Front Porch Conversations: Mike Pierce and Juli Zook

KELLOG — A question was posed during a Front Porch Conversation on Wednesday that sounded more like a riddle than a question about structures displaced by the installation of Interstate 90 in the Silver Valley.

Lorrie Jenicek asked, “how do you move a stone house?”

“You use a lot of adjectives,” Mike Pierce quipped.

The conversation had moved to the topic of the freeway impacting houses and even graves. Homes and graves were moved to make way for the interstate, causing what Pierce referred to as the “haunted” side of the freeway.

For Pierce, growing up on the Sunnyside part of town meant that families were always able to keep tabs on children.

“There weren’t any trees then, so the parents always could tell where the kids were,” Pierce said.

At the top of his portion of the talk, audience members were handed cards for the Vet’s Club in Kellogg.

“You all have a card for a free drink, though it’s not there any more,” Pierce said.

The cards referenced Prohibition Era language with a drawing of a girl holding a sign reading “Down with John Barleycorn.” Barleycorn represented a personification of barley and beer and whisky, the two alcoholic beverages made from it.

Mike Pierce and Juli Zook handed off the mic throughout the night as they told stories and played show-and-tell with props from the past.

Zook’s tales mostly centered around the “good rivalries” of the Kellogg Winter Games, which staved off cabin fever for residents during Februarys in the Valley for 12 years.

With team names such as the Snow Snakes, Barbarians, Woolie Bullies, Alpine Rat, and Zook’s team, the Wolf Pack, the parties outside of the sporting events were rollicking and, though there was fierce competition between the teams, it was all done in good nature.

“We had a howling good time,” Zook said. “How we really got the points was how many team members came out to support all the events, and I believe the Wolf Pack was victorious many times. One of the things that I really liked was that there was all of this team rivalry, but there was a friendly competition.”

Loosely following the order of the Olympic Games, the informal Kellogg version began with a glitter parade with floats. Teams could also rack up points if they had the best float.

“We would wind our way down to Teeter’s Field, where we would light a torch, and that was the beginning of the Kellogg Winter Games,” Zook said.

Judging was, at best, less an exact science and more an opportunity to negotiate. Pierce and Zook hadn’t discussed their individual contributions to securing the Wolf Pack’s wins prior to their shared talk, but, apparently, similar tactics further united the history of the two friends.

“It was known that the judges could possibly be bribed. Did you bribe a judge? OK, so both of us are guilty,” Zook confessed.

A fashion show that became part of the games one year had more than 90 models walking in the event and Zook and other coordinators borrowed clothes from stores in Kellogg and Wallace to pull everything together.

Fuel was also added to the fire during Shoshone News Press coverage of the games. “The Alpine Rats would say something terrible about us (totally unfounded), and then we would have to go back in the paper and put something in about the Rats and possibly the Snow Snakes as well, and then that got them going,” Zook said.

The two most popular games were frozen turkey bowling and leg wrestling, but volleyball, horseshoes, horse-drawn skiing and a tug-of-war were also fun sources of playful contention.

“There was a ball toss for the kids, and a keg toss for the adults,” Zook said.

If you go

What: Front Porch Conversations

When: 5:30 p.m. Wednesdays, July 12 through August 16

Where: 125 McKinley Ave., Kellogg

Speakers:

August 16: Paul and Carol Roberts