Shelley Idaho Memories

An old neighbor and high school classmate recently shared a digital library of photos and information about Shelley, Idaho... the community where I grew up.  This is an image from that library that brings back memories.  It's the old Shelley First Ward Chapel.  I remember going with my mom to Relief Society quilting bees and laying on my back under the quilt watching the needles create their designs.  And I remember being so sad, almost violated, and crying when the building was torn down and replaced with a newer model of chapel.

Other classmates shared more pictures of old Shelley:

An aerial shot of the Shelley City Park circa 1960.  The roadway along the right edge of the picture is the highway that went into Idaho Falls northward and Blackfoot going south.  For the few blocks of downtown Shelley, it was also Main Street.

From the northwest corner of the park, just off center in the photo at the end of that long line of Cottonwood trees, you can see my old house on Oak Street.  The white one on the corner belonged to Edith Hanks.  We lived in the next one, also white, until I was 8.

And the old library in the log cabin at the park... one of my favorite places in the whole world!  There were tables and chairs just the right size for kids painted a green somewhere between lime and mint in my memory.  Books were checked out by noting the titles on a steno pad and during summer break from school there was a reading contest.

The merry-go-round in the foreground was another source of fun times.  You could get on when it was at a dead standstill and "pump" by leaning in and out to get it going.  Pretty soon it was creaking like crazy and going so fast that gravity nearly pulled you off!  I also remember trying to stand in the center while it whirled round and round.  All of the playground equipment was in a line along this edge of the park and it was all metal equipment set right into the grass.  Next was a slide where, in the heat of a summer's sun, many of us kids left burned off skin from the backs of our legs.  Then a swing set where we'd dare each other to swing the highest and jump from the swing at the peak of the arc.  I also remember the monkey bars and a big fire pit.  Sadly, I understand that all of this is gone now.

Before the house on Oak Street, I lived in this one.  It was a school house (first one maybe in Shelley) converted into 2 living quarters.  We lived downstairs and my grandma Clarke lived upstairs.  I remember helping her make Potato Chip Casserole and Peanut Butter Cookies in that little kitchen.

Shelley has a history of schools burning.  The old Junior High burned during the last week of school the year before I started there.  Conveniently, the school board was in the process of deciding what to do with it as the new building was nearing completion in the field behind.  Years later, after the schools had been shuffled and the building where I attended High School was being used as a Junior High, it also burned at the same time the school board was meeting to decide what to do with it because a new building had been erected.  Surely an odd coincidence of timing for that happen twice in such similar circumstances.

And while this last photo was taken a bit before my time, that is very much the way I remember Main Street.

They say you can never go home.  In some ways that's true.  Shelley has changed very much from the nostalgic, almost Saturday Evening Post illustration worthy, place of my childhood.  But finding this treasure of old photos and remembering makes me feel like I've gone home.

Photo credits:  First Ward Chapel, Old Frame School and Spud Day in the 1950s from the North Bingham County District Library collection as presented on the digital collections from the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah.  Aerial view of Shelley City Park from private collection of Dana Mallard.  Log Cabin Library from private collection of Val Carson Darrington.  Junior High Fire scanned clipping from The Shelley Pioneer.