Written 2024Mar17 Special thanks to my dear brother Tom, who is much better known than I am in Boise, thanks to the quarter century he spent as manager of the Esther Simplot Performing Arts Academy and as principle of the Boise Philharmonic’s viola section, to name but two of his longstanding civic involvements. He helped […]
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Learning to Ride a Bike1955 Eastridge Street, in the acute angle produced by its intersection with SW Wilshire Street, marked the southern boundary of the post-World War II apartment complex, and it was not just an arbitrary designation. The north side is where we lived and shopped. The south side presented perhaps
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Big Kite1954 It was early spring, a gusty mid-day Sunday, and Dad felt like “doing” something, as Mom would say with emphasis: elongation and raised pitch. He was in his early thirties and had a touch of cabin fever, after being inside, doing his taxes most of rainy yesterday and facilitating
Eastridge Street Apartments, Cedar Hills, Oregon1954 – June 1956 Talking to an Airplane About 1955 Back in 1951, in the Brown House, at the “Weed Patch,” on Southwest Thurlow Drive, before Tommy was born, Dad enlisted my help in building a homemade “crystal set” radio. Even at the tender age of four,
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Music Lessons – beginning piano and cello When I was eight, shortly after moving to Leahy Road, Mom said it was time for me to start music lessons. It would be piano and she would be the teacher. I would practice nearly every day. She stressed sitting up straight on the bench, keeping a rounded
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Leahy Road stories, 1956-61 A Wonderful, Hazardous Place to Live With a big house to move around in (compared to where we lived before), a full but unfinished basement to develop projects in (even on rainy days), about half an acre of rather wild woods out back, and right next door to our school, West
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Late spring, 1956 Dad drove the four of us from the apartment, a mile or two up Barnes Road, then down Leahy Road to our new digs. He was bursting with constrained excitement to show us all around, inside and out. This acre and a quarter was the first property he ever owned, made affordable
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A Little Knowledge … or how I almost blew my mother’s socks off Ashland Drive, Boise, Idaho, about 1964 I suppose everyone has had more close calls in their life than they know about, and that’s a good thing, otherwise we’d be a quivering mass of protoplasm, fearful of every next move. Usually these close
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Image of Shattuck School Portland, Oregon1953 I don’t remember kindergarten as distinct from first grade. They blend together, probably because they were both at Shattuck School in Portland, and it was another grim time for me, another bad fit, but in the larger social sense. Self-conscious to the point of dysfunctional from the frequent “What
Charlotte McGregor Boggs Tompkins (Tim’s 30-year-old mother)Portland, OregonDec. 11, 1950 Dear Mother and Daddy [medical missionaries (Baptist) in Ongole, SE India], Just a note to go with record, which, we hope, will bring you a very Merry Christmas. Would you like to know how it was made? On Sat. morning we went down to the
Tim’s First Recording, Age 3 Read More »