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s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o
l Trailing of the Sheep Events and Related Stories Pages 6 & 7
WRHS Football Players Support Advocates Walk
Free Concert on Tuesday Kicks Off Jazz Fest Page 9
Watch G-Dog for the Hunger Coalition this Saturday Page 14
read about it on PaGe 18
O c t o b e r 1 0 , 2 0 1 2 • V o l . 5 • N o . 4 1 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
Basque
Basking in
History
“It was a tremendous relief finally being Andrea Scott shows off Gloria Keys’ mecate horsehair reins. Twelve feet of the lead rope is tucked into the rider’s belt loop, she said. Scott’s exhibit at The Center even features horsehair rope in Christmas colors of red, green and white.
able to do what I set out to do — to deliver the truth.”
Buckaroo Project B T
–Bill smallwood
STORY & PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
BY KAREN BOSSICK
he Idaho cowboy has been well documented. The Idaho buckaroo? Not so much. Greenleaf photographer Andrea Scott aims to change that. And, in the process, she hopes to help the buckaroos survive an uncertain future in the face of environmental constraints and a shaky economic market. Scott has founded the Idaho Buckaroo Project, which explores buckaroo culture through photography, essays and the craftsmanship of buckaroos who ride the range. Some of her work, along with crafts, are being shown at The Center, Second Ave. S. and Pine Street, in Hailey from 2 to 5:30 p.m. Thursdays or by appointment. The Sun Valley Center for the Arts will throw a reception for the Idaho Buckaroo Project from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday. Scott will talk about that work at 6 p.m. and Portland-based singer-songwriter Jill Miller will perform songs about buckaroos, including a never-before-performed song paying homage to the 12 Mile Ranch, which lost 145 cows and calves—a third of its herd—in the Long Draw fire which burned 871 square miles of Owyhee desert this past summer. The song will be accompanied by burn photos that Scott says will be “thought-provoking.” Buckaroos, such as the “colorful cowgirl “ from Oreana, Melba spur-maker Gary Keithley and Linda Morton-Keithley, who won an award for their traditional arts from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and Caldwell belt-maker Gary Stark will show off their handwoven saddle blankets, bits and spurs, cinch straps and other horse gear, which will be for sale. Refreshments will be served. Buckaroo is thought to be a corruption of “vaquero,” the Spanish word for cattle herders (“vaca” means cow). This style of cowboy might have originated in Turkey with the Moors, considering the star-and-crescent motif so often associated with the buckaroos, said Scott. Vaqueros came to Mexico with the Spanish, moved northward to California as the Spanish established mis-
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ill Smallwood stood up to General Francisco Franco’s “big lie.” Then he suffered in silence for 39 years as he shelved his book containing the truth about what happened during the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. That changed this year. Not only did Smallwood’s book see the light of day, but the Basque government gave him an allexpenses-paid trip to the Basque country to talk about how he got 124 Basques to talk about the bombing during a time when a person could be arrested and tortured for mentioning the bombing. “You have no idea the pain I saw in the eyes of people who had seen their husbands killed, their children killed,” said Smallwood, who will give a presentation on the Basques at 5 p.m. Thursday at The Community Library in Ketchum. “It was a tremendous relief finally to be able to do what I set out to do—to deliver the truth.” Smallwood, a Sun Valley resident, embarked on his writing career as a science teacher in Mountain Home when he decided he could write a better textbook than the one his students were using. It turned out to be the best-selling high school textbook in the country at the time. Over time, Smallwood wrote two dozen science textbooks, guidebooks for military academy candidates, a couple of books on the Gulf War and biographies on Idaho Sen. Jim McClure, J. Elroy McCaw and Ernest Hemingway, making him one of Idaho’s most prolific and best-selling writers, according to Randy Stapilus, who just came out with a new book, “Idaho 100: The People Who Most Influenced the Gem State.”
Bill Smallwood, former Mountain Home Teacher of the Year and National Association of Biology Teachers Outstanding Biology Teacher, never strays far from his laptop, as he always has another book in the works. He is currently writing a book on a B-17 tail gunner.
Smallwood co-authored “Hemingway in Idaho” with Sun Valley resident Tillie Arnold, whose husband Lloyd had willed him the photos Arnold took as official photographer for Sun Valley Resort. But it was the book that detailed the atrocities committed by German bombers as they leveled the Basque city of Guernica—what the Basques call “Gernika”— that demanded the most sweat, blood and tears. And it started innocently enough— with a vacation to the Basque country. An enthusiastic traveler, Smallwood ventured into Basque country at the height of the Franco-led totalitarian Spanish government in 1970. The vacation started out as a lark, driving around in a convertible, pretty girls on either arm, a little too much wine. But when he broached the subject of politics, he saw a fear in the eyes of the people that he had never seen before. “There are informants everywhere,” one bartender icily told him, refusing to speak another word. As he probed, Smallwood learned that the official Franco version was that Reds had put dynamite into the town’s sewers and poured petrol in to make a fiery mixture that would destroy the town. But he sensed that the people who had lived through the conflagration had a different story. “I said, ‘That deserves to be told. I’m going to go back to Idaho and learn Basque and I’m coming back for a year and I’m going to get the true story of what happened,’ ” he said.
Bill Smallwood wore a black beret he’d been given 45 years earlier when his Basque friends in Mountain Home made him an honorary “Basco” and gave him the Basque name Egurtxiki, for his presentation on the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica. He also wore a black wool dress coat called a “kaiku” that a young Basque had given him during the summer of 1973.
Smallwood returned to Idaho and spent nearly a year learning the difficult Basque language, even spending a month in Owyhee County eating and working with Basque sheepherders as they fought through snow and a bitterly cold April to lamb sheep. After learning such phrases as “the wind is cold outside,” he returned to the Basque country where he immediately attracted interest as a “kampotik”—an outsider—who could speak Basque, albeit in a strange form. “I told them I learned from all the lazy Basques who herded sheep in Idaho and they erupted in laughter because there’s no such thing as lazy Basques,” he said. His grasp of Euskara didn’t immediately didn’t get him the interviews he had hoped for, however. Although he returned to the country on Sept. 13, his breakthrough didn’t come until May Day. “I was told, ‘This man sitting on your right is an attorney. If he tells you there’s a book collection he’d like you to see, that’s the signal he’s willing to help you,’
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St. Thomas Playhouse presents Rodgers and Hammerstein’s THURSDAY THRU SUNDAY OCTOBER 18-21 NEXSTAGE THEATRE KETCHUM
SEE MORE DETAILS ON PAGE 3