indeed!  Since the 2000 Census, that little corner of the world had grown some.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston,_Idaho.   In repeating the story, I found it interesting that I felt perfectly safe and natural, inviting a stranger to join us there on the road between Dayton and Weston.  Had I been almost anywhere else, I would have been wary and may have kept my distance.

There it was just 'round the bend and down the hill--Weston--grain silos on the left and on the right, the U.S. Post Office.  I remember when mail was a part of Archie's store on the next corner.  In the town square, all that was left of the elementary school was the bell tower, sitting monument style on the grounds of what was now a park.  The meeting house appeared larger than I remembered, though I do recall risking my own life and limb in a classroom on the second floor trying to grab hold of a kid who thought he'd go out the window rather than listen to me teach a Sunday school lesson.  Uncle Wells Whitney's house still stood across the road from the church.  Going around the block, I saw the old grandstand still there in the northwest corner.  Jenn really laughed when I called it a grandstand.  I'd sat many a time on one of those rows of bleachers, glad to be under the roof and out of the hot, summer sun, on school field days, or during 24th of July celebrations.  The summer before my 12th birthday, I was allowed to attend Mutual.  It was on that ball field in front of the grandstand, with teens and adult leaders playing, that I actually hit the ball when it was my turn to bat!  I was running the bases, rounding second, headed for third base, when ... CRASH!!!  I was thrown to the ground, the wind knocked clean out of me!  The BIG and BURLY adult, ball in hand and determined to tag me out, SMACKED into me HEAD-ON!  He got me out, alright.  Even though I was pubereskly chubby, I felt like I had been hit by a truck!

The girls and I drove to the cemetery so I could visit a bit with my mom and dad.  Though I think and talk about them a lot, I'd not been there since '85.  Uncle Edgar was there beside them on what use to be the last row on the west.  The Whitney grandparents were among the many familiar names along the first row on the east side.  I remember how Mother fussed about having her name and birth date etched on the headstone when Dad died.  It really bothered her.   Fitting, I thought, for them both to be there in a place they frequented often, tending to family grave sites and making sure no one was forgotten on Memorial Day.  During the war, Mother wrote letters and poems to many of the town's war dead buried there.  For numbers of others who came to rest in this place, Mother recorded funeral proceedings, composed poetry and notes of condolence for their families and loved ones.  Jessi took an interest in this historical site, reading headstones, pointing out some unusual ones.

Archie's store had been gone for years.  The tin roofed trailer that replaced it was a sad substitute.  That was gone now, too.  As visitors, we didn't know where to look first as we entered Woodward's.   This small general store was more than a "Little Bit Country."  There were big game heads hanging on the walls.  Cleverly painted wood pieces and other crafts, even some hand-stitched items could be found tucked into corners and between shelves of the more usual fare of a quick stop shop and reminiscent of a Weston Ward Relief Society bazaar.  Some were hard to resist but how would we get them home?  This seemed to be where the locals went for a cold drink, something to eat or the most delicious huckleberry ice cream, ever.  We had to taste that!

The old Olsen house where Mother and I lived after leaving the farm was grey when we lived there.  Jenn was almost past it when I recognized the house.  It had been painted white, and the facade changed, though I couldn't put my finger on exactly what the change was.  Lilacs tall as trees had formed a hedge between the old place and the new Olsen home in a mix of pale lilac, dark French purple and white but those were gone.

Some landmark buildings on main street had been replaced by open, weed-filled lots or junk.  It was good to see Olsen's Blacksmith Shop still standing amid the rubble, painted, the lettering crisp.  City Hall looked abandoned even though a schedule of upcoming meetings hung haphazardly in the window.  The word, 'Billiards' was all that could be read of the old pool hall sign.  It had been closed for years.  Junk and scrap metal, parts of pieces of who knows what now filled the front steps.  Other building front cut-outs remained as weather and time aged wood, not a lick of paint anywhere on them, standing side by side in a row like a ghost town or movie set.  The small, white cinder block building caught my eye.  The owner, when I was a kid, was a candy distributor and kept his inventory in that block building.  After the ward Halloween party, a bunch of us would go there, knock on the door and he would step out to give each of us one whole, big candy bar!

Jenn drove me up and down a few streets, past Porter's and homes of little old lady friends of my mother's whose names I can no longer remember.  Though main street didn't appear to exist anymore except in my mind and was in stark contrast to the beautifully kept church grounds and building, the 'town' was a mix of new and old homes.  I was surprised to see some of the older ones still in use.  I remember Weston as a little sweeter and a little better kept.  The place looked as tired and old as I felt, in the heat of the day.  I guess that's what age does to old towns and those who were once just sweet, young things.

Down the hill and over the rail road tracks, and the view was beautiful--acres and acres of farmland. There were Grandpa Morgan's fields, Uncle Edgar's house and...Whoa!  Wait a minute!  My house had disappeared!  We had come to the right place!  There was the gate, the white fence and the lane leading into the property.  There was still a yellow rose bush near the end of the lane like the one I loved so much as a kid.  But there was nothing else I recognized!  Jenn turned down the lane at my coaching, driving very slowly past what use to be an apple orchard, a chicken coop and horse corrals.  Jenn was expecting to see potatoes and a huge vegetable garden growing along the ditch next to the lane.  Two large pine trees had replaced the clothes line, raspberry and current bushes and two stately trees that use to shade the west side of the house. We crept further along the lane, making the turn past what use to be small animal pens, a hay derrick, hay stacks, the red barn and cow corrals.  Could that log cabin have replaced the barn of my childhood?  It was right where the barn used to be but seemed much smaller than I remembered.  My eyes were searching for anything that looked familiar.  There!  Straight ahead!  The cement watering trough!   It was crumbling at one corner but something from my past that my eyes could hold on to.  The other small log cabin at the front of the property?  My nephew appeared from between several vehicles.  His presence confirmed that this was the house and I was really at the farm where I lived as a child.

We offered our greetings from the car and got only a brief response in return.  I had hoped for more.  I wanted to be welcomed.  I wanted to be invited in to meet the family who live at the farm now.  I wanted some conversation about the drastic changes, an opportunity to ask questions and a chance to compliment them on the lush, green lawn.  It was clear, from the outside at least, that there had been much effort put into making this place 'home', for them.

It was a quiet drive back out the lane.  I felt like we had trespassed.  I wanted to feel like I had come home after so many years away.  The farm had become a coming-home symbol for so many of my family for so long.  We all had deeply rooted memories of the place.  It was historical, to me, and perhaps to others of the family who knew the story behind the building of that home, and the acquisition of the property.  My girls took a couple of snapshots of the front of the house, though it was now a total stranger to me.  That drive down the lane and back out was the extent of my 'visit' home.  I felt a real loss and a need to grieve. That would have to wait.

Back on the road, the three of us drove to the turn just before the canal flume, past lots of homes of people I remembered and some new ones that had popped up in my absence.  The road had changed a bit to accommodate some of the new homes or so it seemed.  We passed Greene's old place and drove to the dead-end where my Grandpa and Grandma Whitney lived with Uncle Merl, Uncle Mervin and Aunt Kay.  There had been distance between the small, white Whitney farm house and Mervin's more modern home.  When standing at the back of these homes built up on the bluff, looking eastward, the unobstructed view of the garden below, the meadows and the Bear River was beautiful.  There was a bridge, rickety as all get out, that led from the house out to the barn and animal pens.  Acres of farmland surrounded the property all around.  Now unrecognizable, too, the houses appeared to have been squished together or rebuilt.  The trees and yards were overgrown, the outbuildings and barn appeared to be tumbling down in their places and the view of the river was no longer what it once was, so overgrown with Russian Olive trees and willows.  The road that dead-ends into the property was still in a mostly rough natural state, as many were in these parts.  That led Jenn to wonder out loud about our rental car agreement that stated we would not go off-roading in the vehicle.  She felt that the road to the Whitney farm and a few others we had been on that day came very close to just that!

To be continued...