Shoshone County Pioneers & Oldtimers Association

I'm an oldtimer now.

I have to be.

I registered.

Mom started talking about this meeting over dinner the other night and suddenly said, "You wanna go?"

So we went.

Upon arrival, I immediately began to reflect upon what a new town Kellogg is. Silver Valley Girl has been thinking about much the same thing, here.

What's been on my mind about Kellogg is that the town was born of the Industrial Revolution. When the Bunker Hill Company decided to located its lead smelter and, later, its Zinc Plant in Kellogg, Kellogg became more than a mining town. It became an industrial center.

Historically, the Industrial Revolution is a new development in world history. Part of the problem with its being so new is that little precedent exists for how to clean up environmentally damaged areas now that industry has shut down across the country.

I watched the documentary film "Heavy Metal" not long ago and several Kellogg citizens interviewed were hostile toward the EPA and the Superfund clean-up effort. I understand why. The clean up has taken over twenty years. Superfund sites are stigmatized as undesirable places to live or move to.

The prevailing sympathy among the disgruntled citizens was this: "The EPA ought to come in, get the clean up over with, and leave us alone."

I kept wondering, "How does the EPA know how to conduct such a clean up?" I don't distrust the EPA and I'm all for their efforts to clean up the Silver Valley, but I keep thinking that they've got to be learning how to do this as they go.

Who thought, while the Industrial Revolution in Kellogg was producing so much metal and providing so many jobs, that one day the toxic remains would have to be cleaned up? And once that question began to be addressed, doesn't it make sense that the clean up would be a long and arduous project, an entry into unknown territory, given the intensity of the pollution and its unprecedented nature?

Maybe I'm wrong about this. But, I see people's yards being replaced and the slag pile being capped and I walk or bike on the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes (which I love), knowing that the toxins have been capped by asphalt, and I wonder: has the problem of clean up really been solved? While these are good faith efforts, it just seems to me that once toxic material makes its home in a place, can it be eliminated or covered up and stay away?

I'm asking questions about and reflecting upon Kellogg's industrial hey day and the aftermath as a total amateur. But, even as an amateur, I listened to the local people being interviewed and they sounded naive to me. I admire their love for this place and their fierce devotion to it. But, nothing is free of cost. Especially in the world of mining and smelting.

The cost in Kellogg for that relatively short time of industrial success has been to live with a hangover that was much easier to create than it is to get ride of.

Back to the meeting. I was about the third youngest adult at the meeting. Many people who I had known from afar or who were friends of the family attended. Many I hadn't seen for as many as thirty years.

Pride filled the room. These people stuck it out in Kellogg. They had fallen in love with the community. They never wanted to leave the friendly and often crude character of this place.

I felt my connection with my fellow old timers most deeply when we stood and sang together the chorus to our state song, "Here We Have Idaho". I could feel the pride in each of us and truth we felt as we joined together singing:

Singing, we're singing of you
Ah, proudly, too
All our lives through, we'll go
Singing, singing of you
Singing of Idaho.