On Being the Game Warden's Daughter... Day 4/30

Dad had this "radar" that none of us kids were ever able to explain. It must have come from his many years of detective work on poaching cases, but when we became teenagers and he started using it on us, it was really scary - and not-so-much appreciated.

As my sister Kate mentioned in her post yesterday, dad was the only law enforcement in town. The Boise County Sheriff lived in Horseshoe Bend but never ventured the 30 miles to Garden Valley.

This fact made it hard to be a typical teenager of the late 60s and early 70s. There wasn't much to do in the tiny town except drink and smoke pot. When my friends and I learned to drive at the age of 14, one of our first trips was to Horseshoe Bend. It was a Saturday night and we met a bunch of kids at the park to listen to some loud music and naturally, someone brought out the pot.

Even though our rock and roll music was blaring after 8pm (way past bedtime in Horseshoe Bend) and the fact that the park was 50 feet from the only highway through town, I didn't have the common sense to understand that this could be trouble. I had never smoked before but hey, I was game to try. A short time later the Sheriff stopped by.

He started asking everyone for their names and when he got to me, I told him.

"You Bill Pogue's daughter?"
"Yes."
"OK, I want you kids to get out of here and go home. You (pointing to me), go home and tell your dad what you did. I'll be calling him to make sure you've told him."

That was a long 30 minute drive home. I walked in the door and into mom and dad's bedroom and woke them up. I explained what I'd been caught doing. Mom broke into tears and I remember both of them telling me how "disappointed" they were. I would rather have been beaten by a 2x4 with long nails protruding from it than to have my parents tell me they were disappointed in me. Mom and I cried and cried while dad gave me the "lecture." Oh how we hated those lectures.

I didn't find out until years later, that the Sheriff never did call my dad and had no intentions of calling him. Somehow, he knew he'd scared me bad enough that I would go home and spill the beans.

Not more than a few months later, mom and dad took the two younger girls to Boise to spend the weekend at my grandmother's house. Having a new driver's license, dad told me not to drive his new truck more than just down to the valley and back.

Dad and I had this unique relationship. He would tell me to do something or not do something and I would nod and smile and give him a hug and agree to whatever it was, knowing full well that I would do what my little teenage pea brain wanted to do. But it saved a lot of arguments of "But whyyyyyyyyyy???"

So, as soon as the family left me home alone for the weekend with my brother, I jumped in his brand new truck, gathered as many friends as I could fit in it, and off we went to Horseshoe Bend, then on the Emmett to see what was happening in the big city. We drove around Emmett, then back to Horseshoe Bend then home - several times.

When dad got back from Boise, he walked in the door and asked me where I'd been with his truck. "Only down to the valley to see my friends!"

He asked again, and this time he wanted the truth. He KNEW I'd been a whole lot further than that (about 700 miles worth) and in fact said, "You didn't get out of that truck the whole time I was gone. Where the hell did you go?"

I had no idea how he knew I was lying. Did he have a spy? Did my brother snitch? A few months later, my brother told me how stupid I was. "He wrote down the mileage before he left and checked it when he got back."

Who would have thought a parent was smart enough to do something like that? As we grew up, dad would continue using his skills on my sister Linda...