Finding Treasure... Day 9/30

Starting when we lived in Nevada, I remember dad bringing things home that he had found in the desert. He was famous for dragging home old bottles, old stoves, old enamel pots, pans, coffee pots, and clocks.

Spending thousands of days out in the desert where no one in their right minds would go and hadn't been for many, many years, yielded old dump sites and old abandoned buildings that no one had seen since the 1800s .

Dad used some of these items in his artwork as well. The first grade reader book in the same titled drawing, belonged to dad. There's a print he did of a cowboy kneeling by an old cast iron stove that my brother Steve now has. The print below shows an Indian holding a bottle (whiskey, I believe), which either Linda or I have now.



But the clocks were the best. He found several and traded things for others. Each of us kids have been given one of these clocks that will someday be passed on to one of our kids.

Dad knew how much I loved his old junk and just a few months before he died, he told me about an old dump site that he had discovered while out in the Owyhees patrolling with Gary Loveland. He told me that no one had found it and it was just full of great stuff. After he died, I asked Gary about it but obviously he hadn't been impressed with the wonderful stuff the site contained because he didn't remember where it was.

Dad, if you can reach out from beyond, I'd sure appreciate a map!

Homemade Christmas Cards... Day 8/30

Dad enjoyed drawing Christmas cards. Here are a few examples that he did in the late 60s...

This first one wasn't actually a Christmas card but it's a beautiful silhouette.



I don't really remember dad ever going to church, but he must have been spiritual. Several of the papers I've found that he wrote refer in some way to the wildlife and environment that was created by someone greater than he, and as I posted these two cards below, I noticed that each have the Christmas star in them. I like that.




If I ever sent out Christmas cards, I'd have that middle one done. Maybe next year...

Notes and Doodles... Day 7/30

If dad was famous with the family for anything, it was his constant notes and doodles.

Dad doodled on everything. He doodled on napkins at restaurants and left them for the waitress. If he had a pen and there was a flat surface, he'd draw something. Here are just a few examples...






Dad always left mom notes telling her where he would be - I never realized how dangerous his job was, but evidently he wanted mom to know where he was "just in case." Quite often though, his notes were hilarious! Here are a few examples...

Evidently, "we all went to town (Boise) so I'm not sure who Steve left this note for, but I guess mom wouldn't let him take his "good" hat. After Steve wrote the note, dad gave mom the raspberry. I love this one!



One of dad's notes to mom telling her where he would be...


And this, the last note dad ever left - dated January 4, 1981...


This one is hard to see, but I'm glad we have it. It sure brings back a lot of memories...

Oh How He Loved Christmas... Day 6/30

I can't hardly think of Christmas and remember how it turned dad into a big kid. He loved Christmas!



Living in Garden Valley, we always had several feet of snow. There was a pasture just a few hundred feet up the road from our house, and dad and mom would take us kids up there and we would spend hours sledding down the hill. If there was enough snow, we would sometimes get on our sleds and ride the 4 miles down Alder Creek road to town. When we got home, mom always had hot chocolate waiting for us.

One year, he gave Linda a guitar for Christmas and had to play with it of course...



I never knew until I was an adult, how little money a Game Warden makes. At Christmas, there wouldn't be an empty space under the tree. There were dozens and dozens of presents. It seemed like it took an hour to open them all, and dad spent the morning taking pictures of us with our new toys.

One thing I look back on now, and I find myself really impressed with, is the fact that almost every year, dad was brave enough to actually buy mom clothes for Christmas. He actually had very good taste for a male and most of the time, mom loved what he picked out.

For many years, Christmas was really hard after dad died. His laughter, his excitement, and the look in his eyes as he spent the day with his family (unless he decided in the afternoon that there might be someone out poaching and he needed to go to work for an hour or two).



I wonder every year what he would be like at Christmas now. I think he'd be exactly the same, only enjoying his grandkids and great grandkids as well. Merry Christmas dad!

Bill Pogue's Artwork... Day 5/30

I will be gone tomorrow, so I will do days 6 and 7 on Saturday. Just sayin'...

It always fascinated me as a child, to watch dad draw. He would sketch something with a pencil then get out a jar of black ink and a his nib dip pens.



He would draw the most wonderful pictures - but the next day I would almost always find them torn in half in the wastebasket. We finally told him how wonderful his work was and how much other people would enjoy it as well. Not too long after, he started getting more serious about his work and the pieces ending up in the trash became fewer and fewer.

He bought a big magnifying glass on an arm with a light attached that he could screw onto his drawing table. He used the magnifying glass because it was very difficult for him to draw only having the use of one eye. But he would spend hours and hours placing tiny dots of ink in such a way that it turned into magnificent work.

Dad's art told such wonderful stories. He loved old cowboys, anything from the old west, trappers, hunters, and wildlife. I think, however, what impressed me the most was the fact that he used the faces of people he worked with in his drawings and each picture portrays his own hands. It wasn't just art - it was his soul.

A few years before he died, he started selling his work at Brown's Art Gallery downtown. People from all over the country bought it and in fact, most of his original works are gone. But fortunately, we do have prints.

Lady Friends Commin' was one of his last works. I love the idea of two old cowboys giving eachother haircuts before seeing their girls. Where did he get the idea for such a thing?



First Grade Reader is my personal favorite. The face used in this print was dad's good friend from Fish and Game, John Beecham. I love the idea of an old cowboy trying to teach himself to read.



The Cowboy and the Bird was by far, the most popular of dad's work. After he died, it was the first to sell out. We went for many years with only a few copies we had saved for family, but last spring we had some prints made.

The face dad used in this was another friend from Fish and Game, Phil Swanstrom.



While dad loved drawing the rough, tough cowboys of the old west, each of them had a soft side that he loved to tell through his work. Each one said so much about him and how he looked at life.

It was, in fact, his artwork that helped to catch his killer. His print, Mountain Man was used to raise the reward money that helped catch Claude Dallas. We sold them again in order to raised the $25,000 it took to reacapture him after his escape.

I'm so greatful to have this wonderful legacy that dad left for us. Someday, if any of the kids or grandkids want any of his work, it's here for them. At their ages right now it's not their style but as they get older, I hope they will appreciate it for what it is. The heart and soul of a very important man.

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...

Pretty Pink Barretts... Day 3/30

This guest post was written by my sister, Kate. Thanks sis, for sharing this story!

From the time I was born to the age of 9, my family lived in the tiny town of Garden Valley, 50 miles north of Boise. Dad was the local Game Warden and "the only law in town." To us kids, he was God. He was big, strong and could be very imposing when the situation called for it. He was, in the best of ways, bad-ass. He also had a wild and wicked sense of humor, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do to help a friend or neighbor in need. Bill Pogue had the respect of everyone in the valley. Until one day….

See, when I was younger (and apparently not very fast) mom would put my long hair in pig-tails using rubber bands and/or barrettes. This woman invented several never-before-used torture methods that, I’m pretty sure, have since been adopted by the military. But that’s another story. Suffice it to say that the Pogue girls had the TIGHTEST damn pony tails you’ve ever seen. Because of (or maybe in spite of) this, I developed an interest in beauty-parlor play, and after nearly scalping all my dolls, I turned to family.

There was, at that time, a place in town called The Joint; part restaurant, part tavern. It was where the cowboys started their day with coffee and ended it with several Budweisers and a game of pool. It was a place heavy with Marlboro smoke, bullshitting, Tammy Wynette on the juke box, and the occasional bar brawl.

One day dad stopped by The Joint for a cup of coffee before heading off to work. He probably pulled up a stool at the bar, asked for coffee, lit a cigarette and greeted the local men, including one of his best friends, and local really tough cowboy, Sterling Alley. It wasn’t long before the guys started whispering and snickering in dad’s general direction. Finally, Sterling managed to ask “Are you going to work with that pretty thing in your hair?”

Turns out that while getting ready that morning, he’d overlooked one of the pretty pink barrettes I’d beautified him with earlier. Poor man never lived that down.

On the Injured List. Day 2/30...

I'm sorry, I know I should feel bad, but some of the memories of dad which are the absolute funniest to me are his injuries. Laughing at other's "accidents" is a very bad Pogue family trait. Mom doesn't do it though, she's got too much class so I'm blaming this bad gene on dad's side of the family.

I just don't get how one person can hurt himself so many times - and I mean lasting, physical, "damn-what-happened-to-you!" injuries. In order to really know dad and especially his poor driving habits and too-numerous-to-mention truck accidents, you must understand his history of "being on the injured list."

His first job out of college was in Las Vegas - and that's where his accidents began...

Brush with death #1 - While getting ready for a few days' stay in the desert, he got out his sleeping bag and a few other necessities including the air mattress he would use under his bag. Giving the air mattress a mighty shake (not sure if he was checking for spiders or trying to get the wrinkles out), the plug flew out of the hole, through air like a bullet, and hit him in the eye. Where most of us have color in our eyes, dad's eye was black. Really, how does a tiny plug from an air mattress, through all the airspace in our universe, find a person's eye? And to make matters worse, had he minded the doctors, he probably wouldn't have had permanent damage. He was told to stay in bed and not get up. He got up in the middle of the night and ran into the wall, bashing his head so hard that it was the straw that broke that camel's back and he was blinded for good. Then the pain was so bad that he took too many pains pills and mom had to rush him to the hospital for an overdose. I can't watch A Christmas Story and hear Ralphie's mom say "You'll put your eye out!" without thinking (fondly of course) about dad.

Brush with death #2. Dad had stopped to check an unattended vehicle parked out in the boonies. Waiting to see if the owners would come back to the vehicle, he started getting hungry and noticed he had a bag of grain in the back of his truck. He helped himself to some of the grain - but after eating a few mouths full, he noticed the word POISON on the bag. According to mom, he was a sick boy!

He also contracted "Valley Fever" while living in Bakersfield. He had heard of a place where people were discovering sharks teeth and sometime later, found out that the soil was infected with the disease. Someone in the family still has those sharks teeth - proudly displayed on cotton in a frame.

He was thrown off a horse, hitting his head on a rock and received a concussion. Another time, he was on his horse and one of them (we'll blame the horse) made the mistake of cutting too close to an old building and he ran head first into a swarm of bees. Not only was it painful but it caused a lifelong allergy to bees. That was Brush with death #3.

Brush with death #4 happened when dad realized that keeping canned food in a metal container, for months in the Vegas summer heat in the back of your patrol truck, is not a good idea. One bite from a "puffy" can of pineapple caused severe food poisoning and he nearly died. Again, who eats food from a can that practically explodes from all the toxins in it when you open it? All I can say is that he must have been darned hungry.

While living in Winnemucca, and again, out on patrol miles and miles away from help, dad drove over a rattlesnake. Wanting to bring the rattles home to show us kids, he stopped to pick it up. He raked his hand across the snakes teeth and that was all it took. He had to drive himself several hours back to town for treatment. After receiving the treatment at the tiny hospital in Battle Mountain, he broke out in hives and then had to stay overnight in the hospital. That was Brush with death #5.

After the loss of vision in one eye, depth perception was hampered so there were too many pickup accidents to mention. His patrol vehicle always had numerous dents and dings from sideswiping or backing into something.

In all reality, only a few of these were actual brushes with death. But dad was always out of radio contact and miles and miles from the nearest help. He truly was lucky to have survived as long as he did. While talking to mom about this post, I said, "He was just an accident waiting to happen, wasn't he mom."

Her reply, "Every day. Every day. I never knew what kind of shape he'd come home in." Fortunately, his major injuries seemed to end when we moved to Garden Valley...

30 Years, 30 Days, 30 Memories. Day 1...

Many women keep journals. My mom keeps a journal and has for years. I know it's full of her memories, her dreams - her history. My blog is my journal.

On January 5th, 2011 - thirty days from now, it will be the 30th anniversary of dad's death. So, for the next 30 days, I'm going to share some stories that involve my dad that I want my kids and grandkids to know and remember. It's sad when I think that in all reality, my kids know very little about their grandfather. They don't really know his sense of humor, the real danger of his job, yet his deep love for it, his quirks and oddities, and his injuries - I look back on his life and wonder how he survived as long as he did. I'll talk about his premonition of his death, his artwork, his favorite places and other stories that I think are important. With some help from my mom, I hope I can do this justice and that mom and my sisters will jump in here along the way to add their comments and memories.

Mom and dad and the early years...

Mom moved to California from Boise after attending college. That March, she was set up on a blind date with a handsome Marine. His buddy Marines were so surprised and happy that he actually had a date that they all loaned him clothes - slacks, dress shirt, corduroy jacket, shoes, and socks. The ONLY thing he wore that night that actually belonged to him were his undershorts. After they were married, mom asked him where all his nice clothes were and he had to fess up that they had all been borrowed.

Dad on the far left - was he skipping?????



Two and a half months after meeting, they were married. Surely it wouldn't last! That August, just 3 months after they married, dad was sent to Camp Pendleton to train for the Korean War. Just before leaving for the war by ship, he decided he needed to see mom one last time. The Marines, not taking kindly to the AWOL, demoted him to Private once he was back on board. However, I don't think it was something he ever regretted doing.

Several years ago, I was going through some of dad's things and found the letter he had written to my mom's parents requesting their permission to marry mom. It was so cute. I'm so grateful that I have these letters and things tucked away and hope that someday one of my kids will be the "keeper" of this important family history.

After dad returned from Korea, he went to college at Humboldt State University. Their life was tough. Not the kind of tough for young married kids these days - I mean tough. They lived in a tiny village in a tiny, moldy house. They often had very little to eat and no money to do anything. I think the only thing that got them through so much of their early years was the fact that most every other couple in the village was in the same boat. They all had each other.

At one point during dad's college years, they lived in a tent on the northern California coast while he was doing research on fish. My brother Steve had been born and raising a new baby while living in a tent was very difficult. They ate mostly what dad could catch because it was free, and to this day, mom won't eat salmon or crab.

Once dad got a job as a Game Warden they spent much of their lives moving as many Game Wardens do. His first job was in Las Vegas then Winnemucca, Garden Valley, and finally Boise. I know mom hated Winnemucca. Dust and wind, sagebrush and scorpions. But dad loved the desert. Up to the day he died, the desert was one of his favorite places.

In 1964, dad received word that he had been accepted as a Game Warden in Garden Valley. I know mom was excited to be leaving the contanstly blowing wind to live in a small beautiful town with pine trees and water. It was such a change from the years of dust that they couldn't wait to get there. However, they would have to wait another year before they would leave Winnemucca.

There were some internal problems at the Winnemucca Police Department and the City Council asked dad if he would consider taking the job of Chief of Police to help them through. Dad agreed to take the job under the condition that he would be leaving in a year. He took on this new role with determination and was an HONEST Police Chief which made some of the town councilmen, a few police officers, attorneys, and some others, very unhappy. Evidently, some of the officers were getting "Christmas bonuses" from some of the local Madams at the Ho Houses to not interrupt things (especially during the winter when a lot of the locals were using their services). I guess doing away with the "Christmas bonuses" didn't make dad real popular, but, according to mom, "I was so proud of the job he'd done when we left!"

I'm sure that was the year from hell for mom. She was on the verge of moving back to Idaho where her family lived and yet it was going to have to wait...

Baby Steps...

Until we sell our house here in Hidden Springs, we can't build on our 13 acres up the road. It's hard to be patient but so far we've done pretty well. However, I can't stop thinking about things we can possibly do until the house is sold. We have to get Elmer's brother up here to help us decide where to actually put the house when we can build because I have several ideas for the property. One of the first things we can do until the house can go up is to build a home for the chickens and I think I've found the perfect chicken coop!



Pretty cool huh! Now I can't wait until spring. I want to have one animal that will have free range of the entire property and from the research I've been doing, I think this will be it...



Miniature donkeys make great pets and I think the grandkids would love it. Moonshine Meadows in Middleton has some cute babies for sale!

Beautiful home in Hidden Springs for sale! Here's the tour link