St Maries ID, July 26-31

St. Maries is in northern Idaho, close to Coeur d'Alene. My family moved there when I was three years old and we moved from there when I was 13 and going into the 7th grade. The Satterlee family moved there with us and the Odekirks followed, all from Ogden, Utah. I have been back several times and it always feels like I am "going home."

This is Dutch Odekirk's home where we usually park our camper or 5th wheel when we go to St. Maries. It is a nice home and the third one that he has had on his property in St. Maries. It is on a mountain in the middle of the timber about ten miles out of St. Maries.

There is a meadow in front of his home and every evening we see deer crossing it. We didn't get very good pictures of them this year.

We took our camper on our pick-up to St. Maries this year, so we could take our pontoon boat. We took it out on the Benewah and Chatcolet lakes fishing a couple of times. This day, Terry caught a 25" Northern Pike. He has never caught a Northern Pike before. They are kind of a strange looking fish and they have very sharp teeth, so you have to be careful how you take them off of the hook. We took him home and barbequed him.

Dutch's granddaughter Melanie and her boyfriend Zack came with us fishing one day. They didn't fish much, but they jumped off the boat swimming, after I showed them how!

There were lots of osprey birds nested on poles and in trees around the lake. They would squawk at you if you got too close to their nest.

One day we went fishing with Dutch in his boat and we ended up in Coeur d'Alene Lake. Benewah Lake goes under a trestle and becomes Chacolet lake, and Chacolet Lake goes under a trestle and becomes Coeur d'Alene Lake. The St. Joe River, with actual banks on both sides, flows through the Benewah and Chatcolet Lakes and empties into the Coeur d'Alene Lake. It is quite a site to see. There is a Rails to Trails path that follows the old railroad line and goes over the trestle between Chatcolet Lake and Coeur d'Alene Lake. They have built the trestle up where it used to turn sideways for the boats to go through. Now the boats can go under it.

This Rails to Trails is about 60 miles long and would be really fun to ride some day on our tandem bike. It is one of our goals. It is supposed to be a really beautiful tail.

This is a log house that Dutch built on his property years ago when they first moved to St. Maries. I remember my Grandpa Fisher and Great Grandma Fisher living in it one summer. We kids would take turns staying for a week to help them because Great Grandma Fisher was almost blind. Dutch has wanted to tear down the "cabin" but his grandkids won't let him do it. I am sure glad he hasn't because it has a lot of memories for me.

As a kid, we would leave the house to go play and Mom wouldn't see us for hours later. We wouldn't get hungry because there were always so many berries to eat. They were all ripe when we were there--thimble berries, sarvice berries, and blackcaps.

There is an old school bus on Dutch's property. Dutch said that Gene Fisher (my Dad) brought it over one day and asked to park it there. He said he would be back in a few days to get it, and he still hasn't showed up! That must have been over 50 years ago.

We took a ride on the Benewah Road to where I lived most of the time we were in St. Maries. This is an old gravel pit that my brothers and I would go play on. We called it the "Rock Candy Mountain." For some reason, it seemed a little bigger when I was a kid.

When I was in the 4th grade, our house burnt to the ground. No one was home at the time and we lost everything we had but the clothes we were wearing. We went back to the old home site and could see no signs of the house, but we did find the well. We didn't have running water in the house until just before it burnt down, and we never had an indoor bathroom. Mom had to walk down a steep little hill to haul water up to the house. I remember always having a bucket of water sitting in the kitchen with a communal dipper to get a drink. The rule was that you had to drink all of the water you took in the dipper before you put the dipper back in the bucket. We took baths on Saturday nights in a big wash tub in the kitchen. Mom got the first bath, I got the second because I was the only girl, and then the my five brothers, followed by my Dad, as more hot water was added. We also had a chamber pot in our upstairs bedroom so we wouldn't have to go outside at night to the outhouse.

We had a hard time finding where the old house sat until we spotted these three old cedar trees (there is a third tree behind the one on the right in the first picture.) They were in our front yard. How we determined this was that in the middle picture it shows some metal sheets that were put on the trees, for what reason, I don't know. But here in the third picture are the same trees 50 years before, with the same metal attached. It was kind of neat to be able to see and touch those trees, knowing that they were the same ones in our yard and my Dad had put those very metal pieces on them! (Kind of soupy sentimentality!)

This is right in front of the trees where our house used to be. It burned down 50 years ago, this year.

Dad had taken our family album to his logging camp the week the house burnt down, to show these before and after pictures of our house, as he remodeled it. I am so thankful he had most all of our family pictures with him, or they would have burnt with the house! This is my brother Bill standing on the hill that went up to the Benewah road that we had to climb each day to get the mail and to catch the school bus.

This picture, with my brothers Ron, Frank, and Mike, was taken just a month or two before our house burnt down.

Here is my Dad and all of us kids: Roy, Dad, Mike, Frank, Me, Ron, and Bill--quite a group!

I couldn't resist putting in this picture of my Mom milking the goat, taken soon after we moved into the house. We always had goats. We drank their milk and ate their meat. They were never fenced in. There was a nanny who had a bell on her so we could always hear where they were. We would feed them grain when we milked them in the morning, they would go out on the hillsides all day, and then come back at night for their grain and milking. Sometimes we kids would go out where they were laying in the yard and squirt milk into our mouths straight from the goat's udder.

After our house burnt down, Dad built another house on our property. He used logs from off of our land to build the house. It was really nice and had running water from a spring down below it, but it still never had an indoor bathroom with a toilet because we never had a septic system. Dad sold our place and we moved from St. Maries when I was was 13 years old and just going into the 7th grade. The house was there for many years and then the owners torched it and put in a mobile home. My brother Frank went to St. Maries and when he went to see the house he was really disappointed because they had just burnt it down a couple of days before and it was still smoldering. So, this picture is especially for him!

This is what the knoll looks like today where our house sat.

There is a bridge over the Benewah Creek up the Benewah Road where Mom would drop us off to go swimming. Under the bridge it was usually over our heads, but there was a ledge we could walk on under the bridge, if we were brave enough. My brother Frank remembers walking on the ledge, falling off, and me saving his life! I guess he owes me one! The bridge still looks the same as I remembered it.

Dad sold some of our property to Art Satterlee and his family, who moved from Ogden to St. Maries with us. The "White House" was built (the one in the picture) and we were all impressed because it was fully plumbed. Art was a plumber by profession. Now his son Butch (Art, Jr.) lives in a little house across the Benewah road from the "White House" and the "White House" belongs to his sister Barbara (I was told, anyways). This is a picture of him and me. We are the same age and have kept in touch when we visit St. Maries.

We took a tour into town. There are a lot of things that are pretty much the same. This is the grade school that all of us kids went to, with a Lumberjack mascot. It was fun going to St. Maries and reminiscing. Terry was a good sport and just put up with me and all of my stories! I hope my brothers enjoy seeing some of the old pics.

We are now headed back home to Emmett for the rest of August, with one more trip to McCormick with my brother Bill. Then we will leave Idaho until next year.