Tom Richards Jr.: Having a ball at his Snake Pit

COEUR d’ALENE — Tom Richards Jr. would be the first to tell you he was born into privilege.

His father, Tom, and his uncle, John, are stalwarts of the community and former owners of Idaho Forest Industries, one of the state’s major companies that earned a reputation for fairness and generosity for its employees. IFI operated multiple lumber mills in the region, supported many public causes and made more than a little money along the way.

Richards and his younger sister grew up in a house overlooking Hayden Lake. He spent summers flying across the same lake behind a ski boat.

But despite all that, he soon learned there would be no silver spoon. No special favors. No free ride.

When he was 15 he discovered that his pursuit of girls was going to require some money for dates. So he went to his father and asked for a job.

“I was thinking that my family has this company so I’d ask my dad and he’d tell me when to show up for work,” Richards said.

His father handed him a newspaper and showed him the help wanted portion of the classifieds.

“He said, ‘Here’s a telephone and I’m really excited to hear how this works out for you.’

“He was pretty intent that I wasn’t going to get my first job from him,” Richards said. “He wanted me to get my own job, and that was really valuable for me.”

Richards eventually did work for IFI, but he also took his father’s advice and blazed his own trail in an entirely different direction. He has served over the years as a church-building missionary and high school teacher overseas. Most recently he is living two lifelong dreams as a band member and a restaurant owner. About two years ago, Richards and a business partner bought the Snake Pit in the Silver Valley, one of Idaho’s oldest and most colorful establishments.

“I love it. I love being there. I love the history,” he said. “I get a kick out of being up there on weekends when it’s busy and talking to customers and dazzling them with nonsense about the history of the building or whatever.”

Since 1880 the Snake Pit in Enaville, located between Cataldo and Kellogg, has served many purposes — as a railroad depot, a brothel, and a bar and restaurant. Its signature specialty since the 1950s has been, and remains, Rocky Mountain oysters, which are — simply stated — bull testicles.

One of the highlights for Richards is that his blues band, Dr. Phil and the Enablers, can perform to a captive audience every Friday night. Richards plays rhythm guitar and is a vocalist.

“In high school what I really wanted to do was be a rock star,” he said. “My backup plan if being a rock star didn’t work out was to open my own restaurant. So now I get to be both. I’m not sure when I was 19 that rock star meant being on stage in Enaville, Idaho. But it all came around full circle.”

The Richards family roots run deep in North Idaho. Tom Jr.’s great-grandfather was transferred here by Weyerhauser from Minnesota in 1919. The following year he bought the Atlas Tie Mill in Coeur d’Alene.

During the 1930s, the Richardses began selling retail from the back end of the mill and the Atlas Building Center was born. The operation eventually merged with the DeArmond sawmill and became IFI, which was sold to Stimson Lumber Co. of Portland in 2000.

“It’s sad for me to realize that the family legacy is gone because I loved Idaho Forest Industries,” he said. “I was really, really proud of what that company was and what they stood for.”

Growing up in Hayden Lake was a dream, Richards said, though he was quite a bit tamer than others his age.

“I spent more time and felt more comfortable at church and at a Boy Scout troop. I was never as excited about hanging out at the country club as some of the kids who grew up there,” he said.

Tom remembers the construction of Highway 95 through Hayden replacing Government Way as the principal access from the north and when there was only one stoplight between Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint. The new highway included an accompanying bike path, which he would use on his Schwinn 10-speed for the long trek to the Lake City.

“Hayden Lake and Coeur d’Alene seemed like two distinct communities at the time,” he said. “I have no memories of Playland Pier. I lived in Hayden Lake. Coeur d’Alene was the city we’d drive to on occasion to shop or go to Hudson’s Hamburgers,” he said.

When the family built the Atlas Building Center outlet at Highway 95 and Kathleen Avenue, it was considered the wilderness.

“I remember people telling my father he was nuts. The only customers were going to be deer and antelope,” he said. “When Atlas first opened you could walk around the entire building and not see another building anywhere.”

While his career path took a different direction, he followed family tradition in terms of education, from Hayden Lake Elementary to Coeur d’Alene High School to Stanford University, where he studied economics, graduated in 1987 and met his future wife, Kirste.

As a senior at CHS, Richards tried his old ploy for a second and final time.

“I needed some money so I asked my father for a job,” Richards said. “He said, ‘You can apply at the building center but I’m going to tell them to hire you only if and when they need you. You don’t just get a job because of your last name.’”

So Tom spent his summers working in restaurants, loading 2x4s into pickups and serving as a whitewater rafting guide on the Salmon River.

Richards, 52, a talkative, good-natured and eternally youthful father of two, said CHS and Stanford were both good experiences. His older daughter is also a Stanford graduate.

Richards doesn’t share quite the same passion for Stanford athletics as his father, but loves to travel with him a couple times a season to Palo Alto for football games.

After college, Richards decided it was time “to get out on my own and get established.”

He moved to Seattle and went to work for a company that exported lumber to Japan for several years. When the Japanese economy declined along with the demand for lumber in the early 1990s, he and his wife were recruited into something quite different. They moved to Japan for two years as missionaries to help build a Christian church in Hiroshima.

“It was fascinating. Challenging. Difficult. Fun. Exciting. Everything,” he said.

Richards returned home and managed Atlas Building Center for four years until it was sold.

“At that point, I was not seeing myself becoming my father,” he said. “So I had a midlife crisis and became a teacher.”

He moved with his family to Vienna, Austria, where he taught social studies in an American school for 10 years. From there they moved to Seoul, South Korea, where he taught another three years before learning that the Snake Pit was for sale.

Tom Richards is grounded now, he said. No more globe-trotting and exotic adventures. He’s found his niche in a place he always wants to be.

“When I was overseas my students would point this out to me... I would talk about where I came from way more than any other teacher. I’ve always taken North Idaho with me everywhere I’ve gone. It’s always been in my heart,” he said.

“I’ve never had any interest in living anywhere else. If my entire family left North Idaho, this would still be home for me.”