Another one of the stops on my New Jersey Sopranos tour was Paterson Falls. Although only about 40 miles or so from where I grew up, I’d never been there.
I knew of the town, though. It’s an old industrial village with waterfalls, which meant that in the early days of our country it was perfect for industrial development. The falls provided hydraulic power, and that could be used to drive machinery. Indeed, it’s where Samuel Colt built his first run of revolvers, which are known (not surprisingly) as Paterson Colts. Paterson was established as the nation’s first planned industrial city in 1792, with its readily-available hydraulic power and close proximity to New York City and the Atlantic Ocean. Paterson manufactured silk cloth, steam locomotives, textiles, paper, firearms, and aircraft engines. It is centered on the Passaic River, which flows into Newark Bay and from there to the Atlantic Ocean.
The Passaic Falls are contained within the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, which is (as the name implies) part of the U.S. National Park system. All this was news to me, which is kind of amazing when you consider that I grew up a short 40 miles to the south. I’d never known any of this, and to learn about it at my age was surprising. I’ll give the credit for that to David Chase (the guy who created The Sopranos). Had that show not sparked my interest, I’d still be ignorant.
So, let’s move on to the scene in The Sopranos that caught my attention. It’s the episode in which Mikey Palmici (Uncle Junior’s driver and bodyguard) throws a drug dealer off the bridge over the Passaic Falls:
That episode you see above occurred later in The Sopranos. There was another scene in the very first Sopranos episode on the same bridge shown above in which Hesh Rabkin and Big Pussy Bompensiero (two of The Sopranos characters) threaten to throw a health insurance company executive (a guy named Alex Mahaffey, played by Michael Gaston) off the same bridge if he didn’t cooperate with a Sopranos scam to defraud the insurance company.
When threatened with a swan dive off the bridge, Mahaffey gave in to the Soprano family’s demands, but alas, his Sopranos career was over; Michael Gaston never appeared in another episode. But that didn’t mean Sue and I wouldn’t see him again. In one of our trips to New Jersey, we rode the Air Trans shuttle between the airport and the rental car facility. Just before we boarded the shuttle, Michael Gaston was leaving the car we entered. We didn’t bug him, but we made eye contact and he knew we knew who he was.
Michael Gaston, an actor we bumped into on the Newark Airport Air Trans.
There’s a lot more to Paterson, though, then simply having been a location for a couple of The Sopranos scenes. Here’s another video that describes Paterson’s history:
Today, Paterson is undergoing a renaissance, as the old factory buildings are being converted to loft apartments. Yup, Paterson is being yuppified. It looks like an interesting place to spend more time, but my schedule didn’t permit doing so on this visit. For us it was roll into town, grab a few photos, and bail.
A view of Passaic Falls. This is a beautiful area.The wood-surfaced foot bridge featured in two different Sopranos episodes.Another view of the bridge. It’s closed to the public. On the Internet, it says it’s for safety reasons. One of my police buddies told me it’s because there were too many suicides from this bridge.Another view of the Passaic River and its Falls in Paterson.While we were visiting the Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park, this rather plump groundhog was doing the same. My Dad used to hunt these in New Jersey with his .243 Model 70 Winchester and the farmers loved having him do so. These woodchucks may look cute, but they destroy a lot of crops.
One thing I know for sure: I’ll return to Paterson. I’d like to explore the city, its museums, and more in greater detail.
Want to see our other visits to The Sopranos locations? Here they are:
We’ve got a bunch of good stuff coming your way, my friends. I just finished a whirlwind week in New Jersey, we hit some of the Sopranos film locations, I grabbed a bunch of very cool Norton P11 photos, we saw where Bruce Springsteen was setting up for a concert in Asbury Park, I have a review on the new Garmin chronograph about to go live, Mike Huber (aka Mike Nelson) is down there in Indonesia and Thailand becoming one with the sea turtles, I’ve got a review on Ruger Customer Service and my revamped .357 Bisley, Joe Gresh has his Z1 Kawi all dressed up with lots of new places to go, and lots, lots more.
Andrew Capone, Isle of Man impresario and British Motocycle Gear CEO, with an unknown paparazzi reflected in a Norton Scrambler fender at an undisclosed location in New Jersey.All dressed up with lots of places to go…Joe Gresh and the Z1…the gift that keeps on giving!How fast is fast? Stay tuned, and we’ll tell you!Scuba Southeast Asia with Mike Huber!Bisley mania! Plinking at 100 yards with a handgun? You bet!Andrew, Harry (aka “the Norton Whisperer”), and what is unquestionably one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever made!There’s ink, and then there’s Sopranos ink. Oh, do we have a story for you!
You know, we blew right by 1500 blogs some time ago, and I started to wonder if we were going to run out of things to write about. Nope. Not gonna happen. It’s like when one of my geezer buddies told me he didn’t know what to say at a lunch gathering, and another of my geezer friends told him, “Don’t worry…you’ll keep talking until you think of something.”
Well….we’ve been having a little heat wave here in SoCal and I have been hanging around the house too much, so it was time to take the Harley Low Rider out for a little run.
My Low Rider when it was at the dealership in Minneapolis. I bought it about 4 years ago with 4,000 miles on the odometer.
I couldn’t do my usual run around the Palos Verdes peninsula due to the highway being closed to two-wheeled traffic. So I instead went the short way across the peninsula and then through the beach cities where it was nice and cool compared to the rest of Los Angeles.
I got through them all and was coming out of El Segundo and towards the airport and Westchester. On Sepulveda there’s a tunnel that goes under a runway at LAX and we call it, of course, the airport tunnel.
Some guys on bikes think of it as a tunnel and some think of it as a concert hall. Well, I kinda go both ways on that. But every time I get near it, I harken back to a memory of New Year’s Eve in 1972. I was a teenager at the time and my best bud Dave Reimer called me at home and told me he was at a great party in El Segundo. He offered to come by and pick me up (I had no wheels at that time). Dave showed up at my pad on a BSA 650 motorcycle he had borrowed from a friend. I jumped on and we headed out.
As we approached the tunnel from the Westchester side going to El Segundo Dave yelled back to me to hang on. He kicked it down a gear into 3rd and hit the throttle hard. We entered the tunnel going about 60mph and he banged 4th and hit the throttle hard and we were flying. The support columns just turned into a blur. There was a lot of great engine noise too. We came out the other end doing about 110mph!
What a kick! The things you do and get away with when you are young can be amazing. It was a great party and it is a favorite memory.
Today, in honor of my buddy Dave who left us about 15 years ago, I entered the tunnel in 3rd and laid down a little sweet Harley music with lots of throttle. It was about as much as I could get away with considering traffic.
So, Dave, wherever you are just wanted to let you know I was thinking about you.
Thanks, Bob. That’s a great story and we enjoyed reading it. Remind me never to lend my motorcycle to any of your friends!
I grew up up in the Evel Knievel era. It was a glorious time, the 1960s, and if you were a motorcycle freak (as I was and still am), there was no way you could not have heard of Evel Knievel, a man who jumped cars and buses (and ultimately, the Snake River Canyon) on a motorcycle. He was one hell of a showman.
In the summer of 1966 I was a skinny little 15-year-old kid, my Dad owned a new Triumph Bonneville, and I was in hog heaven for that reason. Then and now, there was and is nothing cooler than a Triumph Bonneville. We were going to the motorcycle races. A big night out in those days was the East Windsor Speedway, a half-mile dirt track oval where they raced everything. Stock cars, two-strokes, and the big bikes. Not just locals, either. Harley’s Bart Markel (National No. 1), Triumph’s Gary Nixon (National No. 9), and more. It was the 4th of July weekend and it was 58 years ago. I remember it like it was last week.
East Windsor Speedway is no more. It’s now tract homes. My loss; New Jersey’s property tax gain.
East Windsor Speedway put on quite a show. Dad and I rode there on the Bonneville. I fancied myself a motorcycle guy and it just didn’t get any better than the half-mile dirt oval at East Windsor. The fun started right in the parking lot with hundreds of fans’ motorcycles. Fins and twins (everything was an air-cooled twin in those days), carbs, chrome, custom paint, custom seats, and more. It was all England and America and a little bit of Japan: Triumph, BSA, Honda, Harley, Suzuki, Yamaha…you get the idea. Italy and Ducati were yet to be discovered, only weirdos rode BMWs (remember those strange sideways kick starters?), and weirdos definitely didn’t go to the races. A new Bonneville was $1320 and a Honda Super Hawk (electric start, no less) was only about $600. It all seemed so attainable.
The East Windsor Speedway is long gone now, shut down by noise complaints from the encroaching ‘burbs and then plowed over for more cookie cutter homes. It’s a pity, really.
East Windsor always put on quite a show, but that 4th of July evening was a six sigma outlier on the right side of the bell curve. Stock car racing was first, then the 250cc class (love that smell!), then the big boys (including Nixon and Markel), then the main event (Evel Knievel!)…and it was all washed down with a 4th of July fireworks display that was as good as I had ever seen. That warm New Jersey night out started before the sun went down and finished around midnight. I think the cost to get in was something like $2.50.
Evel Knievel was the highlight for me and I think for everyone else, too. Evel was just starting to get famous, and here he was in person. White leathers and a cape trimmed in red and blue on the 4th of July. (Gresh and I always wanted capes, but we had to wait 50 years and go to China to get ours.) A Harley V-twin, with monstrous ramps set up on the infield (one for liftoff and one for landing), with a couple of Greyhounds in between (buses, that is…not the dogs).
Airborne Evel back in the day.
The crowd fell silent as Evel revved the 750 Harley and then accelerated. But it wasn’t up the ramp. Nope, Evel (ever the showman) accelerated alongside the ramps and the buses when we all expected him to jump. Faked us out, he did. Then he looped around to start again. Ah, I get it, we all thought. That was just to gage his acceleration before hitting the ramps for real. The anticipation built. Thousands held their breath as Evel accelerated again, but he faked us out with another run alongside the ramps. Okay, all part of the show. A third time….maybe this would be it…but no, it was yet another tease. Back to the start point, more revving, and by now we were wise to the ways of Evel. We all thought it would be another feint. But nope, this was the real deal…up the ramp rapidly and suddenly there he was: Airborne Evel, sailing up and over the buses, suspended high in the evening air, and then back down on the landing ramp. He hit the brakes hard, struggling to stop before running out of room, the Harley’s rear end sashaying around like an exotic dancer in a room full of big tippers. The crowd went nuts. A seismic cheer drowned out the mighty Milwaukee sound machine. We had seen Evel, the man and the motorcycle, airborne and in person, flying over the buses that would have you leave the driving to them. It was awesome.
It all happened 58 years ago. Evel, my Dad, and the East Windsor Speedway have gone on to their reward and I’m officially a geezer drawing Social Security. But that evening will live in my memory forever, which sort of brings us to the present. Sue and I were on a content safari in Idaho (you’ve seen several blogs from that trip, and I still have a few to go). When we visited Twin Falls, we were on the edge of the Snake River Canyon. That name stuck in my mind because it was where Evel went when the US Government said “no dice” when he asked for permission to jump the Grand Canyon.
Good buddies Velma and Orlando on the south Rim of the Grand Canyon. Evel asked, and the Feds said no.
The entire concept was preposterous on so many levels I can’t list them. But that was Evel Knievel. Before he did it, the idea of jumping over a car was preposterous, as was the idea of jumping over several cars, as was the idea of jumping over a bus, as was the idea of jumping over several buses, and…well, you get the idea. Evel had bumped up against the limits of preposterousness, and that’s when he floated the Grand Canyon idea. The Feds nixed that, but Evel wasn’t a man stopped by obstacles. He went for the next best thing, and that was the Snake River Canyon. It’s over a mile wide, and it’s a big drop to the bottom.
To get back to Idaho connection and this story, I looked on the map to see if it denoted where Evel did his thing and to my surprise, it did. And it wasn’t very far from Shoshone Falls. Sue and I did our thing at Shoshone Falls and as soon as we were back in the car, I plugged in “Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon Jump.” Waze didn’t know from Evel Knievel, but the regular iPhone mapping app did. We were only a few miles away, we were off to the races (so to speak).
On the way in, as we approached the road’s end (it ended at the Snake River Canyon), we saw no signs initially marking the spot where Evel made history. We did see a lot of tract homes, and a sign selling more.
Not bad for an entire acre by California standards, but that’s Idaho. Someday every square inch of America will be covered by tract homes or high-density housing, and our politicians will wonder why there’s so little water and so much traffic.
As we reached the end of the road, the Canyon came into view, as did the ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog. Whoa! Can it be?
The Snake River Canyon, where Evel attempted his jump. It’s wider and deeper than it looks.
It was. On the other side of that dirt ramp, we saw our first indication that we were where we wanted to be. It was a good summary of Evel and the attempted jump that occurred decades ago.
Evel: The Man, the myth, and the motorcycle.
The deal on the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon jump is this: Evel didn’t attempt it on a regular or even a modified motorcycle. He instead used a steam rocket-propelled aircraft of sorts that was mounted on a launch ramp. The dirt ramp you see in the photo at the top of this blog was not one that you would attempt to roll up and hit at high speed with a motorcycle to become airborne. The idea instead was that the rocket ship would launch off a launch rail, carry Evel across the Snake River canyon, and then Evel would deploy a parachute and he (and the rocket ship) would float back to Earth on the other side. That was the theory.
An excerpt from the above sign. Evel Knievel, motorcycle astronaut.
It didn’t work out that way, though. Evel and his rocket ship made it about halfway across the Snake River, the parachute deployed inadvertently and prematurely, and man and machine descended into the canyon and onto the Snake River’s banks. Miraculously, Evel walked away, never to attempt a canyon (any canyon) jump again.
Another excerpt from the photo above. There was no V-Twin hidden in the bowels of Evel’s rocket ship.
We climbed to the top of the ramp and gazed across the Snake River Canyon. I wondered: Will we ever see another man like Evel Knievel? I think it’s less likely, given our predilection with biological males competing in women’s sports, our insistence on listing our pronouns (you can just refer to me as “hey, you”), and everything else our society has degenerated into. But that borders on being political, and as you know, we don’t do that. That said, though, I think it’s a safe bet that Evel never worried about anyone using his preferred pronouns.
After our climb down, we wandered around the area a bit. Other than that sign above (which isn’t visible until you walked to the other side of the ramp) and a marker on the trail fence, you’d never know this was an historic spot.
Peering at the Evel Knievel sign on the canyon side of the historic launch site.A tiny fencepost marker on the trail that runs along the Snake River Canyon.A macro shot of the Evel fencepost marker. History happened here.
We had a marvelous trip through Idaho, and like I said above, I still have another two or three blogs to wrap up our Idaho expedition. I’ll tell you before I get there, though, that visiting this obscure (and rapidly fading into further obscurity) spot was the highlight of the trip for me.
As mentioned in our introductory Idaho blog, I had briefly visited the Craters of the Moon National Monument on the 5,000-mile Western America Adventure Ride with the Chinese and other folks who owned RX3 motorcycles. Good buddy Baja John did all the navigating and planning on that ride; I just rode at the front of the pack and took all the credit.
Baja John posing at the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserved entrance exactly 10 years ago. Tempus fugit, my friends.
We planned those early CSC trips as if it was just Baja John and me riding, and I figured on way too many miles each day. John and I can do 600-mile days easily. When we planned the larger Western America Adventure Ride, even 400-mile days were a huge challenge. A good rule of thumb on such larger group rides is to stick to a maximum of 200 to 250 miles each day. I didn’t know that then.
Anyway, on that first Craters of the Moon stop, we were on a big mileage day and we didn’t have too much time to spare. We pulled into the Craters entrance, grabbed a few photos, and continued our trek to Twin Falls. I recently wanted to do a Destinations piece on Craters for Motorcycle Classics magazine, and when I looked through my files, I found I only had a couple of Craters photos. That dearth of useable photos became part of the reason Susie and I visited Craters again.
The ride from Boise (where Susie and I started that morning) to Craters takes you east on I-84 and then east on US Highway 20. As an aside, Highway 20 runs across the entire United States, from Newport, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts. Part of Highway 20 in Idaho was designated as the Medal of Honor Highway by Governor Brad Little in 2019, and Susie and I took it to Craters.
US Highway 20, Idaho’s Medal of Honor Highway. The photo ops through this part of the world are impressive. Bring a polarizer.Idaho is justifiably proud of its Medal of Honor winners. That’s an M1 Abrams tank in the background, a turbine-powered, 70-ton beast that can hit 60 mph and fire on the move with great accuracy. Three Medal of Honor recipients currently live in Idaho; as many as 48 people awarded the Medal of Honor have an Idaho connection.
After Highway 20, it’s a left turn onto Highway 26 to get to Craters of the Moon. It’s more scenic riding, including the towns of Carey and Picabo. Carey is where we had a comical encounter on the Western America Adventure Tour when riding with our Chinese compañeros across Idaho. On that day 10 years ago, it happened to be Pioneer Day. We didn’t know that, nor did we know that there was a parade in Carey. I was in my usual spot (in front of the pack), Gresh was riding alongside me, and our group of a dozen RX3 riders were right behind us. As we approached Carey, local residents lined the streets. Many were holding American flags. They waved and cheered us as we rode into town. We had no idea what was going on. Gresh flipped his faceshield up and said, “Wow, a lot of people are following the blog” (I had been blogging our trip across the western US every day). We didn’t know it at the time, but we were only a few minutes ahead of the parade Carey was expecting, and those good Idahoans thought we were the advance guard. It was fun and it made for a great story (which I have told about a thousand times by now).
On US Highway 26 heading east into the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. Note the volcanic rock on either side of the road.
The good folks in Carey were not waiting for Susie and me on this trip, but we had a good time anyway. When we rolled into Picabo a little further down the road, we had an even better time when we topped off the Jeep and had lunch (which was excellent). I told you a bit about that (and the Ernest Hemingway connection) yesterday.
The volcanic flow in the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve. That’s Echo Cone in the distance.
The National Park Service describes the landscape in and around Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve as “weird and scenic” and that’s an apt description. The landscape is almost lunar-like. Its alien features consist of mostly dark brown solidified lava surrounded and sometimes punctuated by patches of green vegetation. It makes for a dramatic landscape and awesome photo ops.
A walkway above the pahoehoe lave field.Sue reading about the pahoehoe lava. The National Park Service does a great job making these kinds of places accessible and providing explanations telling the story at each location.
You can ride a designated, one-way, circular tarmac road through the Preserve, with paved offshoots for specific sights. One of the first stops is a pahoehoe lava field. The name is a particular type of lava, and it comes from the lava volcanoes and their flows in Hawaii. Pahoehoe lava is characterized by a rough and darkened surface. What made it even more interesting is the walkway above the lava. You can walk a loop of about a quarter of a mile and see what the hardened lava looks like. The walkway is a good thing; I don’t think it would be possible to navigate this terrain on foot.
Monolithic cinder cone fragments in one of the lava fields.
Another lava structure is called cinder cone. Sometimes these structures break apart and leave monolithic forms like those in the photograph above. One of the more dramatic areas in Craters of the Moon is the Inferno Cone. There’s a place to park near the base and you can climb to the peak.
The climb to the Inferno Cone peak. Sue did it. I watched.Completing the circular ride through Craters of the Moon. The lava formations to the left are called cinder bombs.
There are several lava tubes (caves formed by lava flow) in Craters of the Moon, and if you wish, you can hike into them. We didn’t do that. There are also longer hikes throughout the Preserve if you want to explore more.
There’s much to see and do at Craters of the Moon. How long you stay and how much you see is up to you. We were there for about three hours and we had a great visit.
The next stop on our Idaho expedition would be Twin Falls. That’s coming up, so stay tuned.
If you would like to read about the Western America Adventure Ride and how CSC rewrote the motorcycle adventure touring book, the story is here:
1500: Keep that number in mind. I’ll tell you what it means at the end of this post.
As I mentioned in the introductory blog on our ExNotes Idaho expedition, I was surprised to learn of the apparently well-known strong connection between Idaho and Ernest Hemingway. My previous ignorance of this connection made me feel kind of illiterate when I read about it at the Basque Museum, and then again in Picabo while we were driving to Craters of the Moon National Monument. I wouldn’t want any of our readers to feel my pain, so I thought I would offer a brief Hemingway biography and explain how the Idaho/Hemingway connection developed.
I previously wrote about the Basque Museum a blog or two back. Our next adventure was Craters of the Moon, and on our way there as we passed through the small town of Picabo I thought I would top off the Jeep and grab a cup of coffee. The gas station had a small general store and a restaurant, so Susie and I grabbed lunch. The place had an interesting corner devoted to Ernest Hemingway and his Idaho adventures.
Firearms Hemingway gave to local rancher Bud Purdy in a Picabo restaurant display case.
Hemingway loved hunting and fishing in the Silver Creek area near Picabo with Bud Purdy, a local rancher and Idaho legend. Purdy was an interesting man, too. You can read about him here.
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois (a small town near Chicago) on July 21, 1899. He was wounded in World War I, he went on to become one of the world’s great novelists, he married four times, and he died at age 61 in Ketchum, Idaho. But there’s a lot more to the Hemingway story than just those two short sentences.
As a young man growing up in what was then a predominately rural area, Hemingway’s father introduced him to hunting and fishing. He graduated from the Oak Park public school system in 1917 and went to work as a reporter at the Kansas City Star. It’s been said that’s where he developed his writing style, based on the newspaper’s guidelines emphasizing short sentences and paragraphs, writing in the active style, shortness, and clarity. Hemingway carried the style to his fiction, later explaining “Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them.”
When World War I started, Hemingway wanted to serve but poor eyesight prevented his enlisting. He instead volunteered to be a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy. Hemingway was wounded only a month into this adventure by a mortar round, and then wounded again immediately after that by machine gun fire. All this occurred while carrying a wounded soldier to safety. The Italian government awarded Hemingway their Silver Medal for Valor.
Hemingway returned home and went to work for the Toronto Star Weekly, where he married his first of four wives in 1921. The Hemingways moved to Paris, where he met several of the great authors of the era while still working as a reporter covering such things as the Geneva Conference, bullfighting, and fishing. It was while Hemingway was in Paris that his first works of fiction were published, including Indian Camp and Cross Country Snow.
From 1925 to 1929, Hemingway wrote some of the world’s great literary masterpieces, including Our Time in 1925. It contained The Big Two-Hearted River, The Sun Also Rises, and Men Without Women. A Farewell to Arms followed in 1929, which was quickly recognized as a defining World War I masterpiece and earned Hemingway a reputation as a literary giant. Hemingway became a world traveler, visiting Key West for fishing, Africa for hunting, and Spain for bullfighting. He continued writing, creating For Whom the Bell Tolls, Death in the Afternoon, and The Green Hills of Africa.
For a time in the pre-Castro days, Hemingway lived in Cuba. Hemingway lost his home when Fidel Castro confiscated private property in 1958. He and his fourth wife bought a home in Ketchum, Idaho, where he would live out the rest of his life.
Hemingway had spent time in Idaho prior to purchasing his Ketchum home. Averill Harriman (an American entrepreneur who owned the Union Pacific Railroad and other businesses) was promoting a new resort in Sun Valley, Idaho. In 1939 Harriman invited Hemingway to visit the Sun Valley Lodge and that set the hook. Hemingway hunted and fished Idaho, and he fell in love with the area. Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls in Room 206 of the Sun Valley Lodge (known today as the Hemingway Suite). While a guest at the Sun Valley Lodge, Hemingway also wrote Islands in the Stream, The Garden of Eden, and A Moveable Feast.
Later in life, Hemingway struggled with poor health and depression. Some say he was an alcoholic. He had experienced numerous concussions, a couple of car accidents, and two airplane crashes. Hemingway committed suicide by shooting himself in his Ketchum home in July of 1961 at the age of 61.
Ernest Hemingway was an outdoorsman, a shooter, and a hunter. In other words, he was my kind of guy, so it’s surprising that the only Hemingway novel I ever read was The Old Man and the Sea. That’s a character defect I aim to correct in the near future.
It’s probably appropriate that this post is about Ernest Hemingway, as this is our 1500th literary endeavor on the ExhaustNotes blog. Yep, 1500 posts! We appreciate you reading our blog, we appreciate your comments, and we especially appreciate you clicking on those pesky popup ads!
Sue and John Paul started the Warhawk Air Museum in 1989. It contains aircraft, automobiles, aircraft engines, automobiles, guns, and other things from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. For us, it was our eighth Idaho stop and only our third day in Idaho. We were covering a lot of ground.
The entrance to the Warhawk Air Museum hangar and display area.
Aircraft
The Warhawk Museum had a bunch of aircraft both inside the hangar and parked outside on the tarmac. I love these kinds of places and I love these vintage airplanes, partly because they photograph so well but mostly because of what they represent. We were taking in military history and I was loving it.
“Parrot Head,” a Curtiss P-40N Warhawk dominating the Warhawk Museum display area.“Yellow Peril,” a Navy N3N biplane.“The Boise Bee,” a North American P-51C Mustang.“Boise Bee” nose art.
The Warhawk has a beautiful, jet black, Vietnam-era Huey helicopter. I spent some time when I was in the Army flying around on Hueys (not in Vietnam, though). My time in the service was fun. I enjoyed the Huey rides, especially when the doors were open and the pilots flew low level. Cue in Ride of the Valkyries.
A Bell UH-1C “Mike” gunship helicopter. The “Mike” had an upgraded 1400 shp turbine.Nose art on the “Mike” Huey: The 68th Assault Helicopter Company (the “Mustangs”). This is cool stuff.
Engines
The Warhawk Museum displays an impressive collection of piston and jet engines. The old radials, in particular, were amazing. As an engineer and as a motorcycle guy, the radials spoke to me. But they were all nice to take in. Mechanical stuff is just so much more intuitive and easy to understand than electronics or software. I can look at mechanical things and comprehend how they work; I could never do that with electronics or software.
A Curtiss OX–5 airplane engine. It’s a 90-horsepower V8 made in 1917.A macro shot of the Curtiss OX–5 engine’s rockers. These parts were cast and machined more than a century ago.A Pratt and Whitney R-985-AN 14B air-cooled radial engine. It made 450 horsepower and was used in three aircraft, including the C-45.A second R-985-AN14B display engine. As the designator implies, these 9-cylinder engines displaced 985 cubic inches.An Allison V-1710-81 water-cooled engine. It was a V-12 that generated 1,425 horsepower. During World War II, these powered the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, the Bell P-39 Airacobra and the twin-engined Lockheed P-38 Lightning.A Ranger engine. These powered the Fairchild PT-19 aircraft.Perhaps the most impressive radial engine in the world: The Pratt & Whitney 4360 radial engine.Another view of the It’s a 28-cylinder four-row radial piston engine that powered the C-124 Globemaster, the KC-97 tanker, and the B-36 Peacemaker. The B-36 had six of these engines. That’s 168 cylinders! How’d you like to adjust the valves on a B-36?
Automobiles
Who doesn’t enjoy vintage automobiles? I’ve probably done a dozen or more blogs on vintage automobiles in various museums around the country and I never get tired of seeing them. The Warhawk Museum had several vintage cars, and several more military vehicles.
A little 1960 Nash Metropolitan. These were made in England. They had a 120cc engine and sold for $1,672. Beep beep!A 1940 DeSoto Deluxe with a beautiful two-tone tan and cream paint theme. This car retailed for $905 when it was new.The DeSoto’s hood ornament. Those were the days!A 1930 Packard 8. It was powered by a torquey inline 8-cylinder engine, and sold for a princely $2,385 in 1930.The Packard’s hood ornament.A 1927 Studebaker couple. These had 6-cylinder engines and sold for $1,575 (big bucks in 1927).The Studebaker’s radiator-cover-mounted brand emblem.A US Army halftrack with a quad .50 mount. These are interesting vehicles. Note the armor on the radiator. I’ve always wondered why car or accessory companies making big tough guy trucks never copied this design; I think it would look cool.A 1955 Buick Century. This was the golden era of GM auto design. This car had a 236-horsepower V8 and it sold for $2,590 in 1955. These were fast cars in 1955. The California Highway Patrol used them.
Other Interesting Stuff
In between all the exhibits mentioned above (as well as many more Warhawk Museum exhibits that space precludes including), there wasn’t any wasted real estate. I’m only showing a couple of representative exhibits here on the blog, but there were many, many more.
Flight suits, a uniform, and other militaria make for a colorful photo.An M1903 .32 ACP Colt. I had one of these years ago.
The Warhawk Museum is located at 201 Municipal Drive in Nampa, Idaho, about 15 minutes from downtown Boise. It costs $15 to get in (and it may well be the best $15 you’ll ever spend). Vets, Seniors, and active duty military get a discount.
You can rent the indoor Museum display area for weddings and other events. My youngest daughter had her wedding at the Chino Planes of Fame Museum (a vintage aircraft museum) and it was an awesome event. These places make for cool venues; if I was a young guy getting married I’d consider it.
Talk about a hidden gem and a great destination: The Yanke Motor Museum in Boise, Idaho is about as good as it gets. There’s precious little information on the Internet about it, but trust me, it’s worth seeing. It’s not widely publicized and you can’t just roll up and visit its treasures; admission is by appointment only. My advice is to make the run to Boise and make the effort to get an appointment. The Yanke Motor Museum contains a world class automobile, motorcycle, tractor, and musical instrument collection.
A 1924 Packard convertible is one of the first vintage cars you encounter upon entering the Yanke Motor Museum.
As you know from reading this blog, I’m a big fan of car and motorcycle museums, and I never heard of the Yanke Motor Museum. It’s the only automotive museum in Idaho, and it never appeared on my radar before. I only came across it because I Googled “motorcycle museums in Boise.” Some of the Internet services won’t tell you that it’s by appointment only, but that’s the deal. Further complicating things, some of the GPS programs get the directions wrong. We used Waze to find the address and it worked.
There is a lot to see at the Yanke Motor Museum. We were lucky: Sue and I had the place to ourselves. We made an appointment and new good buddy Tyler (one of the curators) pulled up just as we entered the parking lot. Tyler was in a silver Subaru WRX, so I liked him right away. He opened the place just for us, and then he had to walk around turning all the lights on (and he flipped a lot of switches to do that). The place is huge.
A 1957 Cadillac. This is a beautiful car. I was 6 years old when it rolled off the assembly line.
I didn’t quite know what to expect because when we entered the main display area (after walking through a collection of musical instruments), I at first saw mostly automobiles. They were impressive and they were plentiful (see the Packard and drop-dead-gorgeous pink Cadillac above), with the odd motorcycle parked here and there. There was a Ural and a couple of Harley dressers, so I asked Tyler if there were more motorcycles. He smiled and pointed me toward another hall. Wow, were there ever! In fact, my back started bothering me lugging my boat-anchor Nikon D810 and 24-120 lens around to get the photos you see here, but it was worth it.
A Ural with a sidecar. Good buddy Dan owns one of these.
Before we got to the main motorcycle hall, we saw several more interesting motorcycles and the odd trike or two. There was a ’37 SS Jag replicar. It was flanked by a stunning cherry red Harley Servi-Car and a custom flathead Ford trike with Offenhauser heads.
Sweet!A fire engine red Harley Servi-Car.A flathead Ford trike. Check out the front brake.A custom in every sense of the word. The workmanship is stunning.Offenhauser heads. Offy also made complete 4-cylinder engines. Think decades of Indy 500 dominance.One last view of the flattie trike. Even the tires are beautiful.
Susie and I were blown away by the classic cars and the multiple motorcycles we encountered at the Yanke Motor Museum, and we hadn’t even made it to the motorcycle room yet. In the main hall, classic motocross and other bikes were scattered among the cars and other vehicles.
I once had a friend who thought a Bultaco was a Mexican food item. No kidding.
There was a flatbed truck with a Harley XLCR Cafe Racer, a vintage Indian Chief, and a vintage Harley.
I could have bought a new ’77 XLCR just like this one for $3,000, but I couldn’t justify spending $3,000 for a motorcycle back then. I don’t know who I thought I had to justify it to.A 1941 Indian Chief. Those fenders!
When we entered the motorcycle room, it was like being a kid in a candy shop. No, wait, I take that back. I used to be a kid in a candy shop six or seven decades ago. This was better. Just about everything imaginable was there if you are looking for cool motorcycles. Desert racers, WW II military Harley 45s, modern bikes, custom bikes, vintage Harleys, vintage Indians, scooters, Whizzers, vintage flat track and flathead Harley race bikes, and more. The Nikon was giving me fits weighing heavily on my lower back, and leaning over to get macro engine shots was getting downright painful, but I didn’t care. Susie had an Advil, I swallowed it, and the photo safari continued. I was on a mission. Anything and everything for our ExNotes readers…that’s our mantra.
In the motorcycle room…check out the Army 45s.A 1934 74-cubic-inch Harley VLD flathead, another stunning motorcycle.A Lambretta!Whizzers! Carlos, take note!Harley-Davidson flathead flat track racing motorcycles.Ah, the patina! Check out the steel shoe!Flathead porn.An Army 45 in decidedly non-Army colors.
The Yanke Motor Museum also contained some cool military stuff, including Jeeps and a few cannons. Cannons!
A 1948 US Army Jeep.A 25mm Hotchkiss cannon.The same action as a Ruger No. 1. A classic falling block concept.Another falling block artillery action.A custom scope mount for direct fire. This thing must be a hoot to shoot. Folks at the Museum reload for it.
I thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, but when I peeked into an adjoining room I spotted several 37mm and 25mm projectiles in various stages of the reloading process. Imagine that: Reloading for your own cannons! There’s no doubt about it: The folks who own and run the Yanke Motor Museum are our kind people.
Ron and Linda Yanke started the Museum. An extremely successful entrepreneur, Ron is unfortunately no longer with us. The Yanke family started the business empire with a machine shop. Ron Yanke expanded the business holdings to sawmills, an air charter service, a firefighting equipment manufacturer, extensive timberland holdings, several real estate companies, a mechanical contracting firm, a manufactured housing company, and a couple of banks. He was one of three original investors in Micron Technology, the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer.
I don’t know what it is about prisons that fascinates us. Susie and I have been on three prison tours (the Old Idaho State Penitentiary, the topic of this blog, is our third; the earlier two were Alcatraz and the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville). It’s not just us; abandoned prison tours are a hot ticket and Hollywood loves to do prison movies. The Shawshank Redemption was a hugely successful film (I watch it every time it’s on the tube), and Netflix is currently running Orange is the New Black (don’t waste your time on that one). Google the topic “Why we love prison shows” and the Internet will light up with underlying psychological reasons: The ultimate loss of control, the inherent brutality of man, surviving after losing everything, etc. But that’s enough armchair psychology…let’s get on to the topic of this blog: The Old Idaho State Penitentiary.
The entrance to the Old Idaho State Prison. The warden’s office was immediately on the left as you entered.
Idaho (actually, Idaho convicts) built the Old Idaho State Penitentiary in 1870. The construction was sandstone mined from the hills surrounding Boise. It held prisoners for 101 years, and during that time, this old prison had its share of escapes, executions, and experiences that make for an interesting tour. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Old Idaho State Penitentiary is that the grounds are so beautiful. It’s more like a botanical garden than a prison.
The landscaping is magnificent. Wandering the grounds, it almost feels like a college campus (with, of course, solitary confinement and Death Row).Another scene from inside the prison grounds.
One of our fellow tourists asked our guide, Eric Overzet, if the grounds were as nice when prisoners were housed there as they are today. Eric told us they were.
The first structure we entered was the prison’s multi-purpose building. It served a number of functions, including being a shirt factory, a shoe shop and then a shoe factory, a bakery, a license plate shop, the laundry, a hobby room, and a loafing room. It also housed the prison showers.
Inside the prison’s multi-purpose building. The prison showed movies here, too.
The prison’s shoe and bakery outputs were particularly successful after they started selling to the public, and to hear Eric tell it, they made a hell of a product for a very low price. The Idaho State Penitentiary manufactured shoes that cost a fraction of what store-bought shoes cost, and they lasted much longer. The shoes were so good the prison worked itself out of the market. They saturated the Boise shoe market and the business folded. Other ventures were more successful. When the prison bakery started selling donuts to the public, word quickly spread that they were the best donuts in town. The prison produced 4,000 donuts a day. People lined up outside the prison to buy them. A lot of donut sales were to police officers (some of whom probably put the guys who made the donuts in prison).
Next we toured the cell blocks. Things looked bleak. You wouldn’t want to live in a place like this.
Eric Overzet sharing stories of prison operation and famous prisoners.The different halls had different kinds of cells. This cell housed four people.
We saw the levers that opened and closed the cell doors. Seeing them was like seeing a scene out of a movie. As a retired mechanical engineer and all-around gearhead, I enjoyed seeing the mechanism. Everything operated mechanically; there was no software or any of the other intangible things we would use today.
The locking devices were patented in 1897. The Pauly Jail Building Company is still in business today.Levers for opening selected cell doors or all cell doors at the same time.
There are five prison halls in the Idaho State Penitentiary, and several different forms of “special housing” (i.e., solitary confinement). I couldn’t remember all the ones Eric described, but one stuck in my mind: A set of underground 4 ft by 4 ft by 4 ft cubes for solitary confinement. There were hatches at ground level through which a prisoner entered. It was hot when we were there. I can’t imagine what it must have been like in those little boxes in Idaho in the summer, nor can I imagine what it must have been like in the freezing winter months. In 1909, inspectors from the State of Idaho decided these 4 ft cubes were too cruel for human confinement and directed the prison to stop using them. The prison told the inspectors they agreed, and then they continued to use the little punishment boxes until well into the 1950s.
One of the “dark cells.”Another set of solitary confinement cells were known as “Siberia.”One of the “Siberia” cells.Another set of punishment cells.No shoes, no shirt, no service, and most definitely, no loafing.
As one might expect, the execution chamber and Death Row are areas that get the most attention. When the Old Idaho State Prison was in operation, hanging was the only execution method. Idaho uses lethal injection today, but when good old-fashioned hanging was in vogue the execution chamber was designed around it. The noose hung from a mount in the ceiling, with the trap directly below it. I shot these photos from the witness gallery window.
Death Row, coming up.Idaho uses lethal injection today; there are currently 8 men and 1 woman on Idaho’s Death Row. The modern Idaho State Penitentiary is just south of Boise; the women’s prison is in Pocatello, Idaho. When the Old Idaho State Penitentiary was in business, both men and women were imprisoned there (separately, of course).The noose hung from this fixture.The trap that dropped the condemned to their death.
You may want to go back up to the featured photo at the top of this blog. Old Tony Grooms (featured in that picture) was a real bad boy. There were several placards explaining the crimes of occupants in different cells and what they did while in prison. Old Tony had acid splashed in his eyes and convinced the prison guards he was blind. The guards figured it out when nurses were in the prison for a medical emergency and they saw Tony following them with his eyes. I can’t tell that story as well as our guide Eric can; that’s a good reason for you to visit the Old Idaho State Penitentiary.
We enjoyed the Old Idaho State Prison tour. You can also do a self-guided tour, but we were lucky. We arrived just as Eric’s tour was about to start. My advice is to go for the guided tour. Eric was a magnificent guide and entertaining storyteller, and he knows a lot about the place. We would not have gotten as much out of the tour just wandering around by ourselves.
The Old Idaho State Penitentiary is in Boise’s Historical District at 2445 Old Penitentiary Road. Admission is only $8. The guided tour is another $2, and that’s a hell of a deal.
Foggy and cold in the morning. I broke down and bought a burrito from the Flag and Wicket down in the paddock. Everything was soaking wet and I didn’t feel like making food. The Rag and Basket has good burritos and they are nearly the same price as a Quart-o-Grease from McDingies.
The Rag and Moose down in the paddock has good eats for not too much money.
I don’t think they can run in the wet fog but the rider’s meeting is on. We will see if they wait a bit.
The trials sections were mostly tight corners in uneven terrainThis never happened historically but I’m letting it go.
When you’re at the track you’ll need to be somewhat self sufficient as the only place nearby is the Toro restaurant and they close early. There a little food store towards Salinas but before the Toro where you can get stuff. Forget going west to Monterey, it’s sort of touristy and unless you’re going to the Aquarium or cannery row it’s a food desert. It could be that I don’t know where to look.
I think it will be a short day today. The fog is still thick, if a bike went off the course you’d never know it.
Foggy conditions delayed the racing for a bit. AHRMA still managed to run a full slate
I wandered over to the trials sections and they were ok, the fog doesn’t bother trials riders as they only need to see a few feet ahead. There was a triple log obstacle that I saw only one guy on a TY175 clear. Everyone else dabbed. The trials was held down in a little valley and the sections led a short way up the sides. Very tight turns and soft sand caught out many competitors.
Two old codgers on two old bikes. Still flogging. Fulton and Roper.
Back on the track the fog cleared and AHRMA ran 14 more multi-class races. You get your money’s worth for sure.
I’ve decided to let the whole historic thing go. What AHRMA really does is provide sanctioned races for orphan motorcycles, both new and old. Even 160-175 Honda twins.
Sunday the campground empties out and the squirrels take over. You’ll need to keep that tent closed or they’ll rob you blind. I like the Sunday night, it’s quiet and you get to be alone for a few hours.
The wind never let up the entire day and I got sort of tired watching so many races. It was dry and around race 12 I decided to load Godzilla in the truck before the plastic bed liner got slippery with dew.
All in, I’ve been here four days and it’s time to break camp and get back home. I highly recommend attending the AHRMA either as a spectator or a competitor. Just bring plenty of water and any food you might like to eat.
I’ll be back next year. Maybe bring the RD350 to see how it runs at sea level.
