Sunday Scribblings - "Curve" Writer's Island - "Extravaganza" 6/1/08

The initial response I get when I tell people I am originally from Idaho is invariably “oh, potatoes.” (That is if I am speaking to someone geographically savvy enough not to confuse Idaho with Iowa and start discussing corn) I guess identifying with potatoes is better than the other things Idaho is infamous for, Aryan Nations, the Ruby Ridge massacre, and a Senator Larry Craig's men's room reacharound. I will pause for a moment while the unfamiliar google these entries. Idaho is perhaps the most joked about state north of the Mason Dixon Line (I hope you don’t have to google that line of demarcation). Here are a few of my favorite Idaho jokes, though old:

This is the reining Miss Idaho
Why do most college football fields in Idaho use Astroturf? To keep the cheerleaders from grazing
What do you call a beautiful woman in Idaho? A tourist
Idaho is the only state with two capitals: Spokane and Salt Lake City. This is funny because neither is actually in Idaho but Spokane is the center of commerce for the northern part of the state and Salt Lake City is the location of the Mormon Church headquarters, which governs southern Idaho. That is a really funny joke if you can find Idaho on the map.

Anyway, you get the idea that Idaho is not the cultural center of the Universe. Well, that is not what my blog is about. The Sunday Scribblings prompt this week is “curve” and the Writer's Island prompt is "extravaganza". This is what I came up with:

Idaho is that weird shaped state that resembles an intoxicated person attempting the letter “L”. The north and south have very little in common, not even a time zone. I think it is important at this time to say that I am from northern Idaho. Potatoes do not grow in northern Idaho. It is all mountains and rivers and lakes and beauty, while the south is, well……potatoes. Northern Idaho is called the "panhandle". That is not because we hit up Washington and Montana for loose change, it is because of its narrowness.


It is nearly 500 miles from a very defendable border 50 mile border with Canada to the desolation that is Nevada and Utah. But you can't get there from here. Amazingly, due to terrain, there is only one highway that links the north and south without venturing deeply into Montana. It is US Highway 95. I did not say Interstate. No way. It is a mostly 2-lane highway that we motorists share with wildlife and stray domestic animals. Or at least it was when I lived there. It weaves its way over and around mountains. Real mountains. Not the hills passed off as mountains in the Appalachians. As you can see by the map, that 500 miles is not as the crow flies. Unless he is a crow with a very poor GPS.

The most hazardous stretch of Highway 95 was the 10-mile stretch dropping into the town of Lewiston driving south from Moscow. And dropping is the operative word here. It dropped 2,000 feet and included 64 turns. Many of these turns were hairpin curves with a surely fatal drop should a driver fail to negotiate one. Dale Earnhardt wouldn’t have exceeded 30 mph for much of the ride. Couple the dangerous road with the fact that snow and ice add an infinite degree of difficulty through the winter months as well as the probability of meeting an out-of-control logging truck on a narrow switchback.

There was a weekly extravaganza witnessed by the citizens below as headlights disappeared only to reappear in places there was no pavement. There were unrecoverable vehicle carcasses of failed attempts littering the valley below as well as sections of guardrail missing or severely disfigured marking departure points of those “getting air.” Though there were many other curvaceous stretches of US Highway 95, none could match the Lewiston Hill. I do not have numbers to support this claim but I am fairly certain there were more fatalities on this stretch of highway than the rest of Idaho’s portion of US Highway 95 combined.


I have been down that grade as a passenger of many school busses piloted by white-knuckled drivers and cars driven by chemically enhanced college students.

And your reward for making it to Lewiston was to be greeted by the foulest stench you can imagine from the pulp mill that was located there. I am fairly certain the EPA has probably curtailed that operation due to the pollutants.

The Lewiston Hill road was replaced with a straighter, much more user friendly highway in 1979. An extravagant gesture by a state that spends so little on highways that the only time potholes are filled is by ice in the winter months. I have only been down it a few times since then, but it is not nearly as exciting. Last I heard, the old road was still open for bicyclists and brain-dead tourists coming to Idaho to see potatoes.