A Revisionist's History: French Town Pond

This is French Town pond looking West.

My father, a wise man, realized the importance of building a relationship with his son before teenage dementia set in. To do this, about the time I turned ten, he brought home a couple of five-gallon buckets full of motorcycle parts. Then for a winter, I would stand beside him shivering in the garage as he pieced together the parts to resurrect a late 70’s two-stroke mini-bike.

Dad continued to nurture this hobby and our relationship by establishing a few traditions. Most prominent among those was our own version of March Madness. Every March my dad would take me out of school for a week and we would travel 800 miles south to the Moab and San Rafael Swell regions of Southern Utah. Four or five months later, we would also travel to the Sawtooth Mountains in Central Idaho and ride dirt bikes for another week among lodge-pole pine.

During the warmer seasons, when the mountains around Spokane slipped from the icy grasp of snow and ice, we rode nearly every Saturday afternoon. After working hard all day cleaning, serving, and mowing, we would hook the trailer to the Dart. Then we would load the motorcycles into the back of dad’s white trailer. Once loaded, we would head to either the Nine Mile ORV Park or the Liberty Lake and Mica Peak trails.

Often times on our way out of town, we would stop by the downtown Burger King on 2nd Ave., rummage through the loose change in the ash tray, and buy ourselves a 99 cent Whopper. With that “sandwich” (dad’s affectionate term for hamburgers) in our gullets, we would ride for a few hours and come home by dinner time.

I could and—over the course of time—probably will spend time reliving many more of those afternoons. Today, however, while the storm pounds deafeningly against the glass behind me and the trees two blocks over are shrouded in steely clouds of rain, one particular trip comes to mind in large part because of how much it differed from today.

One summer, rather than making the traditional Sawtooth pilgrimage, my dad decided to meet old friends in Star Valley, Wyoming and ride some of the trails he rode years earlier when single and later in the early years of his marriage. After three days of trail riding in the mountains in Southeast Idaho and a morning spent poking around St. Anthony sand dunes north of Rexburg, Idaho it was time for us to return to Spokane.

After wrapping up at the dunes, Dad and I headed back to Rexburg and then west out of town on Highway 33 until we reached I-15. Dad turned right onto I-15, and we rolled northward through Dubois, Lima, and Dillon. Finally reaching I-90, we merged with west-bound traffic and continued motoring north and west.

The ’73 Dodge Dart, by design, really wasn’t a remarkable car. Our particular Dart had one claim to distinction, its remarkably intact condition. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this conglomeration of myths and accounts “according to Howell,” the black-vinyl roof sported nary a tear and the body was nearly entirely straight with only a slight inconspicuous blemish near the drivers-side door.

Apart from its condition, there were a few unique characteristics about that car that I eventually came to appreciate. We owned the two-door Swinger model, which differed from the four-door Dart in some significant ways. For one, the rear window on that car was concave; it rounded inwards. Plus, for whatever reason, it did not contain the standard defrost wiring embedded in the glass. Instead, Dodge mounted a blower under the rear deck that would defrost the rear window in much the same fashion as defrosters work on windshields.

I’m going far afield now, but the key point I wanted to make was that all the side windows on the Swinger rolled down. And the windows on the doors were frameless, much like those on a different Dodge Rachael would bring to our marriage years later. So, with both the front and rear windows rolled down, the side of the car from the belt-line to the roof become one broad, unbroken vent.

Add to that all the fury of 70 mph winds coming through the gaping vents under the dash, and you suddenly have a swirling vortex of super-agitated air on your hands. Unfortunately, in the sweltering cabin, the air coming out of the vents had very little impact on cabin conditions. The air entering the cabin, entered at the same temperature as the outside air hovering over the shimmering black asphalt. Granted, 70 mile-per-hour winds have all the evaporative punch of a commercial food dryer. But evaporation won’t help if there isn’t any moisture left to evaporate.

That Saturday, like the week leading up to it, was warm and clear with hardly a cloud in sight. And it became quite toasty in our cockpit before we left the dunes. Anaconda, Deer Lodge, Clinton, Missoula—the miles clicked by with the sun in our eyes and the roar of the road in our ears. With the windows down and the vents open, communication was possible only by yelling. So there we sat in sweaty pools of solitude, glumly anticipating another three hours of travel time over the Continental Divide and back down into the Inland Empire.

Around 1:00 p.m. that afternoon, after four or five hours in the “furnace,” our tanned and weathered hides, looking all the world like beef jerky, were crusted with a fine layer salt. Missoula faded behind us and we rapidly closed in on French Town, some five or ten miles west of Missoula. My head bobbed, and dad shifted uncomfortably trying to unstick himself from the vinyl. A deafening howl reverberated around the inside of the Dart as a semi rolled past on the left.

Obviously, that is not me or dad, but the freeway is in the background.
This would have been the very section we swam.

Suddenly, the car slowed and swerved slightly to the right. Dad pulled onto the shoulder and came to a stop. I looked over at him numbly, a question in my eyes. He climbed resolutely out of the car, crossed over to the passenger side of the car, and kept going. My eyes followed him bewildered into the weeds. Then he asked, “Want to go for a swim?” There on the far side of the roadside fence was an idyllic pond crowded with old men fishing and young kids in water wings known as French Town Pond. The pond has been converted into a state park and does “brisk business” on warm summer days.

It didn’t take me long to get out of the car, and clamber over the fence behind him. We pushed through some sage brush, dropped our shoes and shirts right there in the coarse grass on the undeveloped-side of the pond, and waded up to our waists in the cool water. Slowly, luxuriously, we stretched out and began propelling ourselves through the emerald water. Unlike Rachael, I am not a strong swimmer, and I realized midway across that the pond was much wider than my feverish glance from the shore suggested. I crammed down a stab of fear, rolled over onto my back, and back stroked a while.

Pretty soon, we hit the soft sandy soil in the shallows and then, like proto-humans emerging from the slime, steadily rose out of the pond to meet the stares of those park patrons who entered the park through more conventional methods. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves at that point. Out of habit, I used the outhouse. Then we trudged back into the water and made the return trip across the pond. We put our shirts and shoes back own, hopped the fence and climbed dripping into the car.

The first few miles after the swim were a little dicey. Our wet shorts slid back and forth on the vinyl seats and water pooled on the floor mats. But the relief from the heat was wonderful. Unfortunately, it was also short-lived. I don’t remember, but it seems to me that our clothes must have dried even before we made Lookout Pass. What I love most about that experience was the spontaneity of it. I loved how carefree it felt to swim—just because we needed to cool down.