Home Again

I'm back in Burley. Not much really changes here, at least not quickly. They're tearing down the Overland Elementary School that my father attended. I guess they're taking it down brick-by-brick to reuse. Burley as a whole fits that sort of general slow, brick-by-brick pace.

I love seeing my family. Everyone is doing well, and Madison is a little angel. She's sweet and cute with lots of lovely dark hair. She's a quiet baby. I sleep upstairs right above their room and have not heard her cry in three nights. Candice said she went to sleep around 11:00 p.m. and slept until 3:00 a.m., then until 6:30 a.m., and finally woke up at 10:30 a.m. Mom, Candice, and I gave her a bath today, and she didn't cry or fuss a bit. Candice is also doing very well.

Yesterday for fun Mom and I went to the grand Burley Museum. We bought a book they published that has a picture of my Grandma Afton harvesting potatoes in her high heels. She and my Grandpa Wade were among the first to really turn a lot of Burley desert into good farmland. They also had a picture of my Grandpa's truck hauling sugarbeets.

In the actual Museum they had old machinery, farm equipment, clothes, journals (I was interested in one woman's who quoted Matthew Arnold), arrowheads, multiple buffalo skulls, supposedly the train car that carried John Wilkes Booth's body (and was later used to raise pigs), and an early settler's log cabin with a dirt floor rebuilt log-by-log for display. They also had a lot of items that were random and somewhat junky. Mom and I laughed for quite a while over their "fabulous pencil collection." Of course it wasn't labeled that, but they looked like regular pencils from local businesses circa the 1980s. Ah, such is Burley.

I'll post some of the interesting information I found in the book later. But does anyone want to venture a guess about Cassia County trivia?

1. How did the town "Declo" get its name?

2. What was the full name of the college in Albion?

3. When was alcohol illegal in Burley?

4. What was "Diamondfield Jack Davis" accused and found guilty of?

5. When did Burley become the county seat?

6. The Chadwick building built in 1917 had a pool hall and cigar store on its ground floor; what was upstairs?

7. The corner of Main and Overland where men gathered to exchange gossip used to be known as what?

8. Intersections of roads used to have signs warning people against what crime?

9. How many known Jewish families settled in Burley prior to 1930?

10. How many children were necessary in a community before the state would send a teacher?

11. What was the original name of "Elba"?

12. What was the reasoning for the town name "Malta"?