Wallace remembered

Before we get to the topic of Wallace, a bit about this blog. Early on I suspected someday I’d run out of content; yet so far something has flown into my brain nearly a couple of times each month. The seeds for most often take root as I walk – capturing phrases and key points thanks to iPhone dictation. This works well for my brain as it alleviates worries that I’ll forget them later, or that the circling and spinning words will detract from my getting away on my walk.

I bet few of my blog followers today know or remember the origin of this blog. My first post on October 9, 2016 (Baseball, bandages and an irony) followed just that: suffering the somewhat uncommon lisfranc joint injury, two surgeries and eventually 16 weeks of “no-weight-bearing” caused during an 1880-style softball game. I learned to adeptly haul my knee scooter out of my car without falling to get to work at OHSU, and my biceps became buff as I crutched up and down stairs at home. Oh, and I had a lot of time to write; especially with Russ then busy as Mayor. It was the same time My Music Man was rejected by one press yet accepted by another. I researched “Should I start a blog?” The guidance seemed to be yes if you 1) are an unknown author who needs to find followers; 2) need writing practice; and, 3) intend to stay with it. Now, seven years later, I guess I’ve shown the answer to be yes to all three. I’ve picked up some followers, soon will publish my fourth book (fifth if you count the one I self-published), and still post blogs. I do promise I’ll stop or post less regularly when my heart doesn’t have something to spill forth, I become repetitive or I feel uninspired.

Today I’m thinking about how the content of those blogs has changed. Not surprisingly, especially considering my tagline, Musings About Life in Oregon, my early blogs focused on stories tied to Oregon or Pacific Northwest history. After all, that was a big part of why I wrote My Music Man: sharing family stories, many with historical ties. Some of those favorite blogs became my self-published book (see: Then, Now and In-Between: Place, Memories and Loss in Oregon). Through the years, although some posts still focus on historic tidbits, they have morphed into other life stuff: aging, death, grief, well-being, mid-life. That “life stuff” too filled the pages of My Music Man, they just may not have seemed so blog-worthy to me then. Or maybe I didn’t quite know how to share them.

While much of the family history I’ve shared has been on Dad’s “Montgomery and Gill” roots, there are a few I’ve shared from Mom’s side. In my soon to release From First Breath to Last, I mention how once toward the end of her life, Mom told me she thought she had at one time lived in MIssoula. I reminded her of her Montana ties, including the many trips to Missoula to visit me and my brother Pat. Mom loved Missoula. Pat reminded me she even had a book event in Missoula (Mythmaking: Health Your Past; Claim Your Future) while I was living in Seattle.

But it goes deeper than that. I blogged briefly about some of this in Oh Yellowstone. Mom’s father, Merrill Daum, hailed from Kansas and her mother, Esther, from Indiana. Yet they found themselves both in Montana in 1920. After serving in the Army in World War I, my grandfather finished a post-graduate education in civil engineering and then headed to work with the U.S. Forest Service based in MIssoula in 1919. Not long after he returned to the mid-west, married Esther, and returned to a job with the State Highway Commission based in Helena. Oh Yellowstone shares more about when he begin working for the National Park Service in 1923 as Yellowstone Assistant Park Supervisor, and the final yet first visit our parents made there with Russ and me following our daughter’s UM graduation in 2013.

I’m not sure of the exact date of this blurry recaptured slide, but likely not too many years before my grandfather’s 1984 death. Oh yes, and I have regrets that I don’t remember many discussions with him about me selecting University of Montana for my undergraduate education, although I know he was excited. One of my most favorite later memories of Grampa D. is his joining us at our Illahee beach house many times through my high school years. Each Thanksgiving (until I got smarter, or less courageous) he held my coat when I insisted on quickly dipping into the icy Pacific Ocean to claim the end of the year. And one New Year’s he was delighted to walk in snow on the beach. Yes, I’m grateful to have the memories and stories that I do have.

But in this blog, rather than those stories, I wanted to focus briefly on the town of Wallace, Idaho. For it was here that I still remember Mom often reminding me anytime we passed through, how “her father put in the highway.” I think that means he helped design it. And of course it’s the story I think about each time I travel through that town, even today. I too imagine what he might think today with the highway rerouted outside of town. For that reason, often I make sure in today’s world that we pull off the freeway and travel through the town as we always did in those older days.

“For many years the town of Wallace was famous for having the only stoplight on 3,100-mile-long coast-to-coat Interstate 90, which ran through its business district. Then some unsympathetic road-builders built a bypass, killing the town’s claim to fame. Wallace held a grand funeral for its stoplight on September 12, 1991, placing it in a horse-drawn hearse and driving it through town as bagpipers played. Now the stoplight rests in peace at the Wallace Mining Museum, its lamps forever dimmed, in a coffin filled with artificial flowers. The Museum also displays the one billionth ounce of silver mined in the district, an item clearly more relevant to the museum and the town than the stoplight — but the stoplight still gets most of the attention.”
Last Stoplight on I-90

Of course others might say Wallace is known for the filming of Dante’s Peak (nope, haven’t seen it), or the longer ago stories about its Red Light District. Maybe more widely, Wallace is also known for the now popular Pulaski Tunnel and the Hiawatha Scenic Bike Trail. While the Pulaski trail is a four mile steep hike, Russ and I still have our eyes set on completing the Hiawatha bicycle trail that winds through 10 tunnels and across 7 sky-high steel railroad trestles. I’ll have to do some deep breathing and take mindfulness breaks with all those tunnels as I’m afraid my psyche still harbors scary tunnel memoirs from when my buddy Karen and I naively pedaled through tunnels along Italy’s Cinque Terre all those years ago (see: Coming of age on two wheels).

Perhaps surprising to some, is that Wallace continues to be – as it has for a century – the world’s largest silver producer. Apparently it is considered the richest mining town still in existence and the last town that was listed on the National Register of Historic Place. Yes, you read that correctly: the entire town. Of course, given that history there’s been a lot of environmental devastation, cleanup, remediation and redevelopment into alternative but healthier recreational and commercial uses. This too returns the area to memories from my earliest career years while working as the Region 10 EPA Industrial Hygienist, based in Seattle while the Bunker Hill Superfund site work in the neighboring town of Kellogg was underway. I joined two of my fellow EPA staff from the Boise Office to walk through the site, identify removal projects of asbestos and other hazardous materials, and from afar offer advice on community soil removal projects. My two most lasting memories of those trips was my buddy Bill pointing out, from a safe distance, the largest puddle of mercury on the ground I could ever imagine. And heading to Wallace with my friend Al for a couple of dinners. Those scientist buddies were so kind and good to me, a young woman just a couple years out of graduate school. I think about them all now when I mentor others newer to the profession. And I always think about Bunker Hill as I travel to and through Wallace.

Yes, that was a bit off track. Yet, that’s what our brains do isn’t it? The older we get, the more these diverse memories spin, collide and amalgamate. But if you asked me what I think about when I drive through Wallace? It’s all there.