All things North Idaho … from an insider

Things North Idaho … from an Idaho “skinny” insider.

The stop sign on Gleason-McAbee Falls Road off Highway 57 is punctured with bullet holes. Target practice on the sly. Allure of the bright red octagon. Like a bull going for the red cape — only technically cattle can’t discern red. A bit of trivia: The first stop sign appeared in 1915 in Detroit and was two foot square, white with black lettering.

And then there’s Idaho’s version of Russian roulette. A logging truck behemoth loaded with 40 tons of logs — jake brakes on — bellering down your mountain road that’s barely wide enough for two pick-up trucks. How do you get home? Stop at bottom of hill. Turn off radio. Listen. Nothing. Make an uphill run for it, kicking up gravel — hoping you beat it. Pull up to your house. Sag with relief behind the driver’s wheel. Listen. Here it comes. You had two minutes to spare. Piece of cake.

More trivia: You have to go back to 1913 for the first logging truck. After that the logging industry utilized leftover World War I military trucks.

Let’s talk wood smoke. Woodstoves in winter. Campfires in summer. Logs stacked in front yards … even on porches. Classical chainsaw buzzing on the breeze. Firewood feeding the Franklin stove — named for Ben, who invented it in 1742 at the age of 36.

You know what time people wake up by the head of smoke blowing out the chimney. The lingering scent hanging over town that lets you know just where you are. And it gets better in July. All the fir and cedar forest — those vertical logs still standing — perfuming the air just by being. Some households buy the north woods in a pressurized can. But all we do is open the windows.

The Fourth of July is here. I met up with a lady from New York now living in Bonner County. She didn’t do one of those “eeny, meeny, miny, mo” random pokes on the map. Serious study went into her move. She said, “Idaho is one of the states with more freedoms.” People from other places where certain personal freedoms are getting tight are finding that out. There’s free … and freer.

Most everyone has somewhere they dream of living. Fifty states fly in the red, white, and blue. Each one holds an appeal for someone. But only one as they say, is “Idahome.”