1 15 1 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/76642/archive/files/c8bfa5b8f958f57b89b284ee400c20a1.mp3?Expires=1777507200&Signature=uT%7E9GpJjrS8i6GxlDbqUEaEHak5Ysy-KkeKmsc3j1sjIHoPJ2KWR8JVsAGUvI%7EF4tO9fuB6WiqyiLnrFvoC9UXlERdZDPNjJdsIf3EnFHE124Z68h8tzhqNil5B4JhHomrlr0aorconluZU628Z99WR%7Er9u8O1%7EN%7EQhFlNkGZQfz02fwHQd1Pyqc7uacOJCdY6CYZj3AOfNgQINzMbW-8-LcRtbVKCaeQOlId6B-0pnidfsTngxrNCZBhRe79FkfZk8ZmZAtdtmUq4ckCt7vDg-4ajhXDU60-lHI3dRCMW-ClI-O9jnbXsQa7tQ7xykUN2Ne3-vTqxVu%7EEGUe3TlrQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM af49826296032cbd0729144b3cfb1cb5 PDF Text Text KEN HARWARD: Okay, this is an oral history interview with Sumner Johnson as the narrator and Ken Harward as the interviewer. And we’re meeting here on May 16, 1985. That’s working. Okay. SUMNER JOHNSON: Did you give the introductions to it? KEN: Yes SUMNER: All right. Well, I don’t know where to start, Ken, maybe other than just a little family history. My grandfather and grandmother started their life in Nebraska. In fact, Ord, Nebraska, and Alonso J. Perkins, although he went by AJ Perkins, [00:01:00] he was a farmer and a banker back there. And he sold out, apparently, at the tail end of World War I and came to Idaho in late 1917. My aunt tells about the amount of money he sold the bank for, but I can’t believe it. She said that he sold it for half million dollars, but a half a million dollars in 1917 kind of staggers me, so I’m not sure that’s the correct figure. And he bought 80 acres out here, west of Nampa on Midland Boulevard, which is now the OK Subdivision, bounded on the north by [00:02:00] West Flamingo, and bounded on the east by Midland Boulevard. And that two-story brick house there that sits north of that mobile home court that’s on the property is a house that he had built. In fact, he shipped all the material and the carpenter and everybody from Nebraska because he didn’t figure anybody in Idaho was competent to build it for him. KEN: About what year would that home have been built? SUMNER: Well, I suppose it would have been in 1918 or thereabouts, shortly after he came out. And then, he bought a 21-acre piece that’s on the northwest corner of Midland Boulevard and Caldwell Boulevard, which is now I believe, [00:03:00] the Keener Industrial Park Subdivision. And the house that he had built there was a cobblestone and brick house that was just tore down a few years ago, prior to the Skipper’s Fish and Chip Establishment being built on it. I was real busy at the time, but I regret that I didn’t go out there now and get some historical items from it, but you know, you look back at those things you should have done. And my granddad, he was a great one to raise fancy, I believe they were Percheron horses, and Jersey cows, and Poland China hogs, and all kinds of livestock, [00:04:00] a large part of it in fruit trees. And of course, as kids we’d go over there, and that was great to get the cherries and peaches and apples and so forth. And he had a garden with Filbert nuts, and English walnuts, and things that are not common around here. And so, it’s quite an occasion to go to Grandmother’s for a Sunday get together because my mother, with her five sisters and one brother, and so of course, it was always a big gathering. KEN: The 21-acre farm there, was that for the orchard, the fruit trees, there in that? SUMNER: About half of it was pasture, and about half of it was fruit trees. He had a great good barn, and it was a fairly fancy place. He had said horses and registered Jersey bulls, [00:05:00] and provides breeding services around. Then, my parents got acquainted while attending University of Idaho at Moscow. And see, my dad was born in Idaho at Eagle Rock, which now is Idaho Falls, in 1896, and helped there with his father, and of course, there was 11 children in his family, eight boys and three girls. And you’d be interested in know, when he was a boy, he had eight years of perfect attendance at the LDS Sunday school. (laughter) (inaudible) but anyway. When he graduated from University of Idaho, he and my mother, Leta [00:06:00] Firkins, were married. That’d be in 1920. KEN: Now, what did your dad major in? SUMNER: Agriculture. KEN: And his name was Ambrose. SUMNER: Ambrose W. Johnson. And they came here to Nampa and were married here. And by then, Granddad had built the house on the 21-acre parcel. So, then my folks moved into the big two-story brick house on the 80-acre place. And Dad farmed that till probably the fall of 1925. So, then, I was born in October of 1924. And then the year later, we moved to an 80-acre ranch about two miles south of Star. And Dad bought the place, [00:07:00] and then of course, that was in the heydays after World War I, and he got caught in the Depression of the ’30s and actually last place, had to let it go back. He continued to rent it until the winter of ’34-’35, which at the time he bought the place out just north of Nampa, where the Upland Industries Industrial Park is, the 70 acres in there. And we moved in by horse and wagon, mostly from Star to there in 1935. And of course, I was just 10 years old, but I can remember taking off from the place with a team of horses on a hay wagon and taking a load of material over to the new place. In fact, I still remember, [00:08:00] out just north of Cherry Lane on Franklin Road about a quarter of a mile there’s four beautiful, I think, they’re split leaf white birch. They’re now great, huge trees, but they were young, modest sized trees then, and I’ve always been impressed with them. But most people have trouble dying around here but for some reason, those have survived. KEN: Over the years, many years. SUMNER: And anyway, Dad then farmed that place, and it turned out to be a successful venture for him. I was in the fifth grade that winter when we finally moved there in February of ’35 [00:09:00] and then of course transferred to Lakeview School. Before that, I’d gone to the what they called the Lower Fairview Grade School out near where we lived at Star. That school is not there anymore. In grade school, I was quite an athletic type, but my mother wouldn’t let me play football, and come along in the sixth grade, I remember we went to the Nampa High School football game at the old rodeo grounds, the same place it is now, but it was an altogether different bleacher setup. And the stands, [00:10:00] the grandstands were on the south side and there was a few portable bleachers on the north side. And us kids kind of hung around the portable bleachers, and I remember at halftime, the sixth-grade kids from Lakeview got out there, playing around with a football in the field you know the way kids do. Of course, now, they won’t let them, but back in those days they would. In some way, the ball got tossed to me and I ran the full-length field, outrunning everybody. And Leo Matthews who was the coach of the sixth-grade football team in Lakeview, he cornered me the next day and said I was going out for football. And over my mother’s objection, I ended up being a football player. Kind of. KEN: Well, what are some of your earliest recollections of school there, at Lakeview? Now, you started there in the third grade. SUMNER: Fifth grade. KEN: The fifth grade you started. Do you remember any of the teachers? SUMNER: Old [00:11:00] Flossie Stark was my sixth-grade teacher, and a fella by the name of Earl Cook was possibly my fifth-grade teacher. But Flossie Of course, ended up being the librarian at Nampa High School for a number of years, and in fact, there’s a Flossie Stark Library out in... What’s the name of it? KEN: Midland Manor? SUMNER: The retirement center, there on 12th Avenue. KEN: Oh, that’s the Sunny Ridge Manor. SUMNER: Yes, Sunny Ridge Manor. Anyway, and she was a very, very influential teacher and a good teacher, one of the better ones. I always had fond memories [00:12:00] for her efforts to get the most out of me. KEN: At the time, you were then living on the farm. How’d you get into school each day? Walk? SUMNER: Well, they had school buses in those days, and it came right by the place. And I would be the last one, practically, to get on because we were about a mile and a half from school, or whatever the distance was. And then when we’d go home at night, I was lucky, they’d reverse, and I’d be the first one to get off. But again, as I got older, I wouldn’t be caught dead riding the school bus. That was an insult. And so, in the grade school, I rode the bike in good weather. But in junior high school and [00:13:00] high school, if at all possible, I’d ride my bicycle, clear from there to Central, and then of course, this site here where the city hall is now, because it was the old high school when I was in high school, sleet, snow, whatever it is, I’d ride that bicycle before being caught on that school bus. Only sissies rode the school bus in those days. Going back to when we lived out by Star, one of the things I can remember there was a gravelly hill that’s about a half mile north of what is now Highway 20, because we lived on the southeast corner of Highway 20 and Star Road. And in those days, in the wintertime, when the ground was frozen and [00:14:00] so forth, you’d haul gravel, pit run gravel, and the wagons they used were kind of a box type wagon, but in the bottom of it, they had, as I remember, they were two-by-fours that were just laid loose through the bottom on crossing stringers, and you’d load the gravel in with a shovel by hand, and then when you get back to the ranch and want to gravel the driveway or whatever you’re graveling, you’d pull up with your team and stop the wagon, and then you’d work those bottom two-by-fours up, lifting up on them, and pretty soon, the gravel would fall through, so you didn’t have to unload by shovel. It would fall through. It was a bottom dump, so to speak. I don’t remember ever seeing one of those in a historical setting. KEN: I’ve never heard of one. SUMNER: So, that’s [00:15:00] kind of an interesting sidelight. Of course, now I had two older brothers. Wayne was three years older, and Gene was 15 months older. And things were tough. And I didn’t know what a new pair of britches was. I got the hand me down britches with patches on them by the time they got to me. But I didn’t know any difference and I was happy. And of course, in the summertime, barefoot continuously, the whole summer. I could run across the hay stubble field by fall, you know, because you had such calluses on the bottom of your feet. It was just one of those things. Then, in, I think it would be about the Christmas of 1933, the one Christmas present that I can remember the most, the folks had absolutely no money. We had food, raised it, Mom canned, [00:16:00] and rendered lard, and cooked. I mean, we butchered our own beef and butchered our own pork, and Dad would cut them up. And it was very common. But they didn’t have any money. And apparently, the day before Christmas, the folks went to Boise, and they found a broken toy that was a little steam engine type thing. It was round at the base, maybe about three inches in diameter, and came up as a cylinder, and on the top, it had a flywheel and it had a little petcock that you could turn, and so, when steam was generated, steam would come out there and make a whistling effect. And down at the base, inside that cylinder, [00:17:00] was a little place to put, I guess it’d be a kerosene lamp burner thing in it. And anyway, that flywheel had been broken and Dad figured out that he could weld it. They bought it at a very great discount because was broken, and brought it home, and that night, welded or soldered the thing back together, and that was the one toy for us three boys on Christmas morning. And of course, I was only eight or nine years old, and my mother was scared to death of me using it. But Wayne, my older brother would actually like the matches, and get the burner going, and put the water in, [00:18:00] and then that flywheel would get to going, and then we’d open that petcock, and the thing would whistle. Greatest toy I’ve ever had in my life. That was our sole toy for the three of us there, that Christmas. Far cry from nowadays. KEN: Yeah, sure is. SUMNER: So, that’s just kind of an indication of what you did. You didn’t have TV and so forth. And of course, I learned to play cards, pinochle, at an early age because in the wintertime, that’s what you would do. And we had a neighbor friend that would come down, and in the process, out of the whole family, we’d end up with four of us playing cards. That was a wintertime pastime. Then, another thing I can remember distinctly is, you see, we didn’t have refrigerators in the summertime. And we all had ice boxes. [00:19:00] You know what an icebox is? KEN: I do but go ahead and explain it. I’d like you... SUMNER: Well, it looks about like a refrigerator, except there’s one cubicle that you put a block of ice in, and then there’s a place for, as it melts, which it will, the water drains out, and you have a discharge out to, in those days, we didn’t have a whole lot of sophisticated indoor plumbing, but you’d drain it to wherever your sink drain went. And, anyway, we were about 1,000, maybe 800 feet, from Star Road. And the iceman’s route would be heading north on Star Road. He didn’t use Highway 20. It wasn’t there then, of course. And [00:20:00] so, mom had a sign that she’d put in the winter that had, in big red letters, “I-C-E,” on white background and when she wanted ice, she’d put that in the window, and of course, then, the iceman would turn down our road and deliver his ice. KEN: And was that a horse drawn wagon? SUMNER: No, that was a motor vehicle in those days. We had no Model-T, then. And my mother used to drive then, but she had a wreck or something, I can’t remember, it wasn’t too serious, but that would have probably been before ’35, and she has, to this day, never driven a car again. She’s petrified of it and will refuse to. And she’s still alive, but if she travels anyplace, [00:21:00] somebody has to take her. KEN: Where did they get the ice? Where’d they store the ice in the summer? What did they put it in? SUMNER: Well, you see, the icehouse was, the best I can remember, the old brewery over on Ninth Avenue North, there on the south... KEN: The Overland Brewery? SUMNER: Yeah. They had an icehouse there. And I remember after we moved to North of Nampa, we’d go there and get ice. And they made it and manufactured it there, you know. Now, up at places like McCall, in fact, there’s an old timer up there, still alive, I can’t think of his name now that tells it, that worked, and that was his business going out on the Payette Lakes in the winter and cutting blocks of ice, and then hauling them and they stored them in some kind of [00:22:00] – KEN: Insulated – SUMNER: -- setting, yeah. And of course, they’d put them in there at way below freezing temperature, the natural weather temperature, and then, they would apparently keep all summer long and they’d be able to supply ice to people. Of course, that was before my era. Down in here, the ice we talked about was manufactured by some electrical process. KEN: Well, what were the streets like here, your earliest recollections of the streets in Nampa? SUMNER: Okay. Well, I’ve got an unusual recollection. We moved there on Franklin Road, which at that time did not come on into 11th Avenue, as you realize. See, that was built in the late ’50s [00:23:00] or early ’60s, that section through there from the interchange at I-84 on in. And it used to turn around what is Third Avenue and come in on Sixth Street North there, at I guess it’d be Fourth Avenue probably now, I’m not sure. Anyway, it used to wind around and take a curve there at our corner and go due north. Well from our corner -- well, I guess all of that, was built as a federal aid secondary job and started in the summer of ’34 and wasn’t finished till the fall of ’35. And they paved that section road by our house on September 5th [00:24:00] my mother’s birthday 1935. And I’ve always remembered that because it was my mother’s birthday, and the dust was so terrible, and she considered that her birthday present. And then, of course, the streets in Nampa, they had a pavement coat on them in a form, and I don’t know how it was developed in those days. Now, the old Warrenite pavement in downtown Nampa, that was done in the late ’20s and Caldwell Boulevard, clear out, I think clear to Caldwell, from Nampa to Caldwell, was done with that Warrenite process. And they’d go in and fracture rock out of a quarry, and it was fairly large, not uncommon to have two-inch material, [00:25:00] and it would be placed by hand, and then they would go through a process of pouring Warrenite-type asphalt on it, and then putting fine materials in it and wedging it together. And of course, the street project this past year downtown tore out a bunch of that old Warrenite. It lasted all these years. It’s amazing. KEN: Yeah, that was a pretty thick base there, a lave rock base right now, at the bottom. SUMNER: And the real benefit is it was porous enough that any moisture that got in it went through it, and so, you didn’t have any serious problems of frost or excess moisture. A very expensive method because it was done by hand so much, you can’t use okay. And [00:26:00] then as I got involved in the city situation, I discovered that the Nampa Highway District was originally created and did take care of all the city streets, as near as I can tell. I haven’t researched the record. But then, when World War II came along, nothing was done on local roads in any place, probably, in the United States. And then when they came back, after World War II, as near as I can tell, the highway district had gotten in a good habit of not doing anything on the city streets and still do. Now granted, their function is farm to market Road. That’s a kind of a pet peeve of mine, I might add, that they should be doing the farm to market roads in the city limits because we’re part of their district. But they don’t. KEN: Right, [00:27:00] the city limits is part of (inaudible). SUMNER: And probably, someday, the city ought to get this annexed from them, and it would be an economic benefit for the city at least. But as such, they weren’t doing anything. And then, the city had to develop a system to maintain the residential streets, because the highway district had apparently been maintaining them. And of course, the old sprinkling tax was a tax that they put on businesses and property, and they would sprinkle with water, horse drawn teams. I can remember those as a kid, seeing them go through town before the streets were paved. And so, then, after the war, World War II, it was necessary for the city, [00:28:00] the, to create a street department which they did. And they started to maintain the streets. And the highway district was still working with the city and doing the farm to market stuff on a cooperative basis. But as that finally got into the period when I went to work for the city, why, they were starting to practically do nothing. And the city, then, had their own street department. And they had put on a tax for street and road construction, and apparently, they kept it on during the World War II. And they were able to build up quite a cash situation, where George Shellaberger, who was the city clerk, had it going so that he could pay cash for everything, didn’t have to worry about getting the tax receipts in before and borrowing money against them and so forth. I went to work for the city in [00:29:00] ’49 as assistant city engineer and the thing I found is that the records were a shamble as far as engineering office. Nobody had kept the sewer-service connection book up to date, and there was hundreds of those that we tracked down through the city clerk’s records and got recorded. And the maps, nobody had kept them up to date and they were a shambles. And we logged and recorded in an orderly fashion so that we could find the old sewer records and the old water records and so forth. And the water department maps hadn’t been kept up for a number of years. So, we had to work with the water superintendent to get those so we could record those. And in the process, they started to do a [00:30:00] little street construction Sure. But they really weren’t too well organized on it. The mayor, Peter Johnson, he was not a businessman, so to speak. And so, the economics of how to leverage the city’s street department was not his forte. And so, the streets really didn’t start to be a real good improvement to the city until Preston Cappell came in as mayor. And he was mayor, maybe six years. And during that era, he used up all the surplus, so to speak, and spent about twice as much money for street construction as he took in because he used up all the surplus and was able to get a lot of street work done in the old residential part of town. [00:31:00] I could be a little bit critical if you want to look back, because they didn’t put enough base in. And so, they haven’t lasted as well as they should have. But on the other hand, he was able to spread it farther and get all the potholes. KEN: Up to that time, were there mostly dirt streets in residential areas? SUMNER: Well, they were dirt with some kind of a strip of oil. KEN: Dust oil? SUMNER: Yeah, as I remember, it was a hard surface. It wasn’t like a dust oil. But it was only about 20 feet wide. Curb lines were out 40 feet wide. And so, there was a dirt shoulder between the edge of the paving, which was some kind of a penetrating oil with sand on it or something. And very [00:32:00] poor drainage. Drainage was a disaster. And nobody really addressed it until we got involved as city engineers, under contract from Johnson and Underkofler in 1957. And one of the early things we did was start a street program, as I mentioned, too, the other day, developing a five-year program. And then, the more streets we paved, the more drainage problems we created. So, we did a drainage study for the city. And there really was no way to fund it, because to do it as one project, we’d have to have a bond issue, but you can appreciate the only people who had problems are the ones who were in the low spots, the ones on the high ground, so to speak, they wouldn’t vote for [00:33:00] a storm drain systems because they didn’t have any problem. So, in those days, the city had, as I remember, some 30 -- well, I think they started out when we came as city engineers in ’57, I think they had like 35 or 36 employees in the street department. And through the process of efficiency, we got that down into the low twenties, as I recall, and did about twice as much work because we just got the thing organized better. But in the wintertime, we didn’t want to tear up residential streets and leave them a bog hole for people. So, we conceived with the council’s blessing to start the sections of the storm drainage system. And the street department, in the wintertime, would lay storm drain. Fortunately, we didn’t have winters like last winter, which here, [00:34:00] was terribly cold. We had fairly open winters. And after a number of six or eight years, they put in most elements of that storm drain system. And so, now that area is... KEN: Was that about the mid-50s? SUMNER: Yeah, that started probably in like ’58 or ’59, and then went on through into the mid-60s to finish it. Though it was a very efficient way, an economical way for the city to get a storm drain system, because they did have an extensive street department that up until then, wasn’t doing much in the wintertime. KEN: I’d like to get into more of your experience in the public works development, but let’s go back, because we left you personally back in Lakeview school, about the sixth grade or so. And of course, having been born in your grandfather’s house over where [00:35:00] now the Skipper’s restaurant is, and then going to Star, and then back to the farm there, just off Franklin. And a little more about your early childhood days in Nampa, sixth grade? SUMNER: Well, even before then I can remember coming to town and usually on Saturdays, with Dad, because that was farm day to come to town, you know. And where Firestone’s store is, there on the northwest corner of 14th Avenue and Second Street, there was some kind of a sale yard, a country sale yard where they’d sell livestock and people would bring their old used furniture, whatever it was. And Dad [00:36:00] would stop into the sale. And then catty corner from that was a feed store. I’m not sure it wasn’t Vale’s, but then and he’d stop into there to get the special mixes he might need for supplement for cattle feed, or calf feed, or pig feed, or something. And then, probably where Herb Carlson’s sports shop, or in that vicinity was the old Maclean’s hardware store, if I recall, and that was always a place that Dad had to stop, because of farm tools and so forth. And I’ve always had some inclination to like to browse through hardware stores and I [00:37:00] still do to this day. And I don’t know whether it’s because of that. And then another stop that we made is where the First Interstate Bank is, there on 11th and Third Street. That was the old Co-Op Oil gas station. And as a farmer, Dad was a member of that, and we stopped there. And then where Pioneer Federal is was the old Lindsay Ford garage. And Dad had Ford cars, and that was always one of the stops. I can remember those types of facilities very distinctly. The Subway there at 11th, for some reason, I don’t have a strong recollection of it. It was built in the mid or early ’30s, but for some reason that doesn’t ring a bell with me is as far as visually seeing it [00:38:00] go up. Now, when I was about in the seventh grade, I was going to Central, they built the gymnasium there as a WPA project. It actually was when I was in the sixth grade. And I can remember that we got out on the street, in I think it was in the fall of about 1936, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt came by in his car, and we all... KEN: Oh, he personally came through town. SUMNER: Yeah, came through town. And I suspect it had something to do with dedication of that gymnasium. The record might show, but at the time I didn’t realize, I just remember that we stood there, I think I stood on 14th, [00:39:00] just west of the Old Central School when he toured by. I can just vaguely remember that. And of course, when you’re in the grade school out there, Lower Fairview, the PTA was a big social event. And I think they’d have PTA one Friday night a month or something like that. And of course, as kids, we’d play, and run, and holler, and do everything but go to a PTA meeting. But one I can remember very, very bad situation at one PTA meeting were three of the sons of PTA members were in high school at the time, [00:40:00] one of the boys were able to get his folks’ car and they headed south on Star Road to come to Nampa. And that car had visors, or whatever you call them, over the headlights. And where the main line from Boise crosses Star Road there, it was on a fill. It wasn’t a smooth transition up like it is now. And those kids didn’t see the freight train going across the crossing, and they plowed... END OF RECORDING Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sumner Johnson Recording 1 of 6 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/76642/archive/files/7435a9ec194c2de9d0854e40094e62af.mp3?Expires=1777507200&Signature=ZR-vqRsP1T8ex0m5csuJZRcaM3nanruNaC%7ENwDU9dQh0ARTRqvrnRbeiOrShNBTbUu2e8qg77QYGaGYQBdDHNRVrC1k-9sCVEcrbmhl2KyHtUd%7EjTG0pGwsMswdCqGuN-ROH5JbDPpNDyerWbwrDHhjh93uTv7OePqtrjo6teGdHRQ2sJRQzcSARjJATGRCu60fYdWdA8ZVrVtL363D2dG4OvMHxT81fQgUYj28fDyLVwCC4LLZIeA0o1TT32VQ7a1%7EyhPTO91xR15P6BQnl7yE7xRCsckzX1hmhkdfh3t6zbjb1vKbcmJfkdBoqdwKdKHtvUfrq1D5WnYUr%7Eid9Bw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c11415d311fb822f01994cdd55b3fddc PDF Text Text SUMNER: And they plowed into that train. And the gas tank was in front of the windshield in those days, and it exploded and caught fire. And of course, that was the end of the three boys. And of course, that news came back to the PTA before it was over, and of course, that was just a nightmare. KEN: Oh, a real tragedy, yeah. SUMNER: Another thing that that was asked, out there, The Phyllis Canal, the swimming hole in the Phyllis Canal was about a mile from our house. And of course, we would go down to that swimming hole, where there was a ladder, and swim. And that would be in the summertime, after we got the haying done, or the threshing done, [00:01:00] or whatever the field work was, why, we’d go down there and go swimming. That was the form of a bath. And I don’t remember it, but my dad and people tell me that we used to swim in Boise River too, which is about a mile and a half north of us. And I don’t know how big it was in those days, but it wasn’t dammed up like it is now, but I supposedly swam across the Boise River when I was seven years old. I don’t remember it, of course. And then, when we moved here north of Nampa, that Phyllis Canal is right by the place, of course, and we swam in it every day as kids also, and believe it or not, went over to Mason Creek, which is in an area, which would be north of the interstate highway now. And we had a swimming hole there that we swam in. And it was... KEN: That [00:02:00] must have been one of the big summertime pastimes, recreations, swimming in the swimming hole. SUMNER: Oh, yes. Yeah, and laying around in the dust. And of course, quite frankly, the swimming suits were not vogue. (laughter) KEN: Well, those things you could do without, because you didn’t have them. SUMNER: Yeah, so we’d... Some of the other things that we did, we pulled our pranks too. As I got older, the neighbors would have cherry trees, we’d have to slip down and eat a few cherries. I can honestly say that we didn’t destroy, like some. I’ve raised apples and I’ve had kids get in apple fights with my apples, but what we went out and picked, we put our mouths. And then we’d [00:03:00] do the same with the apples. And my granddad of course, living over there where he lived, a guy by the name of Mossman lived on the east side of Midland Boulevard in what is the old Stan Keim place. And he had a watermelon patch where the Press Tribune facilities is now, that field, clear over to US-30, as far as that goes. And I remember the big boys telling about trying to steal his watermelons and he’d come out with his shotgun and pelt them salt pellets. But I never was brave enough to get involved in that kind of excursion. We’d even go down, a guy had a bunch of honey beehives and we’d slipped down there when they were kind of dormant, and [00:04:00] pull out one of those honeycombs and get us some bread. And we’d do our share of the pranks. One time, we got stung and my mother wondered, what happened to my cheek? Well, my friend’s elbow hit me there. I don’t think she believed me, but at least I thought I had her believe me. KEN: What was it like at Central, now that was called the junior high? SUMNER: Yeah, it was the seventh, eighth and ninth grade. KEN: What are some of your recollections there, and some of the teachers you had? SUMNER: Well, Vernon Woodman was math teacher, a very excellent teacher, somebody I’ve always admired and appreciated. I remember one day -- math was kind of an easy subject for me, and I enjoyed it, [00:05:00] and one day he called me up the room and gave me the key to his house. He called me up, he gave me a key to his house, and he had a little diagram drawn out, and I got on the bike and pedaled over to his house, wherever it was, and went in, and turned off the electric stove, because he’d left at noon and forgot to turn the stove off on something that his wife had cooking, and he was supposed to turn it off. I can always remember that. But we had a playground there that was just gravel. And played, actually, tackle football, believe it or not. KEN: On a gravel field. SUMNER: Yeah, on sandy gravel and it would pure wear out the knees of your britches. KEN: I’ll bet it would. SUMNER: And then of course, the gym had been just completed. KEN: That must have been a major thing, [00:06:00] that gym. SUMNER: Yeah, and we just were we just thought we were in hog heaven because we had that wonderful gymnasium and played basketball and I remember shop classes down in the basement classrooms, under the stage. And we thought the dressing room were superb. By modern day standards, of course, they were very mediocre. But it was it was something as far as we were concerned. Bill Gillam was our principal. And he went from there to principal of the high school, and then I think he went to Emmet as superintendent, I believe. But he was a former football coach here that ended up in administration. KEN: Who were some of your classmates during a time that we might still know around [00:07:00] here? SUMNER: Well, Reid Faylor, Dr. Reid Faylor was a classmate; our dear friend Marguerite Brown, Marguerite Spencer, she and I are classmates. And then Bob Brown, who’s the realtor now, his folks were in the trucking business, then, he had followed that for a long time. Gil Keim was a classmate, he at Keim Packing company. And Cal Flora, who’s retired now from the telephone company. Bob DeCoursey, a farmer out northwest of Nampa here, classmate. KEN: What were some of the, [00:08:00] what I guess kids today would call the in things to do, kind of dress, the dances, the parties? SUMNER: Well, the in thing to do was to go down to Peter Pan at night, especially on weekends. And that’s where everybody congregated. It was an ice cream joint, about where -- what finance company is that right there, just east of the entrances to Schiller’s Law Offices, now? KEN: That’s Capital Escrow. Oh, around the corner. SUMNER: Back towards the alley. KEN: Yeah, that was Pacific Finance. SUMNER: Yeah, I think it was. KEN: Even better. SUMNER: Yeah. And that’s where the Peter Pan was, and that was the hangout spot. And I remember this friend of mine, Bill Hunter. Alex Hunter’s the former city councilman for years and president of the council, his son. They lived just north of us, [00:09:00] about 1,000 feet or so, just far enough away that we could holler and hear each other. We had to wait for the sound wave to carry, but we could communicate that way. Didn’t have phones, you’d holler. And he and I would go down there to the Peter Pan. And I didn’t know too much about what girls were in those days. And we would each order a quart brick of vanilla ice cream, and a spoon, and sit there and eat a whole quart of ice cream, when we were in high school, of course. But that was the gathering place. And then they had dances in junior high school, but I was just embarrassed, and two left feet, and everything else. And I never took up dancing, [00:10:00] never got the hang of it until I was well into my senior year in high school. KEN: What about sports? Were they a big thing in the high school, in junior high and high school? SUMNER: Yeah, well, that was a very important thing. We had a real competitive basketball situation, with Boise as our big competitor, of course, Caldwell. And of course, football, as ninth graders, we would come over to the high school and play on the fresh-soph team. But in the seventh and eighth grade, they really didn’t have any organized football. Like I said, it was out there, noontime, on the sand. And didn’t have any organized baseball for the junior high school. We played softball at noon time and so forth. KEN: See now, [00:11:00] let me just be sure I got the perspective on the time period. That would have been, you said ’36 was about the year that the gym was completed. SUMNER: Yeah. KEN: And that’s right in the heart of the Depression. What was the Depression like, as you recall it, here in Nampa, in those days? SUMNER: Well, of course, I was young. I didn’t know any difference because I always had plenty of food, being a farm family that raised food. KEN: And never having any money, so it was nothing different. SUMNER: Yeah, but I didn’t even know that we didn’t have any money. See, and I think of my grandmother. This is an interesting, I’ll just throw in a little philosophical situation here. See, my granddad died in about probably 1933 or ’34. And then it left my grandmother with -- [00:12:00] ad he’d got caught in the Depression, and the only thing he ended up left with was the 21-acre place. And nobody would buy it. There was no money. It finally sold, I think, for something like 5,000 dollars, the house, barn... KEN: The 21 acres? SUMNER: Yeah, that’s not a factual figure. It was a very, very low figure. KEN: Was that in the Depression, that she sold it? SUMNER: Yeah, or she had to sell it to have some money to live on, and she couldn’t run it, and so forth. Anyway, in Granddad’s will a lot of the stuff, believe it or not, went to kids and didn’t leave it to his wife. And she ended up penniless. And my mother was the only one of her daughters that she could get along with. One of them she wouldn’t even speak to. [00:13:00] Three of them, she could tolerate, or they could tolerate her, whichever way it was. So, she lived with us for a while, then she’d go to daughter number one, then she’d come back with us. And then she’d go to daughter number two, and then she’d come back to us, and she’d go to daughter number three, then she’d come back to us, and then she’d go back to daughter number one. It was a cycle about every three or four months. And I have, today, an old rocking chair of hers, that Dad and I moved about 100 times. And Dad always said that he was going to have that chair and she left for him, and then, he gave it to me. And I’m very proud of it. And I have my granddad’s old rolltop desk, too, that he bought 1907. I’m very proud of that. But anyway, here, [00:14:00] my grandmother ended up being penniless. Well, it was no problem around our place as far as shelter and food, but she didn’t have any money. And so, if she needed a new flannel nightgown or a new cotton dress, Mom had to come up with the dollar or whatever it was to go buy the material and they’d make it. And the point I’m making is that was when Social Security had its founding. And Social Security was not created to live in luxury, which lot of people think today that it is. It was created to live in dignity. If she’d had 10 dollars a month in those days, she could have lived in absolute dignity because she could live with us, and had her food and shelter, but she would have had money to buy an all-day sucker [00:15:00] for each one of the kids on their birthday. She had have 25 or 30 grandchildren. And she could buy a little bit of Christmas presents, and so forth. And it’s unfortunate that we’ve got to thinking that Social Security was designed so we could retire and live in the luxury that we couldn’t afford while we’re working. KEN: Yeah, that’s interesting. SUMNER: And I don’t know how anybody ever got the message that it was designed that way, because it was designed so you could live with dignity. KEN: That’s a good point. SUMNER: It’s unfortunate that we’ve got away from that. Of course, digression back again to those days, and this started when I was probably about 11 or 12 years old, but I think that’s when the 4-H age limit was. Dad was a 4-H leader, and I think I went in one year early, because of that. But you see, we had Jersey cattle and I raised those and had Poland [00:16:00] China pigs, and I worked in those, and we’d take to the Caldwell fair, over at Caldwell, it was held there at the armory, at the Old City Park. I don't know what they call it now, but they’re going up to the west of Caldwell, there. And that was a big highlight. And then the Nampa harvest festival had a little dairy show and so forth down in the old cavalry bar. But the harvest festival was on Main Street. And they’d set up all the booths right down there, right down Main Street there, First Street south, going from 11th Avenue, as I recall, down to 14th, maybe 15th and there, and then, [00:17:00] some on the side streets over to Second Street. And all the carnival activities, and that was a big deal for everybody go down, mill around, and throw at the bottles or whatever. But I always got involved in the 4-H dairy shows. And then the big thing was over to Western Idaho fair, in Boise, which used to be where there’s an industrial complex now and the interstate highway goes right through it, this side of Orchard Avenue, west of Orchard Avenue and south of US-30 or Fairview, there. And we’d stay there in the lofts of the dairy show barn for about a week. Our bedding up there, and we had straws, we didn’t have air mattress, so you’d put down straw, and then your bedding. And there was no way to keep that straw from [00:18:00] out of your sheets. It was a mess. But anyway, we wouldn’t have had it any other way, because that was the highlight of the year to go there and stay a week. And Dad would show quite a string of dairy cows too, and so, in the process, we’d stay there and run the string of cows while he’d go home and do the chores at home at night. And anyway. KEN: That’s interesting. SUMNER: Another thing that I did in those days, the Oddfellows Hall, I was a junior Oddfellow. And they had a pool room up there. I used to go up there and play pool by the hours. KEN: Is that in the same location? SUMNER: Same location. And I haven’t been up there for years, but they’re still in the same facility. I suppose they still got pool tables; I don’t know. [00:19:00] I haven’t been up there in so long. Then, when we got into high school -- well let me back up. Junior high school, you see the points for your letter... There was some kind of a letter system and then you could get chevrons that you could put on, that was a big thing, to get two or three of those, and then to get a star. Now, that was the ultimate. Well, you could get points by participating in sports, being on student council, making honor roll and so forth. So, that’s what the whole goal of my friends was, was to get as many points as possible so you could put it onto your school sweater and end up with that star. I never did make the star, [00:20:00] as I recall. There was only about two or three people that made the star. They started that at the beginning of the eighth grade, as I recall, and it was pretty tough in two years to make a star. Jackie Everly did, I remember. I don’t remember who else did. She ended up being student body president of the high school. She was student body president of her junior high school, too. Anyway, we moved on into high school and played sophomore football and was a scrub on the baseball team. And really, basketball was not my forte, but I did go out and was second stringer, and enjoyed it just because of the comrade, the fellas and that. KEN: Well, it sounds like there were enjoyable times. [00:21:00] And I guess history talks about the Great Depression and the tragedies that went along with that, but the survival of that was a lot in attitude, wasn’t it? You enjoyed those times and probably didn’t know. Did you, as a youngster, and as a student at the time, have a perception of a great economic tragedy across the land? SUMNER: No, no. Now, my folks probably did. They probably went through all kinds of mental anguish. KEN: Yeah, I’m sure they did. SUMNER: But we didn’t, like I say, as long as there was plenty of food, and we’d work, worked hard. When I was, like, 10 years old, I was the derrick boy on the haystack and operations. [00:22:00] And that means you lead the horse that would pull the cable that was hooked to the mechanism to the derrick that raised the hay up onto the stack. And so, all you had to do was lead the horse, but then, probably the time I was 14, or even sooner, I was out running the wagon. And we use slings, so it didn’t take a whole lot of strength to make the connection. And then probably at 15, I was probably running a bundle wagon on a threshing crew. And you got your two bits an hour, that was spending money. But you were happy. Now, [00:23:00] I suppose, if we’d have been down and out and had nothing to eat, that’d be a different situation. KEN: Well here at the high school where we’re sitting now, where city hall is, you attended classes right here in this location. What was it like? What were your high school days like? SUMNER: Well, it was always fun. I probably didn’t socialize as much as the average high school kid because I rode my bicycle something like a mile and a half, and I had morning, and I played in participated in football, basketball, and baseball, so after school you were occupied, fortunately. And I think that’s wonderful. Kids should be. So, I didn’t have a whole lot of free time, [00:24:00] because when I’d go home, I’d have to milk cows, and feed dogs, and stuff like that. And I’m somewhat envious of some of them my buddies because they’d tell about their big date tonight before something and I was home doing chores, but probably better off for it. And it was just a fun time. In fact, I think high school was -- my mother tells about college days being her most enjoyable days, but high school was my most enjoyable days. Just fun times. And I did have a setback in the fall of 1940. I had a mastoid operation in the back of my left ear and was in Samaritan Hospital for 30 days. And my mother just ran [00:25:00] across that bill. The total hospital bill was just over four dollars a day. And I’m on the hospital board now, and I’ll tell you, it’s a different world out there, now. KEN: Indeed, it is. Indeed, it is. SUMNER: The basic room is 215 dollars a day, and it’s going to go up. And that’s just the beginning of the charges you can get. Four dollars a day in 1940. KEN: Who were some of your teachers, you remember here at the high school? SUMNER: Well, Paul Jones was one of my teachers. He was a track coach, too. Annie Laurie Bird was, of course, famous here. But I never did have her. [00:26:00] And she told me that I was the only football captain that she never had as a student. But I never did have her. She was kind of prone to take care of the football boys, they tell me, but I didn’t have any trouble with study, so a teacher didn’t have to take care of me. But of course, Leo Matthews was in junior high school. I don’t think he was ever -- yeah, he eventually came to high school. Was he here, then? I don’t think he was. Doc Caldwell was my science and math teacher, Webster. And then, Dr. Lyle Stanford, who went to C of I and quite a noted teacher over there. While he was working towards the doctorate, he taught biology and sciences here and I had him. [00:27:00] He was an excellent teacher. And Evelyn Haglund, God bless her, I loved the dear lady, but oh, she was English teacher, and I had some kind of a quirk that I was a prankster to English teachers. And I led her a merry chase and I’ve felt guilty about it through the years, but I can say that when I was on the school board in the late ’60s, she needed some special help, because in some way, she was about to lose her retirement, not lose it, but somebody was trying to get it away from her. And between myself, and Dick Reardon, her attorney, we were able to ensure that got rescinded and got back to, her and I always felt that I repaid for my sins. (laughs) [00:28:00] And of course, who were some of the -- Harold White was our football coach and of course, and baseball, basketball, coached everything. And I thought he was just God. A guy by the name of Bob Hard was our sophomore coach, and football, and basketball and he ended up over as principal at high school at Emmett, as his hometown. I can’t remember offhand who all the rest of them were. There was this pair -- Mrs. Billick, I think, was in the system then but I never did have her as a teacher. KEN: Well, after you [00:29:00] graduated, then you went on to the University of Idaho. SUMNER: Yeah, I went up there and I got a Union Pacific Railroad Scholarship for a grand total of 100 dollars. I thought that was a big deal. And that was in the fall of ’42 and then the war came along, World War II. And some of the guys were already signed up at the end of the first semester. Reserves and so forth took them. I went ahead and finished and then that spring of ’43 went took my physical for the draft, and unbeknownst to me, they said I had a perforated eardrum, and declared me 4F. That was probably the biggest shock in my life, because here I was thought I was... KEN: Perfect health. SUMNER: Yeah. And so, [00:30:00] I went on back to school, worked on the farms in the summer because farm hands were short, and you worked long hours, naturally, and then went back to school. And finally, in I think, late ’44, early ’45, they reached the bottom of the barrel to get bodies and so they called me up for a re-physical. Well, I had about five doctors looking in my ear, and there was absolutely no sign of perforation. All they can figure out is somebody saw a piece of wax or something, it was thought from that mastoid it had been perforated. And so, then, I was drafted and went into the Navy and Aviation Electronic School program and ended up coming out as an aviation electronics technician. [00:31:00] Went back to school in the fall of ’46. Well, I might add, war is hell. When I was in that school when the war was over, and so, they closed the school, but I couldn’t get discharged. So, I got transferred to the PE department of this base in Corpus Christi, Texas. And four of us were assigned as our duty to keep the baseball diamond in shape. And we were on the baseball team. And we flew all over the Southeast United States playing baseball. And all we had to do on the diamond was get the home base and the pitcher’s mound shaped up, the way you do, float the infield, and line the field. All the mowing was done by public works. And we just played baseball and had free access to the gym and a swimming pool and a golf course and the whole works [00:32:00] of it. I say, war is hell. That was for about three, four months. Probably the most carefree, unencumbered period of my life, because we were on the baseball team, we were fed in a special section in the chow hall, and just had the life of a king, really. Anyway, went back to school and graduated from University of Iowa in the fall of ’48 in civil engineering, I’d switched from ag engineering, and went to work for the highway department down at Rupert, State Highway. I worked there five months. And then they needed an engineering assistant here in Nampa and Peter E. Johnson [00:33:00] and Alex Hunter, who was my longtime friend, because I’ve run around with his son, he’s the one who sponsored me, to get me to come and interview. And they ended up hiring me and after I’d been there about a month, the mayor called me in one day and asked, well, was I ready to take over city engineer? “Well,” I said, “Wait a minute, Mayor, I’m not licensed. I won’t be for three and a half years.” And he didn’t realize that, and was, quite frankly, wanting to can the city engineer. But that was something I didn’t know about when I got into the thing. But it worked out all right, and I went on. John Griffin was the city engineer. And he left, then they hired Clark Murphy. And I stayed there for three years as an assistant. And it was an interesting period. [00:34:00] They let the contract for the first major waste treatment facility... END OF RECORDING Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sumner Johnson Recording 2 of 6 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/76642/archive/files/6d772bf032324c5f861a9e5e107b86c6.mp3?Expires=1777507200&Signature=K34--czK9J%7Eoaon0xNVNr7MLdbSxoUeTsT0Tf9-m5kKktyg5ZoDzv7f6A7Jaj6ZQEq8vFLUfKCHqvvRv3NM0FhwZdVno27Uldh8X73LVPr1DhiXh-0KlCqM0blJgI6fiPbgXd-f3R1Q2782m%7EbuU1yRg9NQA4CrB-8vurFy%7EB74qWxj1AneTqyhAcGWQw4efcoPiyRcdxX5db8bAkYBdOoo0Jx%7Ec8Dr8I88zkTu4M-JoAFO8A0GmWzmjCaFfawJ%7E3Zs7e8EmmkmL01MQZGNK3voS5duWDl9Ma%7E6wVYWaMXjoYucBmxOBKB5EK%7EEODmvubprfd2aephjguAO8xP3TCQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e8d9f387f5bff74f2765fa44c1626131 PDF Text Text SUMNER: That’s probably in about the fall of ’49. KEN: What was the treatment – SUMNER: Before that? KEN: Yeah. What did we have? Just septic, then? SUMNER: I think they were different versions of septic tanks. They’d put in a septic tank here and it outgrew, and they’d put in another, and down where the dog pound is now, there were some large septic tanks in there. And I don’t believe the city had what they call an Imhoff tank, that’s a little more sophisticated, but it was just a matter of collecting the solids, and then they discharged it direct to Indian Creek, the effluent, they didn’t go to drain fields. And I didn’t have a whole lot to do with that, because we hired [00:01:00] John Farthergale as the inspector out there. And of course, I would be involved in some of the decision-making. That’s where I got my first exposure to actual on the job construction of a sewer plant. KEN: I wonder if there any pictures available that you might have, or the firm might have of that project. SUMNER: Of course, I wasn’t with the firm in those days, and I doubt if I’d have any pictures of it. Can’t believe I do. I’m not much of a photographer, so I don’t think I’d have any. I don’t know. Later, when it was remodeled or expanded in the late ’60s, we might have some of that. There might be some, someplace on that. Anyway, as I’ve mentioned earlier, the records, [00:02:00] the city engineer records were in a shamble. And, quite frankly, the first winter of ’48-’49, it was very cold, it got down, frost went over four feet deep in the streets, we had watermains frozen four feet deep. I don’t remember it ever getting that deep since, even last year, I don’t think it was bad. And so, I was kind of just on my own trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. The city engineer didn’t give me much instruction. And so, I went through the process of cataloging and getting all the records and finding out what we had as a basis to work from. And then, I started getting involved in surveying for curb and gutter construction. [00:03:00] People would call in want their lot staked for curb and gutter. It was a very inefficient method to go out and do 50 feet. But in that, you needed to know where the centerline of the street was. And before the Depression, there was good surveying procedures used, and there was monuments all over town in street intersections, but they were buried. And of course, with gravel roads, that’s all you can do, dig them down below... (break in audio) SUMNER: Anyway, and the surveyors during the Depression [00:04:00] got pretty confidential with their information. They didn’t change it back and forth. And they intentionally did not leave any evidence, so that they could go out and survey a piece of property cheaper than their competitor. And of course, I was on the public payroll, so I started a process of digging those up on a needed them, and reference tying them, and creating a reference tie book. And then the local surveyors, John Farthergale and Bob Ednee, primarily, John Griffiths a little later, and then later on Mel Davenport, they would come in and get my records from the city, and then in the process, I got them exchanging information and started the process of public exchange of all survey information. And then, years later, when we came back here in ’57, the city engineer, [00:05:00] we started a program of bringing those monuments to the surface and setting in the brush gap and concrete, which then anybody can walk out there and find it. And we’ve even gone more sophisticated than that in the surveying field that we require a surveyor to file a record of survey when he does a survey that shows new evidence, new information, and he has to file a corner perpetuation record of when he reestablishes, a section corner, quarter corner, or a point of beginning on a subdivision, so that that date is in the public record and it’s available for anybody. But I feel that that started when I was with the city in that period of fall of ’48 to the fall of ’51, when we right here in Nampa started the [00:06:00] exchanging of information much earlier. Then, at that time, also, they created I think it was LID number 40, which was the first modern, large local improvement district in Nampa to provide sewers for the unsewered area, basically, in the town at that time, at least I should say the west and south part of the town at that time. And Briggs and Associates did the engineering on it, and that’s where I got acquainted with them, and eventually then, when that went to construction in the fall of ’51, they needed an inspector and I saw the opportunity and went to work for them as the inspector that wrapped up this whole project. And that started my... KEN: What was here, [00:07:00] then other than the original town? So, when you say south and west, I’m assuming that’s south and west of the original townsite, basically. SUMNER: Well, Togstad’s Edition for instance was in, and of course, Canyon Street clear down to -- I think it even had been pushed through clear to Lake Lowell. Moad’s Addition was in its various stages, a lot of it was already in, Geesion Addition was in, and part of the Moad Addition and Moad subdivision and so forth were in. Of course, Kurtz’s addition was there for years. But here’s an old, old plat, but didn’t really fully develop, there was a lot of acreage, and so forth. And sewers were in the north and west part of it, but this south part down around Amity had no sewers and this LID 40 wrap basically [00:08:00] down Canyon to Elijah Drain, down Elijah Drain to Amity, and east on Amity, generally, and then branched off. It seems to me about a half million-dollar project. KEN: A big one. SUMNER: Yeah, in those days, you can say that. And then, of course, later, in the late ’60s, we did LID 49, 49A, which was a major sewer project for the whole of Nampa. And our goal was to get the entire corporate limits served with sewer. We got that done except for one area, and that was out south of the Nampa Livestock area, well, for instance, Brown Bus company and those are in there, [00:09:00] it took a very expensive railroad under crossing over to Railroad Street and down First Street North and that way to serve those people. And at the LID protest hearing, those people were so solid in their opposition to it that the council, in good wisdom, took it out. Historically, it was a bad thing, because those people still don’t have sewers. Yet, we had a project, there were some federal funds available, and so forth, if we could have done it, why, they’d have sewers now and they’d all be paid for, and they wouldn’t even realize it had been a burden. KEN: In the development of a city, and of course, we’re now in the 100th year from the original townsite of Nampa up to a population of some 27,000 within the city limits, an [00:10:00] additional 15 to 20,000 in the area immediately surrounding Nampa. So, the greater Nampa area, we’re talking of population now 40 to 45,000 people. How important is it in the development of a city, for some of these basic services we’re starting talking about, such as a sewer, and water, and streets? Starting with sewer first. SUMNER: And that’s, of course, the thing that should be put in first, because it’s the deepest in the ground. And so, you if you put the water line in first or the gas mains in first, you’ve got to fight those lines in your process. If you can get the sewer in, and then then once it’s in, then you can put the water line in and cross it over, and so forth, [00:11:00] not having problems. And you for sure don’t want to build the streets until you’ve got all those in because means you built the street without them in. And that’s when one of the problems of LID 40 and LID 49, is you had to go in and replace a bunch of streets, because all those areas had septic tanks. So, in my opinion, you want to get all those things in first. And you need to have an overall plan. Because if you don’t, you’re going to undersize them and put them in the wrong location and things like that. And when I say an overall plan, that doesn’t mean you have it perfect, because things are going to happen different than you can predict. But it’s better to have an imperfect plan than no plan at all. And that’s one of the things, [00:12:00] for instance, you can branch off onto the street situation. In the late ’50s, Bob Underkofler, my partner, became aware of a plan that the Federal Highway Administration was trying to foster. And he presented to the city council, and they went for it, and Nampa ended up being one of the first cities in the nation that developed a transportation plan that brought the Federal Highway Administration, or Department, the State Highway Department, the Canyon County Commissioners, the Nampa Highway District, the City of Nampa and the Chamber of Commerce, into a common meeting to develop a network for a major transportation, highway transportation, to serve Nampa. That has been updated maybe every five, six years. And today is still the City of Nampa’s [00:13:00] transportation plan, and you’ve seen it. KEN: I’ve seen it. SUMNER: And one of the highlights in that, to me, is, in the first plan, we as a city goal, said that Holly Street needed to be extended south of Hawaii on an S curve to the east to tie into Sunny Ridge Road. That is being done now, after some 20 -- no, about 18 years, I guess it is. KEN: Yeah, that’s the plan on the wall is the current project. SUMNER: And that was one of them. And of course, the interstate highway was programmed as part of that plan, the 16th Avenue routing and overpass as a function of that. [00:14:00] The Nampa Boulevard, one of the major connectors from the interstate for us was a result of that plan. And in fact, I can’t say his name, now. (inaudible) get it, a realtor gentleman here in town, and I represented the chamber and the city and went before the State Highway Board to sponsor the Nampa Boulevard connector and overpass. And as a result of that meeting, we got it approved and put on the highway system to be built and funded. But that type of thing, the plan is not perfect when you build it, but they’ve met every five or six years and updated it and put out a new document. And Lou Ross, who was the State Highway Planning Engineer, [00:15:00] whatever his title was then, left Idaho and went to Washington DC with the Federal Highway Administration. And he took the Nampa Transport Placement Plan and used it as the model for small communities in the United States. KEN: That’s quite a compliment. SUMNER: We were very proud that we had a part to do with it. KEN: Well, over the last 30 years, 35 years, you had a great deal, personally, to do the development of what we now call the infrastructure, the basic public works type projects in Nampa, either directly as a city engineer, as a consultant for the city, or in some cases, as the engineer representing some private developers. You’ve seen everything within that last 35 years, probably have a [00:16:00] more intimate knowledge than any other single person in Nampa. SUMNER: That could be true. For instance, we did a water study there, I don’t know, probably ’59 or ’60, that used as a basis for a long time of converting the old, four-inch diameter watermain, when it was put in, and 40 years ago, it was a big watermain. But nowadays, why, it just isn’t big enough. And so, we did that study, and that then served as a basis for the water department and replacing, putting in eight- and 10-inch main, sometimes 12-inch main, where they needed a new well source to fit the area. And I think almost all of that has been implemented. And now of course, the city has expanded beyond that, [00:17:00] as the new annexation has come about. And so, I don’t have any knowledge of what those basic plans are, but I know Larry has done a good job of continuing that plan. KEN: Yeah, he is. In fact, that’s something that Nampa has to offer, where we stand out, as companies, industries look for siting, is Nampa does have a good water supply. We have the sewer services and sewer capacity that’s just unmatched. SUMNER: And that’s because of a good forward looking city administration. If I had a part to do it, I’m pleased. But I know you’ve had a strong part in it, in recent years. KEN: Of course, yeah. But you have to have a good foundation to build on it, which you’ve provided. What are some of the major projects, as you view the development of Nampa, [00:18:00] since your professional involvement in public works in engineering since the early ’50s, up to the present time? SUMNER: Well, there’s many things that fit into a network, as you just said, that we as a community had our foundation or backbone structure for a water system, a sewer system, a transportation system, and a drainage system. So, that then, when an industry or a residential developer came to town, they saw what they had to do, and if they could make it fit into their economic projections, they were ready to go. And as a result, that permitted, I think, orderly growth where in other communities, they’d [00:19:00] go and they’d see the problem, but there was no pattern of how to solve it. And industrial, I think, is one of the big elements. I remember when I came as city engineer in ’57, the Nampa Industrial Corporation was kind of floundered out there and they had the right idea but weren’t getting it off the ground because they didn’t have sewer, and they didn’t have proper water mains. And so, through a result of the sewer and watermain plans and construction, I got involved, then with the Nampa Industrial Corporation, in fact, I ended up being on the board, and I’ve been on it 17 or 18 years now. And we brought a lot of industry to the community onto property that was owned and developed by Nampa Industrial Corporation preparation, but probably an equal amount we brought by just the fact that the NIC was in existence, and they’d come talk to us and we’d show them a whole bunch of other property. [00:20:00] Martin Wood Products, for instance, came as a result of activities in Nampa Industrial Corporations before I was involved, by the way. So, there’s a lot of industrial activities that are spin offs that Nampa Industrial Corporation take a little credit for. And it’s the economic base of our workforce. And it’s been good for the community, I think. KEN: Indeed, it has. SUMNER: The 16th Avenue overpass is a major project that we were able to help the city find the funding to get the thing going. KEN: In what year was that project completed? SUMNER: I’d say in the late ’60s. [00:21:00] Mayor Starr, I went to Ernie, and I said, “Ernie, we can get funding for it. But” I said, “We’ve got to get it on the federal aid secondary highway designation.” And I said, “As an engineer, I can’t do too much to get that accomplished, but you as a mayor can.” And Ernie took the bit and got it done. He got it done. I gave him the idea, but it was a political thing, not a technical thing. And so, he got that done. And then of course, on the 11th Avenue underpass... KEN: Yeah, you were involved – SUMNER: Behind the scenes. KEN: -- behind the scenes getting that done. SUMNER: And that’s the key. Everybody’s got projects if they can find some money to fund them. And of course, the Nampa Boulevard overpass, and rerouting, [00:22:00] and rebuilding was as a result of activities in the Nampa Chamber of Commerce and the city. And John Ray was that guy’s name. He used to live right across the street here on the corner. He was the fellow who was the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce Highway Committee, when we met with the State Highway Board and got Nampa Boulevard approved. The school system has been a big impact. I remember they bought the 40 acres for the high school site. And the first thing they built there was the football field. They could build that without a whole lot of expenditure. And the only place we could play football was in the rodeo park, [00:23:00] and they were going to eliminate the football field and turn that into a rodeo stadium, you see, which it presently is, that was about 1951, maybe, that that was done. And so, they had to have a place to play their football games. And so, they contracted with Bill Hayes, the school district did, and they hired me, and I went out there moonlighted and laid out the track and the football field at nights. And, at the time, the experts were saying you should put a crown in the field, of a foot, I think. KEN: For drainage? SUMNER: Yeah, so that the water would drain away and not pawn. And we put that crown in that and I can sure remember the old timers saying, [00:24:00] “My heavens, that ain’t going to work. It’ll mislead the passer because he’ll be passing uphill from one place and downhill from another,” and so forth. But of course, now, there isn’t a field built without even more crown than that in it. It was one of the early ones that got it. And then next, they built the gym, and they’ve built classrooms. KEN: You were on the school board for how many years? SUMNER: I was just on three years. KEN: When was that? SUMNER: Oh, that was about ’65 to ’67, I think. It was quite an upheaval in the school system, then. KEN: Yeah, I guess it was all over the country, with the Vietnam protests. SUMNER: And then, of course, the innovative teaching, [00:25:00] team teaching and all those things were coming into vogue then. And we really had a strong element that was adamant for that. And, of course, I’ve always been somewhat willing to look at creative ideas. And so, through the process, we did move into some of that team teaching philosophy, but it’s kind of gone out of favor. And as Rex Engelking came in as superintendent, following the period that I was on the board, And I’ve told Rex this many times, that the best thing that ever happened to him is that we had a three-year period there where the liberals were really trying to do all those good things, and they found out they wouldn’t be good. And so, [00:26:00] then when Rex came in, he looks like a wild-eyed conservative, but really, he’s very liberal. (laughs) And he probably got a lot of his programs through that he couldn’t have got, if he’d have followed the Harry Mills superintendent. But the fact that -- I can’t say the superintendent’s name now -- [Oglesby, was in there for a couple of years, and he was very modern. And as a result, then, when Rex came, I think he was able to do a good job and did do a good job. At that time, we planned the both of the two junior high schools, and built the Sunny Ridge School out there in that residential section [00:27:00] that needed it. So, there was a lot of activities going on in the schools in those days. It was going through a lot of growing pains. We went from a three-person superintendent’s office to a few more and then in recent years, it got up to be a bureaucracy, but I think they finally settled back now, and it’s a realistic number. Those things happen. And, of course, Harry Mills was the superintendent and had a lot of talent in certain areas, but the one that was the vogue then was curriculum and modern teaching methods, and that wasn’t Harry’s long suit. And so, we as board, visited with him on it. [00:28:00] And I went to bat for Harry, quite frankly and said, “Harry, we’ve got a job for you here as long as you want to stay, but probably not going to be as superintendent in charge of curriculum.” And Harry was... END OF RECORDING Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sumner Johnson Recording 3 of 6 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/76642/archive/files/1efc1270596e24949e307148f850f9cd.mp3?Expires=1777507200&Signature=jUylZXiydKJPAAwLVmbS7aGZwPCWNhT0Xb%7Ef9GEGO-f2zHbdpa2izNaUoKO7C4KQhXS4EO8G5xkf85MAKucTBS4%7EepqGuZYeBptS50oAYPxB0ZgBYgomjDgq5SYJkuO96IBfILl%7EAe7dAE3hQx71OBnhYuhHGLxETn3jdoY6Kn4W84xpG0CWu23HaWJt2lRIzUNPvXDqAPvMQjFw-jTDyFBBtnNVUo4zJ-DWE2DZHT2ODNpaP7kG95YA9vgCxHKl0lvwbSw2fzrbWbOdtFbfnVzE8Rg-PQhkiP8%7EMgafi05EUJOJ%7Exu8OYJz2kmYXGr3k%7Et6qq-iEmltOUTrh1Cy9A__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM fae5fd9891d1fb3873b52bcb02948289 PDF Text Text SUMNER: And you’ve got to commend Harry, he was big enough to say that “Hey, I better move on.” So, he resigned and went with the State Department. And I didn’t have a real good close relationship with Harry after that, it was a little strained, but I heard it was a much easier job than being superintendent of schools and got paid more. KEN: Yeah, I’m sure it would have been. SUMNER: Of course, you see, then, after I -- well, I don't know what you need to know anything personally about me. KEN: I’d like to. SUMNER: I married Betty Wisely in 1950, and had a home wedding at their family’s home, 512 19th Avenue South. We lived in a basement apartment at [00:01:00] about 12, 14, something like that, Seventh Street South for a while, and I worked for the city. And then, I went with Briggs and Associates in 1951 and lived in Nampa for four years and commuted but couldn’t develop any work in Nampa. I just couldn’t. Nampa businesspeople wouldn’t hire a Boise firm. And so, I did very little engineering work with the community of Nampa but did a lot around the state. Finally, did move to Boise, or Ada County, for two years. And then in 1957, contracted with the city to do their city engineering work under a contract basis, much the horror of the whole municipal community of Idaho, thinking it wouldn’t work. And the net result, [00:02:00] as I think history proved, is probably the combination was good for the city and good for us. KEN: Yeah, you brought an element of professionalism. SUMNER: Yeah. And I found that while I was on the staff, they had me doing everything but engineering, but once I came back as a consultant, they didn’t refer anything to me but engineering. You didn’t have to handle the errand boy duty, so to speak, you got to do engineering. They got more engineering for their dollar. And then it served as a basis for Underkofler and myself to develop and mature. And we were in on the ground floor of a lot of programs that were available to cities and were able to use that in the developing of our company. Then, we eventually brought Bill Briggs [00:03:00] in as a partner, finally incorporated in 1969, as JUB Engineers, maybe 1970. And of course, the rest is history. KEN: The firm grew rapidly through the ’70s. SUMNER: Yeah, and in 1978, and ’79, I think at one time, we had 146 people on the payroll. But now, you see, there’s a great reduction in expenditures for public works through the federal level, and even to the state programs. And so, the cities, and municipalities, and of course, through the financing of residential housing, that’s very dormant. There’s not near the demand for engineering work that there was in the ’70s. And so, [00:04:00] we’re down to about 75 people now. Lean, and mean. And we better stay that way. Because it’s a tough world out there today, probably the toughest, economically. And not only in engineering, you talk -- of course, my walks of life are engineering, surveying, contractors, construction, architects, realtors, that type of people, and all of those are in a very, very tight situation right now. And I think it’s probably as much as anything due to the agricultural economy in Idaho is bad, the mining economy is bad, and the timber economy is bad. You read about all the national growth and so forth, but I think it comes mainly in the Sunbelt. Here in the northwest, we don’t feel it. [00:05:00] And of course, it’s impacted Idaho from the state government on down. You probably feel it here in city government, too. KEN: Oh, yeah. Feel it a lot (inaudible). SUMNER: I guess I want to -- I’ve got some notes here. I want to see if I’ve covered everything. During that era when we were with the city, as city engineers for about four or five years, myself as engineer up until the last year when Joe Huckabee came to work for us, and he worked on our payroll as the city engineer, district would maybe review them. We did that street planning process where we would develop a [00:06:00] five-year plan and then each year updated it and projected it a year and got involved in that Nampa Transportation Planning that turned out to serve as the basis for nationwide small communities. The drainage study, which was implemented and developed, eventually constructed. The water plan for the transmission network and new well supplies. And of course, then we went into the major expansion of the waste treatment facilities as a result of a study we did in about ’61. And then that was expanded and built in stages in the late ’60s. KEN: No, mid-’60s, wasn’t it? ’62 and ’63? SUMNER: Maybe it was. KEN: The bond issue was in ’61. But I [00:07:00] assumed, perhaps it would have been ’62 or ’63. SUMNER: I guess it could be. Yes, that’s right. And then, later, we did some expansion for Birdseye -- or, not Birdseye, Carnation. It was some other name, then. But you probably don’t know that we had some pitfalls on that. I mean, you knew we had the pitfalls, but you don’t know why. An interesting thing, we did a pilot study on treating the sugar company’s waste where we took a pipeline from the sugar company and took about, it seems to me 2 million gallons a day of their waste and run it through the old plant and went through very detailed record keeping and so forth and developed our criteria and a pilot study of 2 million gallons a day really isn’t a pilot study, that’s a full-scale study. [00:08:00] And we did it all winter long. Built the plant as a result of that pilot study and we had digestive sludge running out our ears. Didn’t find out till sometime later that during that pilot study stage, the plant superintendent was moonlight dumping some of the sludge to Indian Creek and it wasn’t going through our meter, and he thought it was, and he was doing something illegal as far as that goes, I guess, and didn’t tell us and we ended up with way, way more sludge than we had programmed, and we couldn’t handle it. And we had to go through a process of building an [00:09:00] expansion for sludge polishing tank and so forth. Well, about time we got that done, then that Carnation Potato, whatever they were called, then, came into being. And the state, there was a demonstration, or a pilot study being done, but R.T. French company over -- not American Falls, between Idaho Falls and Blackfoot. Shelley. And based on that result, we designed an aeration basin here to take care of the potatoes. Harland Formal was the state engineer we were working with, and in the process of final design he had heart attack and died. And we submitted our final plans to the health department, [00:10:00] Vaughn Anderson has subsequently told me this, that just before we submitted our plans to the health department, they found out that somebody had salted the hole, so to speak, on that RT French study and the information that they published was erroneous. And we’d made our design on that whole study. And nobody told us. The health department got their heads together, and they thought, “Well, it’ll probably work anyway.” And we went out there and did it and it didn’t work. And we didn’t find out until afterwards why it didn’t work. In fact, [00:11:00] it was a disaster. We couldn’t make it work. Number two, the last day that I worked on that project, the city took it away from us, I found out that the potato people were supposed to give us a maximum load of so much, five days a week, or six days a week. And their average load for 30 days in the month was like 20 percent over any one day maximum allowable, and the operator had failed to catch that. And so, everything stacked up that it couldn’t possibly work. Then the third thing is the old digester dome, which we didn’t do anything with, and the sewer plant operator was going up there every day and taking a sample, had a crack in the top of it. And that sewage gas was coming out of there and was creating most of the odor that would [00:12:00] permeate. I’d drive down the interstate highway and I’d catch that odor, I’d swing over to the plant, and I couldn’t get it. And I could not figure it out. KEN: (inaudible) SUMNER: Well, the wind, you’d drive down Nampa Boulevard, or Caldwell Boulevard, same thing. What it’d do is, it was warm, and it’d come out and go up, and then it had to go through a temperature inversion before it’d come back down someplace. KEN: So, that’s the way it would spread. SUMNER: And Huckabee finally, some way, found out that, and they sealed that. And basically, the odor, that real serious odor problem disappeared. Well, anyway, I use tell Ernie, I said, “There’s no sense that everybody else be blamed on this, just blame it on us and just let it go ahead.” But you see, nobody was ever taking us to court. And you can see why. Because you see, if we had made all those blunders that appears we did, why, [00:13:00] we’d have a liability exposure. But the state goofed, the city’s operator goofed, and then there was a crack up there that went there for years that nobody knew about it. And it was wasting gas. So, anyway, I just got the digression from when I was going through these. Of course, we talked about the major sewer system extensions. And then that era of Karcher Mall groundbreaking came about. Interesting sidelight, Van Moad about that the land out on the boulevard in the late ’20s was selling for 1,000 dollars an acre. The crash came and the first piece of farmland, so to speak, that sold for 1,000 dollars acre after that was when Harry Daum purchased Karcher Mall, 30 some acres, [00:14:00] 34 acres for 34,000, something like that. It’s an interesting sidelight. KEN: That is. SUMNER: Of course, the I-84 planning, and John Brandt had a lot to do with that, because it was originally planned to go down Highway 20. And if it had done that, we’d have been dead. And to the Real Estate Association, they proposed what they call the Ridge Route, to go through on the ridge and leave the good farmland, and so forth. And of course, the goal was to get it towards Nampa. But the state dropped down below the ridge, where it is, going from here to Meridian. And then, industrial corporations... KEN: Now, what year did the I-84 come through, then? SUMNER: Well, I can’t answer that. [00:15:00] KEN: Late, mid-50s? SUMNER: Oh no. The planning was in the mid-50s, the mapping and so forth. But the actual interstate construction north of Nampa was when Huckabee was city engineer. KEN: So, ’60s. SUMNER: And in fact, I was instrumental in getting them to go out and put a watermain through the interstate on 11th Avenue North extension so that we could eventually hopefully serve the state school and hospital. He didn’t put a big enough one in, in my opinion, he put an eight-inch in there, I think. (inaudible) and then he did the same thing on Nampa Boulevard, as I recall, they put that in, we got the sewer line through before. But I think that was from, like, [00:16:00] ’61 to ’65 in there, I think. And the Nampa Industrial Corporation finally got going and momentum, the Hehr Manufacturing, Fleetwood, Western Stockmen’s, that Northland Camps, what was the name of that outfit? I can’t remember now. They all came in. Back to an interesting sidelight, through the history of the Nampa Industrial Corporation, we’ve averaged one industry about every two years, that’s average. And our presidents generally serve about a two-year cycle. In the two years I was president, I had the misfortune that we brought in four industries. Two a year, instead of one every two years. KEN: What two years were [00:17:00] they? SUMNER: Oh, that would have probably been ’77 and ’78. In fact, we were going through such a growth... KEN: Oh, the North American Plant Breeders is one of them? SUMNER: Well, I can’t remember which, it was Zilog, and I think the seed company east of Fleetwood. I can’t say their name. And probably maybe John Ward Plumbing, maybe North American Plant Breeders, there was four of them came in there in that two-year period. Probably the biggest negative thing in my lifetime that I could have probably done something about if I had the wisdom that I do now, was that they tore the Dewey Palace down while [00:18:00] I was city engineer. Didn’t even realize what a disaster when we were standing by. KEN: What are your recollections of the Dewey Palace, your earliest recollections? And then, as you were growing up, any recollections you have? SUMNER: See, I really don’t have a whole lot of recollection of the Dewey Palace. Because of my farm connections. I wasn’t involved in the city, so to speak. But the one thing I can remember as the student Rotarian, when I was about a senior in high school, they met at the Dewey Palace, and I went there for a month and ate lunch with them. And, of course, was quite impressed with the [00:19:00] linen and the whole thing. Now my aunt, Doris Farrell, who lives in the apartments Bart Westberg built, what do they call them? KEN: The Landmark Towers? SUMNER: Yeah. She worked in the Dewey Palace for years as a waitress. And she could give you a whole lot of history about the Dewey Palace, and Nampa, as far as that goes, more than my mother, I think. And she’s still of good mind. KEN: Yeah, we need to talk to her. SUMNER: But I just didn’t have anything to do, I’ve never had occasion to be in the Dewey Palace, other than through the entryway and into the dining room. So, I don’t ever remember being on the second floor. But it’s unfortunate that somebody didn’t have wisdom back there and keep that from being destroyed. It could be one of the things, but [00:20:00] can’t look back, I guess. In those days, we were trying to get comprehensive planning going, but we didn’t have much success. But we finally planted the seed and eventually did get the comp plan through for Nampa. We did start something that I think you’d used on Midland Boulevard, for instance, the highway department was going to reconstruct 12th Avenue Road, and they were going to do everything but the sidewalks. And we wanted sidewalks but they wouldn’t fund them. So, we said, “Okay, let us create a local improvement district to dovetail with your project and we’ll build the sidewalks with the LID,” which we did. And now since then, they’ve expanded and used it as city’s matching share and so forth on curb and gutters. And that’s used in several communities, too, not only Nampa. [00:21:00] And the city was putting together a local improvement history of some kind out there in Gold Subdivision for sewer in 1956. It was a complete failure. And they had to go in and replace it. And in fact, I’m not sure we didn’t get involved in replacing it because they had arbitrarily made a drop of three feet in a manhole, they got out there and they couldn’t serve two basements. Oh, it was as disaster. But that started the first LID. Then we went through, almost got tarred and feathered at the Council Chamber when we created an LID for curb and gutter and sidewalks in conjunction with street construction, out in Kurtz’s addition. And then, we carried it all through the town, the Fairview addition, and just all over the old parts of town. [00:22:00] And that finally got the town kind of finished. Up until then, it was just dirt shoulders and grass, and people’s front yards, and so forth. Oh, another thing that we got involved with that has been spread all over Idaho. When we came to the city, they charged 50 dollars for a sewer hookup. And they set that back in the ’20s. Well, it’s ridiculous. And so, after that big LID 49, we were able to show what the cost for trunk lines were, and what the cost for lateral were, and from that we were able to project those two elements of the sewer extension. And I don’t even remember what the numbers were now, but it was quite a bit more than 50 dollars. [00:23:00] Each one of them was in the neighborhood of 150 or 200. An interesting sidelight, George Schellenberger was city clerk, and we gave all this stuff to George, the council approved it and everything, and then he would issue the permits and collect them. But he didn’t tell his clerical staff. And pretty soon the sewer contractor found out if they went in while George was off to lunch, they could get it for 50 dollars.(laughs) If they got it while he was there, it was 150 for lateral and 225 for trunk line or something like that, or 375 dollars. And that went on for almost a year before it was caught. And so, the permit was taken out and all the records, but the dollar amounts were wrong. But it just typical of those things that falls through the crack in administration. And then at that era, we started the off-street parking down on Front Street, and we funded that with parking meter revenue. [00:24:00] And we’d run... END OF RECORDING Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sumner Johnson Recording 4 of 6 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/76642/archive/files/15574b7371735c5d5917f7aa5b34a884.mp3?Expires=1777507200&Signature=sR57HIr8b3nzfvS0z63qYJiChMU84y1PF-2HQZFn92gK--0Ec1Nluqjvg6a9Mh0EtuPHeMhx9iCHtpLJqmQYCLsUkURNakjqWlFe1SG4oMPHH6GahHOiiCEPrArQoftdOxjCQV%7EHCKNRUPgxlnNRCaIvcIRZ1y1h9nMuVfiUuAebzDT9hnfkff1EEYrYfCFtxUtowFlhyOp3Bny4b9HLgE9-e4KrB%7Esh59e90415pFROlWDiXly%7EAwoAjfCZuZuTMQFRb8Egz4i2LMU3ftTRv9YMBapWfEp84D8sjHawz4g%7ENTHjHWGYL3ebuvINJpCbmag6yfNh39nA-f-qoGQM8w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3c3dfe7b5b6003deda909986f2027e51 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sumner Johnson Recording 5 of 6 PDF Text Text SUMNER: anyway, on that off-street parking, the city owned some of that property down there, but the rest of it was old, dilapidated buildings that were off of the drag, or main drag, and deteriorated pretty bad. And through parking meter revenues, we were able to dedicate that funds and buy property, the city was, and then tore down the buildings with street department personnel and equipment, and then, contracted to build those off-street parking. And by present day standards, they weren’t as good as we’d like, but back then, they were pretty uptown. And that cleaned up an area, plus provided parking for people. But it really didn’t do the job, [00:01:00] because it was not near enough to the merchants. It was good enough for employee parking and so forth but wasn’t enough to merchants. So, then we conceived a large local improvement district type off-street parking. And I actually wrote the amendment to that old code by Dick Riordan and the city attorney, and he thought it was okay, run it by Hal Ryan, who was a state senator and city attorney for Weiser, run it by Jim McClure, who then was the state senator and the city attorney for Payette, and run by the legal counsel for the Association of Idaho Cities, I can’t remember his name now. All four of them thought it was fine, at least. We gave that to McClure, and he carried it to the legislature and had passed, [00:02:00] and we got it on the books, and we started to create a local improvement district here, and an enlarged district for off street parking, and Earl Reid read it as an attorney representing an opposition, and there was a flaw in it. Just like that, he picked it up. And here, we’d run it by all of the legal minds that we could that knew about city government and state law. And that killed us. But also then, I think we got it amended and then we started it again, and Sevren Honstead violently opposed it, because he had created parking spaces for his property and blah, blah, blah. And so, Frank Bevington was running around, scurrying around in opposition to it. And I remember one night about [00:03:00] eight o’clock at home, I got a call from San Francisco, from Frank Bebbington. He was in a panic. Stanford Variety Store and, what was that other store in there? Drugstore, Nampa Drugstore, had four years left on their lease and they’d given notice that they were moving out. He thought he was in -- Montgomery Ward’s had a number of years left... END OF RECORDING https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/76642/archive/files/91ac06058f860be990eeffdbf41a8387.mp3?Expires=1777507200&Signature=E9EZJQiI9zquk59TeqeDfKCUFNMr2qqQ9RiaYyUn3yI9qEMM4TT7jONqkgjEZgybnVYXmsYqIk5ZpknnagznO%7EgxYTHjC8uyDNxwfbHooZ3HkTpGbTK8%7ESby2fKejrTJlYW20ls23OBkDRLSBleiCohGcCCZ-HdkAKzYmr1RFDwW3aIk5yhvHQJQ-omKLQRv6yKOrqOdvqb98v%7EpEfy-SdyEiIqom3Q5McLTwdK7Q2pN%7EwkDRrjP%7EvDJIH3RU7nfQAxJY%7Ebk0hBIk3pNZX7JY6AA45p0FeSnNcZe8nnW8f0xVaFg5N-lFcKlgrfyWjio70HWAU6WT7OqgH4VFORdJg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 070c23c98c74e7b665c0af3ec63aac3d PDF Text Text SUMNER: Anyway, and they had a number of years left when Montgomery Ward leaves, too. And so, they thought they were all okay Well, he called in a panic after they’d killed this second go at an enlarged LID. “What can we do to reactivate it?” I said, “I don’t think we can do anything because it’s down the tube.” And it never did get reactivated to this day. But I contended that we needed to really look into a major off-street parking, but to compete with the Karcher Mall, you've got to compete with (inaudible). KEN: Yeah, you do. And that’s been one of the major obstacles to the downtown renovation. SUMNER: And of course, when I first got acquainted with you, we were working on that city hall committee, [00:01:00] Citizens Committee. There was about 64 of us. And remember the meeting up there in the old city hall chamber where we put together a final plan? I think you were there that night, not as a member of the committee but as an observer. And we had a vote, I think, 62 to two to go with, I forget which plan we were talking about, but it might have been this location right here. But I think it was Kenwood. And of course, the two that voted no were Frank Bevington and Bake Young. So, then Frank’s on the council and it goes to the council and gets pigeonholed. KEN: I remember that. SUMNER: So, they threw it back to us a couple of times. And that’s where, see, I was involved with the Financial Analysis Committee, [00:02:00] and I submitted it, and I didn’t think you’d ever even heard of it before, and you picked up on it, and we had quite an exchange of ideas and I was just amazed that you had grasped it the way you did, because most people didn’t know what we were talking about, but you had a complete grasp of it. But we tried. Didn’t get the job done. Anyway, the net result, we finally got this side here. At one time, we had a chance through the Ida-Ore to get an about 50 percent grant for a modest auditorium center, here, but couldn’t get city administration off dead center on that. Fortunately, now, we have a new administration that’s very [00:03:00] progressive. If Winston had been the mayor, then, why we’d have had an auditorium in the city, here. I guess that probably gives you about all the blarney you need from me. KEN: That’s a good report. Could we maybe even keep the notes for when we transcribe the tape? Because there’ll be some names that are -- is that something you’d... SUMNER: Then, I put down some of those old stores and stuff on here. I don't know whether I spelled them right. END OF RECORDING Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sumner Johnson Recording 6 of 6 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Nampa Oral History Collection Description An account of the resource Oral histories recorded 1984-1986 for Nampa's Centennial celebration. About 60 individuals shared their recollection of the early days of living in Nampa. Some of these people's stories relate to photos in the Historic Photo Exhibit. Click on the name or subject listed under "Relation" to discover more details about life in Nampa. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984-1986 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Nampa Centennial Committee Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Harward, Ken Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Sumner M. Johnson Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sumner M. Johnson Description An account of the resource Sumner Johnson, born in Nampa in 1924, discusses life in Nampa in the mid 1900’s, as well as his job as an engineer for the city. Topics discussed include the Great Depression, and shares experiences working with City Public Works, Nampa’s transportation plans, and drainage systems. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985, May 16 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Nampa Centennial Committee Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Interviews recorded for the library's oral history program are copyrighted to the Nampa Public Library which maintains rights to reproduce the recordings in all existing and future formats for the purposes of preservation and access. Researchers may quote portions of interviews in non-commercial projects, unless otherwise noted. Proper credit should be given. No part of the interviews may be used in commercial, for-profit projects without permission from Nampa Public Library. Relation A related resource <a href="https://nampalibrary.omeka.net/items/show/586" title="Ambrose Johnson family">Ambrose Johnson family</a> Carnation Condensery Citizens Committee City engineer City planning Farming Great Depression Lakeview Elementary School LID (Local Improvement District) Parking meters Peter Pan Ice Cream Shop Phyllis Canal Public works School building projects Streets Survey records Teachers Toy Steam Train Warrenite pavement