THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: A winding, 35-minute trip back in time to the Fork

When you’ve lived and worked in North Idaho for nearly 40 years, it doesn’t take much to trigger a trip down memory lane.

The most recent journey took place while covering Clark Fork girls and boys basketball games – something I did regularly for 16 years at the Daily Bee.

The kids and the coaches have changed, of course, but some of the folks in the bleachers were the same.

Some were coaches and parents of the players then. Now, they’re grandparents and great-grandparents.

(And how can you not be drawn to a school whose mascot is the Wampus Cat?)

I thought about the hundreds of times I took the roughly 35-minute drive out to Clark Fork, on that winding, scenic highway along Lake Pend Oreille. As I was usually in a hurry – kickoff or tipoff was approaching, or I was heading back to the office on deadline – it was helpful to know the few spots on that stretch of road where it was safe to pass. Perhaps more importantly, where not to.

Last year, watching the Wampus Cat boys at the state tournament at Caldwell High – where a former Wampus Cat recently retired after years on the faculty at Caldwell – reminded me of covering the ‘Cats at state in the mid-1990s, before the Idaho Center in Nampa was even a thought, back when a coach named “Bird” with a towel over his shoulder led Clark Fork to a pair of state trophies, back when there was only four classifications, not the six there are now.

It’s a town of less than 600, but it produced one NFL player. And when he would come back to Clark Fork to visit, you wouldn’t know he was the only Super Bowl champion in the room – and he was probably wearing a flannel shirt.

I remember during my first assignment in Clark Fork, I walked into the local grocery store for something – and the first person I saw was a dog. A dog. In the store. In 1982. It was just lying there, like it was part of the store.

(Maybe Clark Fork was just ahead of its time. Nowadays, you can’t walk through a mall or a big box store – or even a grocery store – without seeing dogs apparently there to help their humans shop. Or just to help them exercise; neither of which is necessarily a bad thing.)

I remember the old bridge just before town, with the warning sign that said something like “One-lane bridge for trucks and buses.” You slowed down as you approached, just in case there was a semi coming from the other direction. Then you punched it through.

Those were the days before lights on the football field – lights being good for folks who worked during the day, no lights being good for sports writers when Sandpoint also had a home game that night.

Those were the days when the North Star League played 11-man football, before the switch to eight-man in the mid-1980s.. Those were the days when the North Star League boasted way more than three teams – there was also Plummer and Worley, before those two schools combined to form Lakeside. And for a few years, there was Falls Christian Academy/Post Falls Christian.

The Clark Fork folk were always friendly, and the postgame burgers – and that one night, the won tons – were always appreciated before it was time to head back to Sandpoint.

The current girls basketball coach (Jordan Adams) succeeded the coach I covered – Mark Stevens, who served three stints as head coach, and has a granddaughter on this year’s team.

In the small-world department, in doing some research my friend Jason noted that I had interviewed Jordan a long time ago – as Jordan Budd, she was on the 2006 Kellogg girls team that played in the state title game. As memorable as that post-game conversation probably was, neither of us remembered it, sadly, 16 years later.

Something else I noticed about Clark Fork was the people who played there in the 1970s knew the kids who came along and played in the ‘80s, the ‘90s and beyond, and treated them like family.

They were all Wampus Cats.

Clark Fork’s alumni basketball tournament, now some three decades strong, remains possibly the single-greatest fundraising event in the history of small towns. Wampus Cats (and friends) old and young, reuniting for three days of basketball … and other stuff.

Obviously other small towns have a similar closeness between the old and young as well.

But whether they can match the burgers and the won tons …

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.