Hard Work and the Happy Days

In 1958 Mom took a trip to Ketchum with her good friend Orriette Sinclair.  Mom was always interested in property to buy, and she found a lot on Warm Springs Road about 300 yards across from the ski run on Baldy.  There was no lift on Warm Springs run in those days so you skied it as the last run of the day.

She convinced Herb to buy it and Herb got a loan from Jim Sinclair, the bank president and Orriette's husband in Twin.  This loan was a such good rates that Dad made the minimum payments on it, until, after Jim had died, the new bank president called to complain that "it looked bad on the bank's books".  Dad promptly paid it off.

In about 1963 Herb and Lorrain decided to build on it.  They bought a 'kit house' that was hauled in unfinished by truck.  They had ski instructors (alleged carpenters) put it together over the summer. Everything was in the kit...except the brick Mom wanted.

So, Mom and Dad found an old brick school near Kuna ( I think it was the Happy Valley School) that was being torn down and we began to salvage the brick.  God, what hot hard sweaty work.  We had to clean the mortar off the brick also.  Scrounging thru the piles of broken brick to find usable ones became our weekend work.

We would load the brick in Dad's 1958 Chevy Biscayne and drive to Ketchum.  But you couldn't just put the bricks in the car's trunk and go.  No, they had to be placed so the car was not over loaded.  Dad devised the method to haul the maximum number, 228, of brick by putting them on the front and back floorboards and in the trunk.  Talk about a smooth ride.  It was the first lowrider.  And when Herb got a head of steam up, there was no slowing down.  It probably took 20 trips to complete the walls and fireplaces.

It was was a great house. I met my wife on New Year's Eve while staying there with fraternity brothers over Christmas break in 1977.

Cleaning brick, loading brick, driving the brick up to Ketchum occupied an entire spring and summer.  Dad would always say, as we sat in the hot car sweating and covered with brick and mortar dust, "these are the happy days!"   I didn't know it then, but he was right.