Marge and Daniel Conley

NARRATORS: Marge and Daniel Conley INTERVIEWER: Erin Bostwick DATE: May 26, 2017 LOCATION: 3177 North Bryson Avenue, Boise PROJECT: Citizens of Boise START INTERVIEW START TRACK ONE EB: Okay, today is May 26th, 2017. My name is Erin Bostwick with the Boise Department of Arts and History. Today I’m interviewing Marge Conley and her son Daniel Conley at her house at 3177 North Bryson Avenue in Boise, Idaho. Marge and Daniel are going to tell me about living in Ustick. So, Marge, when and where were you born? MC: November 23rd, 1932, in Hopkins, Minnesota. EB: And is that where you grew up as well? MC: Yes. EB: What brought you to the Boise area? MC: You won’t believe this. We’re rock hounds. We’d collected Lake Superior agates and we made several trips out here and did rock hunting. We moved here because they have more rocks than Minnesota does, and this is the Gem State. EB: [Laughs] It is, indeed. So, you followed your passion out here? MC: Yes. EB: Did you do a lot of traveling for rock hunting? MC: A fair amount. We traveled around Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and down as far as Arkansas. And then, of course, western Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, of course. EB: Of course. A far ways to come. We must have good gems and rocks out here. MC: We certainly do. [Laughter] EB: And, so, you and your husband moved out here together? MC: Yes. EB: And where did you live when you first moved to Boise? MC: We rented a house down on Leadville for—I think we were there about four months—and when we first got here, within probably a couple weeks, we bought this old farm out in Ustick with a six-bedroom house on it that needed a lot of loving care. And we moved into the old house about Christmastime of 1963 and lived there for I think it was around twenty-three years before we built a house in the former pasture. We built an underground house, which we thoroughly enjoy to this day. EB: It’s a beautiful home. MC: Thank you. EB: When you moved here, what were your first impressions of Ustick? MC: Well, coming from Minnesota where everything is green and lush and full of mosquitoes [laughs], it was awful brown and dry, and it took a few years to get used to it, but brown is kind of pretty anymore [laughs]. EB: Your appreciation grew over time of the landscape out here. MC: Oh, yes. And, of course, Ustick was out far enough from the city. We did not live in the city in Minnesota either. So, that’s what brought us this far west of Boise itself. EB: You’re used to living kind of in a rural area outside of a bigger city. MC: Yes, gravel roads. [Laughs] EB: So, your original farmhouse that you lived in out here in Ustick on the bigger plot, when was that built? MC: The kitchen was an addition onto the log cabin in 1895, and then they tore down the log cabin and built a two-story section and then eventually it was just not well built, and they tore it down and built a nice two-story section onto the kitchen. EB: And that’s where the six bedrooms were, in that. MC: Yes, six bedrooms and one bathroom. EB: One bathroom. MC: Which we turned into four bedrooms and three bathrooms. EB: Sounds like a good move. [Laughs] So, can you describe that old six-bedroom house to me? MC: Oh, well [laughs]. It was a little bit on the primitive side to begin with. It had a very large kitchen, and it had a big wood stove right in the middle and with a hot water heater that was heated by the wood stove. It had two rooms behind the wood stove. One was a pantry and the other one had two wash basins in it to go with the bathroom, which only had a tub and toilet in the converted porch. And that was the kitchen portion. And then the two-story section was much better built. Of course, the living room and two bedrooms were downstairs, and then three bedrooms—four bedrooms—upstairs. And the two very small ones we turned into bathrooms—one upstairs and one downstairs. And, so, it was perfect after the kids left. Our bedroom was downstairs with a nice big bathroom, living room, and kitchen. We didn’t need anything more. EB: Didn’t even have to go upstairs after that. MC: Nope. EB: [Laughs] MC: I’d dust it when the kids came home. DC: There was seven doors in the kitchen, though. EB: Seven doors? Well, I guess if it was its own building with an addition built around it, right? MC: Yeah. Well, there was a door to the back porch, a door to the pantry, a door to the washroom, a door to the bathroom, a door—the stairway came down into the kitchen, there was a door there—and there was a door into the living room. [Laughs] EB: So, how long did you live in that old farmhouse? MC: We lived there, oh, let’s see, about twenty-two years. Because we moved in in ’63 and we built this house in ’85. EB: And that old farmhouse, was it on a bigger lot? MC: The lot the farmhouse was on was three-quarters of an acre, and then alongside of it was eight acres of farmland with the barn, the chicken coop, the sheep shed [laughs]— DC: Two chicken coops. MC: And pig sties. EB: And you owned all that as well? MC: Yes. EB: And was your lot a part of the original Aldridge -- DC: Homestead, yeah. EB: Homestead. MC: Yes. Because it—how many acres would that be? There was eight acres next to us to the east and then our eight acres— DC: And then Sigmunds’ and Ownby’s. MC: Clarence. Sigmunds’, Ownby’s, and Taylor’s. DC: Clarence, Sigmund, Ownby, Taylor—and Taylor married one of the daughters, so, he got the eight acres with the, I think it was ten he had on the corner of Ustick and Cloverdale. EB: Okay. MC: Yeah. So, the original Aldridge went all the way from Shamrock, basically, to Cloverdale Road, or almost Cloverdale. DC: Yeah, because Taylor had the corner piece. MC: Yeah. EB: And that kitchen and farmhouse addition, were those part of the original Aldridge— MC: That was the original, yeah. EB: So, you lived there for twenty-two years. Did you tear it down when you— MC: Oh, no, it’s still there. EB: It’s still there? MC: [Laughs] It’s had two other owners since then, so, we sold it in—Paul lived there for, what, almost twenty years, wasn’t it? DC: I think about eighteen. MC: And then Carlsons bought it after that, and they wanted to put it back to the original, so, and I haven’t been in there since. They took out the big fireplace we put in. EB: What’s the address over there, do you know? MC: Eleven— DC: Eleven. MC: Five seventy-five Ustick Road. EB: And when did you build this house that we’re in now? MC: 1985. EB: 1985. MC: Started in March and we [laughs] didn’t move in until, I think, August. EB: A long wait. MC: It was. EB: So, let’s see here, what did the neighborhood look like when you first moved to Ustick? DC: [Laughs] MC: It was all farmland. Very quiet, nice. We had the Ustick Store, and there was a house. Basically, what we could see from our house—there was a house across from the Ustick Store, and, let’s see, the garage. DC: Well, the Ustick Garage down here, which is next to the bank building. There was the houses on Fry Street and a couple off of—what’s that other street there in the, behind the store? I can’t think of the name. But there was two main streets that had houses. That section they’re building in now, that was all just a field. There was cows in there. You had the Baptist church. MC: Yeah, that was there, wasn’t it? DC: Was there. And that first house on the corner of Wildwood and Ustick, at that corner, that’s where the pastor of the church lived with his two daughters. MC: But that was built after we moved here. DC: The house? MC: Wasn’t it? I thought so. I don’t think that— DC: I don’t think so. MC: We don’t remember. [Laughter] EB: What were the roads like out here then? MC: Narrow, two-lane. In fact, Eagle Road—I hated to drive Eagle Road. It was so narrow, and those big borrow pits on either side, it was almost scary. DC: And Ustick and Eagle was a flashing light. And, otherwise, there was no stop signs from Boise all the way out. MC: Yeah. No lights. DC: No light. No stop signs. Ustick had the free run the whole way. MC: In fact, there was not a stop light on Fairview and Cloverdale when Dennis was working down at Trus Joist, and he was in college then. So. DC: Yes. EB: Were the roads paved. MC: Yep. DC: Yeah. EB: They were? DC: They paved—re-paved Ustick about three years after we moved in there, because I was about twelve, and we used to be with our trucks and cars and stuffed toys and stuff, and we used to play on Ustick Road. And about maybe every two-and-a-half hours, you’d have to get out of the road because a car would come. [Laughter] Skateboards and what have you. EB: Were there sidewalks in the neighborhood anywhere? MC: No. DC: No. MC: No sidewalks whatever. DC: Not even in Ustick. MC: And no bike lanes either. [Laughs] DC: Mumbarto had houses all on that street, too. MC: Oh, yeah. DC: They were next to the store, between the store and the bank, and as you go up there, there is that—I think it’s a continuation of Fry Street that comes this way, and there was houses there all the way down that street and there was two trailers at the end of it, which would be right on the other side of this property, next to us. MC: Yeah. DC: That was Dodges and— MC: The old school was down at the end of Mumbarto. DC: Yeah, because, see, the old school, Lawrence, and his wife’s house— MC: Yes. DC: And then there’s— MC: I don’t remember. DC: Another house and there’s that street. The house that’s between the ditch and that street was where one of the girls I went to school with lived, in that house. EB: What were your options traveling from Ustick into town or getting around Ustick itself? MC: [Laughs] DC: Bicycle. MC: Fifty miles an hour all the way to Cole Road, because I worked downtown at that time, and I would take Mountain View over to Fairview and down the hill. EB: A little bit quicker trip. MC: It didn’t take long—it didn’t take long to get to work. [Laughs] EB: No, not at that speed. [Laughs] So, there wasn’t a lot of traffic in the neighborhood? MC: Oh, no. DC: No. MC: Not until it started getting built up and, of course, the more houses, the more cars. EB: Yes. So, yeah, tell me a little bit about that, when they started building more subdivisions out here. When did you start to notice that change and what was most noticeable about it? MC: Let’s see. DC: Well, the most notable change is, we used to open this place up and cool it off at night. We can’t do that anymore because the heat stays in from all these subdivisions. MC: There’s no breeze. DC: So, it was about 1980 when they started really building up around here. MC: Yeah. DC: There was some going in before that, but across the street was big fields. That started, got developed about then. They moved the ditch down towards Cloverdale, so they put in the Maverick that was on the corner and they put in those subdivisions down there. Lewis and Clark Subdivision went in— MC: Yeah, Ownby and Sigmund sold their land— DC: First. MC: To a developer and that’s where those houses—on Cribbens and— DC: Tattenham. MC: Yeah, that was the first ones. DC: That was the major. MC: We used to walk in the evenings, you know, because it would cool off a little bit. And we were living in the old house yet, but we’d walk through the subdivision over on Bryson Way, and I think we’ve walked through almost every house over there as they were being built. [Laughter] EB: That’s the way to get to know a neighborhood. MC: Yes. EB: [Laughs] Let’s see here: So, what type of community or school events was your family involved in out in Ustick? MC: Well, they both went to Meridian. We’re in the Meridian school district. And Dan belonged to EAA, Experimental Aircraft Association. Dennis wasn’t into sports or anything. Neither one of them were, really, into sports or much of anything. Dennis liked math. He liked learning. [Laughs] So, and he’d tutor some of the football players. So—and I don’t, I don’t know what else. I know Dan, the one teacher wanted Dan to join the track team [laughs] because he could run faster than anybody else, but he wasn’t into sports either. So, you’ll have to ask him. EB: Were there any community events out here, like Fourth of July get-togethers or anything like that, or did anyone--you were kind of spread out, so you’d keep to yourselves? MC: No, we used to be able to sit and watch the fireworks at the Fairgrounds, because there were no trees. It was all farmland. So, you know, we could see them. EB: Yes. MC: And the only thing going on was, was it Founders Day, in Meridian? EB: Dairy Days. MC: Dairy Days, that was it. Dairy Days. And Clarence, our neighbor, would hook up his team of horses to a covered wagon, and the kids and Betty, I think— DC: Yes. MC: And, of course, Clarence would drive the wagon up to Meridian and Pat would follow in the car to bring them all back home. [Laughter] DC: And a wagon trip from here to Meridian was what? Four-and-a-half hours? MC: I think so. EB: Geez! [Laughter] No wonder you brought the car as well, huh? MC: I remember Pat telling about—he saw more of the countryside that day because he was practically idling all the way to Meridian, because he followed us in case something happened, you know, to the wagon. [Laughter] EB: And what did you and your husband do for a living? MC: Well, I worked at Western Equipment. Started there in 1964. And Pat worked for, what’s the name? Opal Harvester. DC: Opal Harvester. MC: They built harvesters. And then he went into business for himself, did advertising brochures and so forth. Did that for many years, until about 1982. EB: Where was Western Equipment located? MC: Western Equipment was in downtown Boise on Fairview Avenue. DC: This side of the river. MC: Yep. Right next to the river. EB: Okay. MC: And the Connector goes right over the top of it [laughs], where it used to be. Then they moved out to Meridian. EB: And what was your role there? MC: I basically kind of worked in accounting. I kept track of all the machines, did all the billing for the rentals and sales, and kept track of the salesmen’s commissions. EB: And how did you get into that business—the farm equipment business? MC: Well, I started [laughs] in Minnesota in farm equipment. I worked for Minneapolis Moline for several years, until we moved out here. And I just got back into it, only bigger equipment. [Laughs] EB: Did your husband—you and your husband—have jobs lined up when you moved out to Boise, or--? MC: No. He had the names of some businesses. He had sent for a book from the Chamber of Commerce that listed different businesses, in stuff that he would be interested in, because that’s what he did back in Minnesota was write instructional manuals on how to put together equipment, farm equipment, and operating instructions. And, so, he was looking for something of that sort. EB: How long did it take for you two to find jobs once you got here? MC: Oh, let’s see. Well, we moved here in, I think it was September of ’63, and I started work in May or June of ’64. And I think Pat went to work within a month. That’s right—he worked for Western Conveyor to begin with. DC: Yes. Way out there on Warm Springs. MC: Yes. EB: And you mentioned driving really fast out to work. MC: Yeah. [Laughter] EB: What was your route to get out there? MC: Oh, I’d go straight down Ustick Road. It was fifty miles an hour all the way to Cole Road. That was the speed limit. And then, of course, it was slower around Mountain View, and then I hit Fairview, and it was only half a mile to the business. EB: Was it still a lot of farmland out there at Cole-Mountain View area at that time? MC: Oh, yeah. DC: The fairgrounds used to be at Orchard and— MC: Orchard and Fairview. DC: Fairview at the time. MC: Yeah. DC: [Laughs] That’s how long ago. MC: That’s how much farmland there was around. [Laughter] EB: I know I’ve seen pictures of before they built the mall out there on Cole and it was still—it looked like farmland until they built that mall in the late ‘80s. MC: Oh, yeah. There were houses along Mountain View, but then that was the view. There was nothing behind those houses. That was all farmland. It’s hard to remember that many years ago. [Laughs] EB: Taking you back a little bit. What did your family do in your spare time? MC: Oh, well, mostly we went rock hunting. Did some camping without rock hunting—not very often. Most of the time we went where there were rocks. EB: What were the best places to find rocks? MC: Oh, well, we used to go up to the other side of—into Oregon, actually, down Succor Creek, and towards the Owyhee Reservoir there’s lot of good rocks over there. And then on this side there’s Graveyard Point, which is still an active mine. You can go out there and collect plume agate. And, of course, go north, you can find crystals--and up by Trinity Mountains, there’s crystals up in there. DC: Used to go to Mountain Home towards Bruneau for Bruneau jasper. MC: Yes. And then, of course, we went that same direction Mountain Home and north up to Trinitys. DC: Yes. MC: And up towards Idaho City sometimes. And, of course, go all the way north, up to St. Maries, and get star garnets. We did that back in 1966, I think it was. DC: Yes. MC: We’ve got a two-pounder in there that we’d found up there. EB: Wow. Impressive. What were your favorite places to go camping? MC: I think mostly over in the Owyhees. It was always so quiet and nice. [Laughs] EB: Let’s see. So, Daniel, what did you do for fun growing up? DC: Oh, we got into a lot of stuff. Model rockets. Model airplanes—the control string ones. Used to fly them a lot. Used to take our bikes and ride them from here all the way up to Lucky Peak to go swimming. Had a parachute—kind of an old Koppels Browzeville—a real parachute. Used to take it down to the elementary school with a riding lawn mower cart and hook it—hang the cords over the handle and hold it and flight it. Go shooting across the school yard at about forty, fifty miles an hour. And then you release the handle, let the chute go off, and you ended up running over it as you went on. Yeah, we had fun. We floated the irrigation ditch system. Nobody ever got hurt or drowned doing that. The other big thing is tying off from a bridge, like behind the Dollar Store down here. You go down to the end of the ditch there and there’s a big thing that does this. Up to the bridge, you’d tie a cord or rope, and you’d have a piece of plywood that was a surfboard on it. And that was a big thing during the summer—surfboarding in the ditch and floating in tubes and— MC: They used to do it right out here on our bridge, too. DC: Yeah. EB: Had a pretty good water flow in the ditch for those. DC: This was one of the fastest sections, right in here where we were. MC: It’s the steepest. DC: Yeah. And, believe me, it was hard to stand up in that section. You had to really lean into the water [laughs]. EB: And nobody ever got hurt. DC: Nope. Nobody ever got hurt. No kid that I knew of—don’t know any kids that ever drown back then from floating in the irrigation ditch. EB: Interesting. DC: And there was a lot of—going up Five Mile, about halfway up to where that ditch goes underneath Five Mile, the same one, we used to go up to the trees there, right where the bridge is, they take the one tree out, but there’s a branch that was over the ditch and we used to climb up in the tree and jump off into the ditch. So, yeah, that’s what we did mostly for fun. MC: [Laughs] EB: Getting into a little bit of trouble? DC: Yeah. Firecrackers. [Laughs] MC: There were no signs saying “No Trespassing” at the ditches then. [Laughs] DC: No. MC: We used to go—we’ve got the Ridenbaugh back here—and we used to walk back there at the end of our pasture and go swimming in there. It was about this deep—chest deep. DC: But it was cold water. MC: Cold. Cold. DC: Dad jumped in it the first time. We talked him into jumping in. He turned blue. He was so cold; he could hardly get out. [Laughter] And Grandma, when she was here visiting, we were going back down to the ditch and--me and my brother were small yet and we were going to go swim in the ditch. Both Grandmas were here and was walking through the fields down there. Grandma McGinty slipped and fell in one of the little irrigation ditches, so she was all wet. MC: [Unclear at MP3 44:50] water. DC: [Laughs] MC: She wasn’t going to go swimming. [Laughs] DC: No. EB: She wasn’t planning on getting wet that day. DC: No. Oh, that was—I think that day, when she slipped there, she started laughing, Grandma Conley was laughing, me and my brother were laughing, and it just turned into just a hilarious event. EB: And you said you mostly got around by bicycle? DC: Yeah. Single-speed bicycles. Steve Nelson was one of the few around here that had—he had a three-speed. [Laughs] But, yeah, single-speed bicycles. Mine was an old one that Clarence had had and they got it from him and they spray-painted it and put new tires on it, and it had one of those big-old gears on the thing. That sucker was a good bicycle to run around on—not like one of these modern-day ones. MC: [Laughs] EB: And where did you go to school? DC: Oh, I went to Meridian High School. I went to the old Meridian Junior High. I did fifth grade at Cloverdale, at Cloverdale and Fairview, which was torn down the year after we went there. There was a bunch of special needs kids at that school, too, going in the classroom there. And then I was at Ustick Elementary, you know. And then Garfield when we first moved here. That’s [unclear at 47:08]. MC: And before that, you went to Oak Knoll. DC: Yeah, that was in Minneapolis, though. That wasn’t out here. [Laughs] Alice Smith, then Oak Knoll. EB: What year did you graduate from Meridian High? DC: ’73. EB: Do either of you remember any stories about the neighborhood from before you lived here—stories you heard from neighbors about how it used to be, or--? DC: Lawrence Bartlett, who owned the Ustick Merc after Charlie, he would tell us all sorts of stories—old-time things, told us about the Boise Boys back when it all happened. He worked out at the guard as a—penitentiary as a guard. He asked the warden where they all were, and he was told to shut up about them. They never did show up at the prison. Clarence would tell us, so, his war stories, but Charlie, who owned the store before him, he’d talk about—and show us at times—when times got tough, farmers would dig into their stash and dig out gold coins. And Charlie, when he’d get one in there and kids, “Have you kids ever see a gold coin before?” and he’d show them and we’d all ooh and ah. And Lawrence, he collected the silver certificates that come through the store. He must have had a two-inch stack of them—ones, fives, tens, twenties, like that. Charlie used to do the coal pit when Lawrence had the store, work in there and stuff. And there was a lot of stories about that. And Gladys, one of the ladies back there [laughs], I think they just liked making her mad or something, come into the store for a steak, she wanted a thin steak, and, “No, a steak isn’t good unless it’s thick,” and she was held up in front of the store with Lawrence talking to her while Charlie cut the steak, and he sliced it and sliced it. It was like a piece of luncheon meat when he was done. When she come in and got a steak after that, never said a word. Just took the thick steak and probably cut it at home. But they talked about the old bank. Lawrence had put the old mama cat in there because the bank was a feed store next to it, and there’s a lot of rats in there. So, he put that old mama cat in there, figured he’d get rid of that, but I guess kept her jumping all night. When he opened the door, the cat shot out and they didn’t see the cat for a week. [Laughter] These are some of the stories, you know, that you hear about. And there was stuff from Ora Thompson and fixing the garage—the garage was closed when we moved in. He’d already retired. But he still fixed local farmers’ cars. Lawrence had the Dodge coupe that was given away in downtown Boise. He won it and they restored it, and he went to driving it. It was Serial Number one. EB: Wow. DC: So, it was given away. Was it Bob? MC: I don’t know. DC: I don’t know who the dealer was back then. I remember they told me but, yeah, he’d won the car. MC: Bob Rice Ford was—they moved here. DC: Bob Rice is probably it. But I don’t know if he was the Dodge dealer. MC: There was another one before that. DC: But, yeah. MC: Yeah, there was another dealer. DC: And then, of course, all the old farmers here, they all had cars sitting in their fields usually—an old car. Boy, we got—we scrounged a lot of parts as kids off there when we got to driving age. Put a car together through parts, you know. This car out of this field, this Lincoln Zephyr motor, this Chevy transmission, this ’57 Pontiac rear end, and we ended up with a car that couldn’t be beat downtown, driving the strip. MC: [Laughs] DC: I mean, nobody could beat it with that Lincoln Zephyr B12 motor in it. EB: You’d go down and do the cruise on the weekends? DC: Drags, drags, drag race. We beat Corvettes. We beat everything. And then Dean had to take the transmission apart and repair it every weekend, because it’d torque the main shaft over and moon the bearings in the shaft. That’s how torquey that sucker was. I mean, like, we beat everything. We were the kings. [Laughs] EB: And when did you start driving? DC: That would be ’70—I got my license in ’72 and I got my car in ’73. My junior year. ’60 Lincoln. Used to fill the car up. We’d go to the Meridian Drive-in. Four in the front seat. Six in the back seat. Three in the trunk with the chairs. And we’d go to the Meridian Drive-in at a dollar a carload. And they’d know my car was packed. EB: You were riding low. They could probably tell from the outside. [Laughs] DC: Not on that ’60 Lincoln. That was fifty-two hundred pounds weight. EB: Wow. DC: Curb weight. EB: I meant to ask when I asked you about your school, but can you describe the school community to me? DC: What do you mean by community? How—how the students were, or how the teachers— EB: Sure. How did you fit into the school? What were groups like? DC: Oh. Well, yeah, they had their little cliques and stuff. I was always bullied. I was always picked on, punched, hit, shoved in a wall, locker, shoved into the bleachers. Got beat by the principal for starting the fights when the bullies started it with me because they were all Mormon. And the principal: “They wouldn’t lie to me.” Bullshit. Sorry. [Laughs] EB: Were there a lot of [WAV starts here at WAV 34:06 for track one] LDS families in this area? DC: My brother wasn’t on the honor roll, yet he had a grade point average higher than half the honor roll. We weren’t Mormon; that’s why he wasn’t on the honor roll. MC: He asked one of the teachers how come he didn’t get on the honor roll, and the teacher said, “You’re not Mormon, are you?” DC: That’s the way it used to be back here. MC: And we weren’t used to that because there were no Mormons in Minnesota. [Laughs] EB: So, that was a pretty healthy-sized community at your schools that you went to, was the LDS community? DC: Yes, yeah. There were quite a few of them there. MC: Yeah, Meridian was just a jerkwater town [laughs]. There was basically nothing there. DC: The cop in Meridian, I’m driving my ’60 Lincoln, as you go past the Mormon Church, there’s a service station on the other side of the road. Well, where that little road come out before the service station was ever put in, a kid come running out in front of my car and I stopped. And the cop said that I got up to fifty miles an hour with that ’60 Lincoln to where the road goes alongside the school, which is where I turned to go into the parking lot. He pulled me over and said I got that thing up to fifty. Well, I couldn’t have gotten it up to fifty miles an hour and stopped. But since I drove a big car, I got to pay a ticket. One of the high school seniors at the time had gotten stopped and this cop tried to get out of the car—he was big and fat—he just put it in gear and took off and the cop couldn’t get back in to catch him. So, after that, it was always, when he stopped you, it was, “Bring back your license” on the loudspeaker. So, he had your license before he got out of the car. EB: Smart adjustment there. DC: Yes. [Laughter] Yep. There was a kid in high school that got shot in the parking lot in Meridian. They brought a .22 to school and they were looking at it and it discharged and shot Craig right in the chest, right in the heart, killed him instantly. EB: Wow. DC: But that’s the only incident we ever had. You know, and back then, yeah, you seen guns in the cars—they’re going hunting after school, seniors, and stuff. You know, the gun rack in the back and there’s a gun in it. Now you wouldn’t dare do that, but, you know, it was a totally different— MC: [Laughs] And you didn’t have to lock the car because nobody was going to steal it either. DC: Yeah, we didn’t used to lock our doors. Nobody hardly ever used to lock their doors. MC: Well, heavens, no. Our neighbors might need something. [Laughter] EB: How far away was your closest neighbor? MC: Right across the driveway. EB: Okay. MC: Because Clarence was brought up in our house and he stayed on the farm, so they built a house right across the driveway from his house. DC: He took care of the family and his parents. MC: Took care of all the land. DC: Yes, he farmed it all. The next closest house was Masons, which is the little house across the street from us at the end of the driveway. MC: Across the street. And Sigmunds on the other side of [unclear at 37:11] pasture. DC: And the Sigmunds—and the little house was just put in when we moved in here—the little blue and white house next to Mason. That was Joneses. Everybody hated it, because they’re used to the city and they had to have a night light, so they got that night light, and the only light—it shined in everybody’s bedroom window. Everybody hated them. [Laughter] MC: It was nice and dark out here. You could see all the stars. [Laughs] Now you can’t see any. DC: I remember it being so dark on a moonless night. We’d gone up to the Golden Wheel Drive-in, rode our bicycles up there with Tom DeShazo and his parents come and grabbed him— “Why aren’t you home?”—and took him. He had the light on the bicycle. We couldn’t see to get home; it was so dark. We had to ride down the road. When you heard your wheels going off the asphalt and hitting the gravel, you turned to get back on the asphalt. You should have seen the curve in the road. MC: There were no white stripes. DC: There was no lights. Everybody was asleep. All the house lights were off. It was pitch black. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. EB: And the shoulder was a ditch, pretty much, right? DC: Yeah, one side was a ditch; the other side was a littler ditch. Of course, you had—it was in front of the houses, but, the little ditch at the front of the house to water the lawn from there, yeah, you’d end up going [unclear at 38:28]. We managed to make it home without wrecking, but— MC: Another interesting thing, I always found interesting, because we didn’t have it in Minnesota, but you’d come up to a crossroad, the white line down the middle? There was no yellow one, just white, but it weaved like this. DC: Like a snake. MC: So, you could tell you were coming to a crossroad. When it was foggy. Because they had a lot of fog when we moved out here. EB: Interesting. DC: Yeah, we had that hoar frost. The fog would—a couple of weeks—even a blade of grass was, like, an inch-and-a-half in diameter, you know, a little straw grass sticking up? That’s how much frost was on everything from it. EB: Wow. DC: It was—we got pictures of it from back then. It’s really— EB: When did that happen? DC: That would have been ’70— MC: It was in the ‘70s. DC: ’77. I was home from the service. MC: Okay. DC: Because we got a picture of me with my long hair, my leather hat, leather jacket— MC: [Laughs] DC: Yeah, I went hippie after I got out of the service. EB: Next I’m going to ask you a little bit about local businesses out here. What were some of the local businesses you guys patronized? MC: Local business? DC: The Ustick Merc. MC: Ustick Merc. [Laughs] That was it. There were no other businesses. There was an Albertson’s at the corner of Cole and Fairview, and it was the northwest corner, not the southeast corner like it is now. DC: And there was, down at the— MC: And there was nothing else but Albertson’s in there. DC: Yeah, but down here there was the M&W Market on the other side of Cole Road at that little shopping center. MC: Mountain View, Mountain View Shopping Center. DC: Mountain View Shopping Center. There was a five-and-dime there. There was several things— MC: [Unclear at 40:32] barber shop. DC: Yep, that’s one of the main places I rode down on my bicycle to. MC: Drug store. DC: Yep. EB: And those were all at the Mountain View Shopping Center? MC: Yes. DC: Yep. And that was about the really closest place. MC: That was the closest shopping center. DC: Oh, on Fairview, between Five Mile and Maple Grove on the far side of Fairview, there was that little market. MC: I don’t remember. DC: Yep. Because we used to— MC: I remember just— DC: Because he used to sell firecrackers to us kids. MC: [Laughter] No wonder you remember it. Just west of Five Mile on Fairview, on the south side, was Pat’s Bar. That’s how I always figured out where to turn to come up to our place [laughs]. When we saw the Pat’s Bar sign, that was our road coming up. Because there was nothing. EB: [Laughs] DC: And the Golden Wheel Drive-in was there— MC: Yeah. DC: At the end of Wildwood. MC: Wildwood. DC: And Fairview. And that Marvin Gibbons’ family that put it in and I went to high school with him. His family, I guess, was the one that built it. EB: And did you go there a lot to the drive-in? DC: Yeah, we went there a lot. Because Paula Hudson’s family owned the M&W on the other side of Cole on Fairview and that was the other place to go, but that was really too far at night, so, to ride our bicycles. EB: Where was the Ustick Merc or store located? DC: Just two blocks west, where it is now. It’s now [unclear at 42:14] Mexican food. MC: Tamale place. [Laughs] DC: Tamale place. EB: And what type of things did you typically buy there? MC: You could buy almost anything you wanted there, except material. DC: Yep. MC: I don’t think he had any material. DC: Nope. MC: But you could buy, I swear you could buy ammunition, you could buy nails and hammers, canned goods. They had a fresh meat counter. DC: Penny candy. MC: I don’t think—yeah, he didn’t have any fresh fruit and vegetables. DC: No, but canned. MC: Canned. DC: Milk. I mean, it was like a 7-Eleven except for— MC: The fresh meat. DC: Fresh meat. MC: And good things. DC: The store, it’s not like now. It had the counter—across the front, the glass counter with the candy, with the little boxes of penny candy on it. Candy bars and stuff were in there, you know, the nickel Hershey candy bars that were, you know, like five times the size of what we get now. And then at Christmastime, on the counter, there was the counter that run here and he had the registers here, the counter across the back, and that’s where at Christmas-time he’d put those chocolates that looked like a little dome with the different fillings in them. That’s what he always had in those. When it used to be a Union 76 gas station, he’d have so many of those little jackpot—like, get three plums or whatever things that you’d tear open—he would hand us as kids coming in there a handful to open up, and any winners we handed back to him. And, of course, if we got some winners, I think we got two cents—two penny pieces of candy for each dollar winner we got. So, if we got a five, we got ten pieces—ten pieces of candy. That means you’d get a Cracker Jacks or [laughter], you know. EB: You’re rich. DC: Yeah, yeah. Collect pop bottles along the road and cash them in. Used to [unclear at 44:06], but when we lived back on Leadville, I used to do it, too. That’s where I started collecting all my comic books. I got—I used to have Fantastic Four and Spiderman, all from number one all the way through. EB: Very cool. MC: Yeah, we had a charge account at the store, too. DC: He’d run out the receipt and stick it on the little mail sticker there. You’d come in there and he’d sort them all out. He’d have your name on it, he’d sort them out, add them up, and that’s how he’d [unclear at 44:37]. [Laughs] EB: Was that pretty common for people around [unclear at 44:40]— DC: Yes. MC: Yeah. And, another thing, well, we had the Post Office at the Ustick Merc, too. And we usually wrapped our packages, like at Christmastime, and just take them in. And when Lawrence got time, he’d put the stamps on and tell us what we owed him. Pat was always taking his coffee cup in there when he stopped in. He’d stand there and talk to Lawrence and drink his coffee and invariably leave his cup. So, Lawrence would just put it in our mail slot. [Laughter] But there was one—I always remember that one lady, and I think Lawrence was a little upset about that—she’d brought in this box with Christmas-wrapped packages in it and a name and address on a sheet of paper and said, “Here, Lawrence, mail it for me.” So, he had to pack it all in there and wrap it up and mail it for her. DC: Gladys. MC: I wouldn’t doubt it. DC: It was Gladys. [Laughter] This is what I was telling you about, the little bits they kind of tit-for-tat. She lived in the first house behind the store on that street that they modified. Charlie’s house was next to it, but he didn’t go down the street. He crossed the ditch because there was a two-by-twelve plank, or two-by-ten plank, across the ditch, so that’s what he’d walk across to go [unclear at 46:05] so he didn’t have to walk out in the rain. [Laughs] EB: What was Gladys’ last name? DC: Huh? EB: What was Gladys’ last name? DC: I couldn’t tell you. MC: I can’t either. EB: What about Lawrence’s? MC: Bartlett. DC: Bartlett. And Charlie’s was— MC: Onweiler. DC: Onweiler. MC: Wasn’t it? DC: Yes. EB: And those were both people who at some point operated the Mercantile? DC: Yep. After Lawrence sold it, Don from Don’s Market up in Meridian, corner of Cherry and Ray Lane [unclear at 46:36], bought it. His mother did not like the Post Office in there and told him to get rid of it, and it killed the store. Nobody went in there for anything if they didn’t go in there and get their mail. Us kids would go in there, but you can’t survive on penny candy. And they weren’t friendly to us as kids. They’d watch us like hawks, like we were just little crooks and stuff. And his mother was horrible; she was a horrible lady. [Laughs] Yell at us kids and stuff. Couldn’t hang out in front of the store, you know. EB: And they sold gas there at some point [unclear at 47:15]? DC: They sold gas the whole time. EB: Was that the main gas station here? DC: Yeah. MC: It was the closest one, that’s for sure. DC: Because I remember filling my ’60 Lincoln up and it was only, like, thirty-two cents a gallon. [Laughs] EB: And that thing had a really big gas tank, too. DC: Yeah, about twenty-five. MC: Pretty good size. EB: How did the changes in ownership at the Merc affect the store, besides the Post Office ending up closing? DC: Well— MC: Between Charlie and Lawrence, no change really. DC: No change. They kept the same old little country store feel. MC: Well, they had the big scale, and all the farmers weighed their grain and their hay on those scales. DC: Which was the second most accurate in the state of Idaho at the time. I think it’s still second most accurate in Ada County. MC: So, yeah, it didn’t change much until Lawrence sold it and then— DC: And even the farmers, I don’t think, went there much afterwards because you’d go in there, you’d weigh a load of hay or a truck of grain, you know. Everybody’d pay—bales off the wagon when you load. Everybody goes in there and gets a soda, you know. After Don was there, he didn’t like the scale, he didn’t want to have to do it. He’d raised the price of weighing to about three-fifty a weight instead of the fifty cents or the quarter it was when we first started. Lawrence had raised it, too, but even the farmers started to—stopped going in there. MC: Well, there was another scale that wasn’t that far away, right up on Cloverdale and Fairview. DC: Yeah, but it got put— MC: There was a feed store up there and they’d go up there and weigh. DC: Yeah, so— EB: Had that opened after or did people just start going there once the— DC: It opened after but— MC: It had been there for a long time. DC: Don wasn’t a personable person to run a store. His ideas of a store, you know, didn’t fit this little community and everybody just abandoned it. EB: Before Don took over, how would you describe the store’s role in the community? DC: A little meeting center. MC: Oh, yeah. DC: I mean, you’d see people sitting around. One guy that always got the mail for being the mayor of Ustick, honorary mayor, he always took that and stuff. And you’d find them in there and they’d be having a little conversation—Lawrence and Charlie and them. MC: I remember Lawrence had an argument with the government. He says, “If somebody comes in and buys a bottle of beer, that belongs to them.” He says, “I have no say in what he does with it. If he wants to go sit in that chair over there and drink his beer, it’s not business to stop him.” They didn’t want anybody drinking beer— DC: In the store. MC: In the store. [Laughs] DC: And a lot of the old-timers did. MC: Oh, yeah. But the Baptists, I think it was, boycotted his store for a while because of it. [Laughs] EB: Did the LDS families go there as well? MC: Oh, I’m sure. DC: Oh, probably everybody went there. If you lived in Ustick, you went there. MC: It was the closest store to get basics. DC: Milk, bread. Anytime you needed something, “Run down to the store and get it.” MC: Yeah. DC: We’d hop on our bike and vroom, down and back. Nothing flat. EB: And when did the store close? MC: Well [Laughs]. DC: Well—and it was open—it closed once for a little bit and then opened back up. And then it closed really good then. Don still owned it at the time. Then the people that were living in the preacher’s house there, they opened it up and they had, like, a tobacco store in there. But the rent on that little place from Don was twenty-three hundred dollars a month at that time, back then. That was way too much. They couldn’t support it. It had taken all their profit. So, then it came empty, and it had been empty for years here until this, Boobies’ little restaurant went in there first. MC: Yeah. DC: And he was there for a couple of years. And he put the kitchen in the back and all that, which helped it to— MC: There was a Russian restaurant in there, too, and store. DC: Oh, yeah, yeah, a little Russian food market in there before Boobies’ restaurant. And it changed a lot of owners there, and, like I said, everybody still went in with those stores because everybody still used the scale. All the street riders used to come there to weigh their cars when it was little Boobies’ restaurant because he let us use the scale and he wouldn’t charge anything. MC: I think Dad told him and you, too, told a couple of the— DC: People about the scale. MC: Owners or renters about the scale and how to run it because they had no idea what it was that was even there. DC: “What’s this big ramp here?” And people parking their cars on it. At least when they made the little restaurant, he put a little cone so people wouldn’t just drive up on it and park their car. You know, wear and tear on the scale. That scale, that was a big center point for the Ustick community, though—for all the farmers that weighed before the other weigh stations were in. I mean, they came from quite a ways away. I mean, clear down on the other side of Eagle Road, those farmers were coming up here to weigh their hay and their grain and the corn. Because some of them were right at the dividing point, whether to go to Meridian and weigh it or—a lot of them came over here. They just liked the little store better. When we used to pick up hay and stuff when I was older and Norm’s Inn on McMillan and Eagle Road, across the street there, we used to stop there. They’d just pull the tractor and the wagon in front of the thing and stop, and we’d all run off and get off in there. If it was a farmer that drank, you’d get a beer usually. But, like Clarence didn’t drink or anything and we’d just all get sodas, hop back on the wagon, take off, come back by, stop, running the bottles back into the place, you know. MC: [Laughs] DC: Used to get paid a nickel a bale for bucking hay back then. And that was for the whole crew—you split it. MC: [Laughs] Oh, geez. EB: Rough. DC: Hey, pick up a thousand bales—good money for back then. EB: Did your family ever go to Delsa’s? DC: Oh, yes. MC: Yes. EB: What can you tell me about Delsa’s? MC: Good ice cream. [Laughs] Yeah, we used to go down to— DC: It was—when we first moved here, moved out here, it was closed. The little store was closed up. They had been in business, and they had stopped for a while. I don’t know the reason. But a couple years afterwards they opened back up. And it’s not like it is now. It was strictly an ice cream parlor—no food. MC: Ice cream cones mostly. DC: Cones, yep. You could get—they would scoop into the little quart paper containers with a little push-down lid. MC: Yeah. DC: And stuff. And they opened back up—let me think when that was, because that had to be ’65 or ’66. I’m guessing here. I have a good memory of things. And, yeah, it was just—it was the same little building which, part of the building there, I think it’s the east end of it, it had been added on to, but that was the original little building. I mean— MC: Well, the restaurant portion is the added-on piece. DC: Yeah. But the little store was about half the size of our kitchen area there. Not the kitchen. I mean the dining room here. It was a small little store. I mean, half a dozen people in it and they’d start lining up out the door. [Laughter] EB: What was your favorite thing to get at Delsa’s? DC: Chocolate shake. MC: [Laughs] Chocolate cone. Or maple nut. They didn’t always have maple nut. DC: Yes. EB: And what was the role of Delsa’s in the community? MC: Oh, I really don’t know because that’s too far east. It’s almost downtown. [Laughter] When you’re living out here. DC: Yes, yeah, the people would ask Dad, “Why do you want to move way out there?” [Laughter] EB: And how has Delsa’s changed over the years? MC: It’s grown bigger. DC: Yes. MC: I’ve had lunch there a couple times. They serve pretty good food really, for a quick sandwich or whatever. DC: Yeah, they definitely have more flavors of ice cream now. [Laughter] They had about eight flavors. MC: Yeah. DC: Chocolate chip, mint, chocolate, vanilla, sometimes rocky road, sometimes maple nut. They kind of—they kind of rotated some of the flavors if I remember correctly back then. Of course, I was always vanilla or chocolate. I’m a chocoholic. [Laughter] EB: All right. I’m going to call it right here. This is going to conclude Part One of my two-part interview with Marge and Daniel Conley about Ustick. END TRACK ONE