The Positive Choice for the Wood River Valley & Beyond nexStage To Lend A Laugh PAGE 3
Turkey Trot Promises Dash Of Fun PAGE 7
See Art In Ketchum On Friday PAGE 10-11
THE BLATANT COUNTY NEWS PAGES 19-23
N o v e m b e r 2 6 , 2 0 1 4 • V o l . 7 • N o . 5 0 • w w w .T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
A Writer’s Thanksgiving Journey To Idaho
Challenger Rises
BY JOHN HUBER
T
hanksgiving in my family extends beyond the holiday; it is a focal point of my family history and of how I arrived in Idaho nearly 100 years after my family’s early history in Oklahoma. It is perhaps the main reason my family ended up in Idaho to begin with. Michael Clasen was my great-grandfather and he was also the owner of the largest turkey ranch in the state of Oklahoma during the 1930s. With upwards of 1000 birds in his flock, great-grandfather would bring them annually to the Oklahoma City Farmers’ Market.
A Union Pacific Challenger No. 3985 “twenty-wheeler” locomotive steams by. The Challenger ski lift on the Warm Springs side of Bald Mountain is named after these historic engines. Photo courtesy of Union Pacific
more about it BY TONY TAYLOR
A
Michael Clasen holds a prized Turkey prior to heading for the Oklahoma City Farmers Market, circa 1930s. Photo courtesy of John Huber
Here, he would set up shop, penning the birds behind the truck and perching a few on rails along the sides. He also put one on top of the truck as a beacon for buyers coming to pick out their Thanksgiving dinner. The buyers were selective and judged the quality of the bird by the straightness of the breastbone. It was a time before Butterball, and before mass-produced piles of frozen turkeys. The birds were always free-range, with no antibiotics or hormones added—just good, wholesome turkey, feathers and all. The income provided by the Thanksgiving holiday was the majority of my family’s earnings for that year. It was a tough life and a tough job dealing with a bird known for its neurotic tendencies. What happened next was a perfect storm. The Dustbowl hit Oklahoma hard in the ’30s, as well as the Great Depression. To add to the misery, my grandmother told me of the day a delivery truck moving fast down a country road took out
nybody who skis knows about “chairlift talk.” It ranges from the bizarre to the mundane, but usually ends at the top ramp. This was not the case last February when three companions and I were sailing up the Warm Springs side of Bald Mountain aboard the Challenger lift. Mindless chatter found mutual focus when someone questioned how the lift got its name. The suggestion that it was named after the ill-fated space shuttle chilled us to the bone. It was totally rejected, but we agreed by the time we reached the top terminal that it had something to do with the Challenger Inn. For the sake of “chairlift talk,” for the sake of history and for the sake of my own curiosity, I had to find out. To dispel any future hearsay, the facts provide that NASA found historic metaphor in the 1870 voyages of the British research vessel “HMS Challenger” and tagged the spaceship with the same moniker. The lift was named after a Union Pacific locomotive. In its glory days, especially during World War II, the Challenger was a flagship “fast hauler” for seven or eight major railways. Union Pacific had the most, at 105. It was developed in the early 1930s by Union Pacific to haul freight over the Wasatch Mountains
in Utah. It weighed in at 1 million pounds, not counting the 25,000 gallons of water and 28 tons of coal required for a fillup. In late January of 2004, a restored Union Pacific Challenger rolled through Roselle, Ill., and 8,000 people lined the tracks to experience a scene once common that had not been repeated for over 50 years. The ground shook, black smoke billowed and the mournful whistle wailed through trailing clouds of white steam. Dogs and cattle ran for their lives, excited children gaped and waved and many of the older adults could not hold back their tears. It was over in a little more than a minute and the engine continued on a nine-state, 3000-mile tour. In respect of its age and nonexistent parts inventory, it was throttled down from the 70 mph allowed in the past to 60 mph. Retired steam engineers admitted to sustained 85 mph so-called “high ball” runs with full tonnage when tracks and weather allowed. It is the largest and most powerful operating steam locomotive in the world and is the last of 252 that were designed by Union Pacific and built between 1936 and 1947. Several locomotive works built the engine but, fundamentally, they were all the same. Often called “twenty-wheelers,” all had a pilot truck in front with four wheels to steer the behemoth down the tracks. Two sets of six driving wheels were hinged beneath the boiler so that each set of CONTINUED ON PAGE 12
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