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So these new rules would make it easier to give permits to more megaloads on Route 12?
One oil rig made the Hwy. 12 alternate route during mid-winter 2014. I'm not sure of everything on the alternate route, but it avoided 12, and crossed the Divide over the Lost Trail pass east of Salmon. I remember this route was also contested, as there are more old bridges along it, and there was a fear one could collapse.
The transport proved to be enormously troublesome and expensive for the company; the hardest part came inside the Salmon city limits, where there's a very tight turn in the highway that stopped the load cold outside of town for a long time until they figured out a way to navigate through it.
For some reason, the stop required the semi tractors to idle the entire time. There were 2 tractors involved, kind of like 2 locomotives pulling a heavy train, as I understood it.
Once out of town and up on the grade, the troubles increased. One of the tractors' engine seized up or something, and the load had to be jerry-rigged halfway up a mountain pass while the problem was repaired in the dead of winter.
A huge mess was left behind, including a porta-potty and a big garbage pile, when the load finally began moving again, but it made it over the top and went into Montana. I don't know if further problems were encountered there, but I'm guessing they didn't end.
As I recall, this load was allowed as an experiment. Things have been mighty quiet ever since. I think the challenges of the terrain may have discouraged the entire idea of moving such massively enormous and heavy loads through Idaho by any route other than the Interstates.
The time and expense, added to the potential for damaging the rigs, the highways, and all the other stuff may have made the plan unfeasible to the petroleum companies at a time when oil production was cut way back due to other factors.
I don't know the particulars of the bill, but I suspect that they are restrictive. Given all the problems, and the fact that these rigs could probably be dis-assembled into smaller parts than the single experimental load's, there may be a better solution for the oil companies to be found, and I'll bet they're working on it now.
Big oil already has a handful of troubles with the BNSF oil trains and their spills.
It seems to me that designing and building more modular rigs, better suited to transport, will prove to be better for everyone involved than continuing to try to make a square block fit into a round hole. For sure, they made no fans in Salmon, and I'm sure it was a big financial hit that wasn't expected.
I doubt they want to repeat the financial and social consequences of the Gulf of Mexico spill repeated in the middle of the Rocky Mountains at all either.
Sure hope so, anyway.
So these new rules would make it easier to give permits to more megaloads on Route 12?
I would assume the reverse. It sounds like there will be an additional permit required from the National Forest Service since US12 transits Nez Perce NF. I assume ITD would continue to be involved for other portions of the route.
"Idaho has statutes that authorize morality police, and it may have been that 50 years ago those laws were upheld as constitutional, but Idaho has to move to the 21st century," said ACLU-Idaho Legal Director Richard Eppink.
50 years ago, prostitution was legal by county option. There were legal brothels in Idaho Falls, Wallace, and some other cities when I grew up here. The same was true in Montana.
I don't know when the law changed, but it was sometime around 19689-69, because when I came back home from the Navy in 69, they were all gone.
Brothels served a civic purpose in old Idaho; they kept the assault and rape down in mining towns and towns that were centers for stock yards and large farm areas during a time when a lot of single men, often young, were constantly needed for labor, much of it seasonal.
The liquor laws weren't very restrictive back then, either. Pay days were usually the day when young men blew off a lot of steam in towns all over the state, often the only day they even went into town.
The county option's adoption was often urged by a city's leading women's clubs and similar organizations, as when a brothel was allowed, the 'respectable' ladies in town weren't accosted on the streets, and were left alone much more.
The brothels also controlled the violence level of a pay day substantially, as the madams all had their own security guards. More importantly, if a madam bounced a mis-behaver, he was bounced from all other brothels in town, and most were a part of the best saloons in town. So once 86'd, a young single guy either led a lonely sober life out in the boonies or started going to church instead of hitting the bars. Churches and bars were usually the only entertainment to be found in most places, even well into the 20th century.
Some brothels did double duty as boarding houses. There were always a lot of single young male immigrants who came here to work to make money that was sent back to their mother country so the rest of the family could immigrate.
Some were Americans who moved out from back east, some from other countries. Not all of them by far patronized the brothels, but they all needed a warm, cheap place to winter in until they were better situated. The boarding houses offered this; many had un-heated sleeping porches that were similar to barracks with rows of bunks, and most of the time was spent in a large parlor/dining room where the days were spent reading, playing cards or other games.
The prostitution was carefully separated from the rest of the boarding house and was more discreet than the other regular brothels. Some foreign immigrant groups who came here, like the Basques, the Italians, Germans, and Swedes, were intensely religious, so the boarding houses were not pits of sin by a long shot.
The boarding houses also served as rough retirement centers for a lot of old bachelors and indigent couples who were the respectable poor. Some were built for these old folks more than for the seasonal occupancy.
The sleeping porches were screened, but had no windows. The cold kept down tuberculosis infection rates a lot, and they were cooler in the summers as well. All the state universities dormitories used these cold sleeping porches for the same reasons.
TB was a death sentence back then. Gooding had a large TB hospital, as did many of the larger cities in the west, and some were luxurious, but all the sleeping spaces were always very cold and as dry as could be. For the doomed, both offered relief. For everyone else, it was the only way to keep TB from spreading.
Keeping the bedrooms in homes unheated also served the same purpose, but most homes did not have any central heating or forced-air heat. Bedrooms that were heated had open air grates cut into floors, and doorways had transoms above the doors that could be opened and closed, which allowed heat convection to warm them.
This was also a lot cheaper way to heat the house, and a way to dissipate the heat from the kitchen stove, which was seldom allowed to let the firebox die out. The cookstove was the biggest heat source, but there was usually a smaller parlor stove in the front, and it was mostly used part-time.
The parlor stove was a family's heating ace in the hole for when the cold snaps dropped the temps below zero. If one stove died, the other still kept the heat coming until the first warmed back up again.
As a kid, all this was still common for me, growing up here in the 50's, even though most of the city I knew back then still exists.
It was very weird how quickly it all disappeared in the 60's. Here in Idaho Falls, entire blocks of our old town were leveled and totally re-built with new homes and businesses.
One entire downtown street disappeared while I was in the service, and became one big parking lot. A lot of old Broadway, our major downtown street, suffered the same fate. It changed the town forever, for sure, and took a lot of local history away forever, too.
One oil rig made the Hwy. 12 alternate route during mid-winter 2014. I'm not sure of everything on the alternate route, but it avoided 12, and crossed the Divide over the Lost Trail pass east of Salmon. I remember this route was also contested, as there are more old bridges along it, and there was a fear one could collapse.
The transport proved to be enormously troublesome and expensive for the company; the hardest part came inside the Salmon city limits, where there's a very tight turn in the highway that stopped the load cold outside of town for a long time until they figured out a way to navigate through it.
For some reason, the stop required the semi tractors to idle the entire time. There were 2 tractors involved, kind of like 2 locomotives pulling a heavy train, as I understood it.
Once out of town and up on the grade, the troubles increased. One of the tractors' engine seized up or something, and the load had to be jerry-rigged halfway up a mountain pass while the problem was repaired in the dead of winter.
A huge mess was left behind, including a porta-potty and a big garbage pile, when the load finally began moving again, but it made it over the top and went into Montana. I don't know if further problems were encountered there, but I'm guessing they didn't end.
As I recall, this load was allowed as an experiment. Things have been mighty quiet ever since. I think the challenges of the terrain may have discouraged the entire idea of moving such massively enormous and heavy loads through Idaho by any route other than the Interstates.
The time and expense, added to the potential for damaging the rigs, the highways, and all the other stuff may have made the plan unfeasible to the petroleum companies at a time when oil production was cut way back due to other factors.
I don't know the particulars of the bill, but I suspect that they are restrictive. Given all the problems, and the fact that these rigs could probably be dis-assembled into smaller parts than the single experimental load's, there may be a better solution for the oil companies to be found, and I'll bet they're working on it now.
Big oil already has a handful of troubles with the BNSF oil trains and their spills.
It seems to me that designing and building more modular rigs, better suited to transport, will prove to be better for everyone involved than continuing to try to make a square block fit into a round hole. For sure, they made no fans in Salmon, and I'm sure it was a big financial hit that wasn't expected.
I doubt they want to repeat the financial and social consequences of the Gulf of Mexico spill repeated in the middle of the Rocky Mountains at all either.
Sure hope so, anyway.
Recent events as reported within the past few days.
Standing Rock Solidarity Benefit Concert with Tom Neilson
7 pm, Friday, October 7
Linen Building, 1402 West Grove Street, Boise, Idaho
$10 suggested admission donation
Several Idaho groups are co-hosting the Standing Rock Solidarity Benefit Concert offered by singer-songwriter and long-time activist Tom Neilson in Boise, October 7 [1-3]. Dubbed the Jon Stewart of folk music, Tom offers inspiration through his music to effect change [4]. He has performed his award-winning songs of humor and compassion in 21 countries on five continents. His songs about historical and current events reflect his travels, intertwined with his farm roots and fervent commitment to social justice. Audiences celebrate Tom’s lyrics for their political astuteness, sophistication, and wit.
Sorry, but I'm growing to hate stuff like this. Every time some list puts Idaho on it, I always dread what can follow. I'm all for Idaho growing, but not in fits and spurts that come from emotional reasons rather than logical and reasonable ones.
As I've often mentioned before, I've seen the disaster that can hit a town or a region that everyone suddenly falls in love with for superficial reasons and impulsively decides to pull up their roots and move here, or anywhere in the Rockies where its beautiful.
It's one thing to want to move here and then prepare and make plans for it in a serious manner. Some of the regulars here have done just this, or are doing it presently, and they already know pretty much everything they need to know.
But it's another thing entirely when a couple sees some pictures which fill their heads with fantasy, and suddenly decide they must move. I've seen that, too, firsthand, and it is everything that's completely opposite from the good when it happens.
So- for any of you who are lurking, just to learn a little of what life is here and what it is not, remember this:
You can't eat the scenery.
No matter how well you prepare, you'll still find some surprises here, some grand, some not so much. Please take your time, come out, see for yourself, and then begin to think seriously one way or the other.
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