Lured by the enticing thought of pungent sauerkraut, we yielded to temptation and returned to the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley this fall after a long absence.
My wife, Robyn, and I left our Lewiston home in 2006, motivated by the need for change and adventure. We landed in Oregon in a rural setting outside tiny Creswell and within easy distance of much bigger Eugene.
We were impressed with the many opportunities for concerts, sporting events and fine food the area offered. We didn’t miss the Banana Belt sauerkraut for a long time.
But as the years passed, we began to fantasize about our old odoriferous friend. It’s one of those intense odors that drives some people crazy and motivates others. Perhaps Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in the movie “Apocalypse Now” said it best: “Nothing in the world smells like that. I love the smell of sauerkraut in the morning.”
OK, OK. Maybe he said “napalm” in the 1979 film about the war in Vietnam. But he could have been referring to sauerkraut instead. Perhaps napalm was just a symbolic word.
Regardless, everywhere we looked for an equal to our past experiences with the luscious taste and nostril-tickling scent we had left behind in the valley, we came up empty in Oregon.
It was time to go back to our old home and search for our old culinary friend.
But can you really go home again?
Famous novelist Thomas Wolfe wrote a book titled “You Can’t Go Home Again,” which was published in 1940.
The point of his novel was that if you attempt to go back to a place from your past, it won’t be the same as when you left it. So you can’t go home again.
But was it true? We wanted to find out.
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With the COVID-19 pandemic easing, we hit the road in October to see family and old hometowns from the past and, of course, search for our beloved sauerkraut.
I grew up in the tiny town of Princeton, less than 20 miles from Moscow in the state’s panhandle. It was an ideal place to live with only 84 people and surrounded by farmland and forests. Folks left the keys in their unlocked cars day and night and many didn’t lock the doors of their houses. My father, Alec, was the postmaster and knew everyone in town.
Everyone in town also knew the Bull family. My brother Bill and I roamed the town and the countryside at will, playing with other kids and swimming in the Palouse River about a mile away. We felt safe and crime was virtually nonexistent.
School was less than a block from my home and I attended first grade along with the second grade kids in a single classroom with outdoor toilets in 1952. My class photo looks more like a lineup of tiny delinquents than happy children in a place of learning. Check out the grim looks on all those mugs. That’s me on the top row, far left. Not even a hint of a smile.
Actually, school was great and I have good memories of first grade. But it didn’t last. At the end of my first year, the school was consolidated into the Potlatch school system, 3 miles and a quick bus ride away in a town of about a thousand people.
At Potlatch, we were treated to indoor plumbing, however. That sweetened the transition somewhat.
Fast forward to 1964 when I graduated high school and left home for college in southern Idaho. I would never return to live in Princeton.
After college graduation in 1967, I took a job in Lewiston with the state of Idaho and drove north in a 1954 Plymouth I bought for $50 from a college buddy. It used a quart of automatic transmission fluid a week, but since it was my first car, I thought it was cool. It even had an AM radio.
Upon arriving in my new hometown, I noticed a stench hanging in the air.
I asked a clerk in a grocery store what the strong odor was.
“It smells like sauerkraut sitting on a fresh cow pie, don’t it?” he said.
I didn’t argue with him because I had never smelled sauerkraut in my life, never mind sauerkraut sitting on a cow pie.
“It’s the darn pulp mill,” he added. “Stinks day and night.”
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But back to 2022 as we set out on our road trip in search of the succulent sauerkraut.
On a sunny Sunday in October, we drove north from Creswell to Portland and across the Columbia River to Vancouver where my sister, Mary, and her husband, Joe, had moved from Clarkston in 2017 to be near their three daughters. I hadn’t seen my big sister since 2018 when our brother Stanley (since deceased) from California came to town. Stanley was taking an excursion boat trip up the Columbia and then the Snake River to Clarkston.
We had a good time, catching up on the old and the new like siblings do when they live apart and finally get together. Drank coffee and ate homemade cookies. Then we headed toward eastern Washington.
Because it was already late afternoon and our destination was almost 300 miles away, we opted to stay in Hood River, Ore., some 70 miles upriver from Vancouver. We picked the Columbia Gorge Hotel, a gorgeous old place which opened in 1921 and was known as the “Waldorf of the West.” A waterfall, taller than Niagara Falls, drops to the Columbia in front of the property.
It was a stopping place for notables including presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover and Hollywood stars like Shirley Temple and Rudolph Valentino. Valentino, a silent screen idol, would book a suite with a fireplace in the 1920s, selecting his dates for a whole year at once.
We had passed by the hotel numerous times over the years and stopped for lunch once but deemed it too expensive for an overnight stay. But in light of how the pandemic had affected travel and the years were passing, we decided to splurge.
The hotel is perched on a cliff overlooking the Columbia River and is surrounded by tall trees, lawns, shrubs and flowers. We had a riverside room overlooking the river and the hills of Washington state on the other side.
After unpacking, we glanced at the menu prices for dinner at the hotel. Somewhat shocked, we drove into Hood River and ate pizza.
Breakfast at the hotel was reasonable and the next morning we ate a leisurely meal with a great view of the river again.
Then we got on the freeway and started the next leg of our trip toward sauerkraut utopia.
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In the middle of the afternoon, we were in Pomeroy and then drove south on winding roads that went from paved to gravel. Soon we were in the Peola area, filled with wheat fields and stands of ponderosa pine.
Robyn’s sister and brother-in-law, Mary and Steve, live in a two-story farmhouse that Steve’s parents had lived in, which they had ordered from Sears, Roebuck Co. It was delivered in the form of a model kit. But instead of a toy model airplane or car, this was a real house. Complete.
They had a 360-degree view of this broad country. It’s quiet and peaceful with no close neighbors.
We sat at the kitchen table drinking iced tea and eating Mary’s zucchini bread (made with molasses) and, once again, catching up on the old and the new. We realized we hadn’t been to this house since 2005.
Too soon it was time to head to Clarkston, because I had promised my brother to see him in the late afternoon or early evening.
We hadn’t been to the L-C Valley since my mother died in 2009. Coming down from the higher Peola area into the Clarkston Heights, I was amazed by all the new homes that were built on what was farmland our last time through.
We found Bill and Bonnie’s place on a quiet street and soon were having a déjà vu experience.
As we talked about the old and the new once again, I had a thought: texting, emails, Facebook and even phone calls do not take the place of a live, in-person visit. Face-to-face communication is still No. 1.
Bill and I hadn’t seen each other probably since Mom’s funeral in 2009. Thirteen years? How was that possible?
Back in our motel room, I vowed not to let that happen again.
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Tuesday morning, we headed north to Pullman and then on to Kamiak Butte County Park. Robyn and I had studied the maps and noticed the butte was not far off the route to Potlatch, out final destination for the day.
Growing up in northern Idaho, I’d heard people talk of Kamiak Butte. I’d always wanted to go there but never made it. Robyn had researched it and was interested immediately.
The butte is surrounded by the rolling hills of the Palouse where agriculture is king.
A trail takes hikers through stands of ponderosa pine and Douglas firs to the top of the 3,641-foot summit. The reward is a beautiful view in all directions of farmland and distant forested hills.
There was no sound at the top save for a breeze blowing through the trees. I wondered why I’d never made the effort to see this beautiful spot I’d lived so close to.
Potlatch was more than a half-hour away, so we hit the road again once we got to the bottom of Kamiak Butte. We had a meeting with Gary Strong of the Potlatch Historical Society at 2 p.m.
After my dad’s death in 2001, I inherited a lot of items from his 30 years as the Princeton postmaster: photographs, post office records and other memorabilia he accumulated and stored in his basement. I didn’t want them to go to Goodwill so I kept them all.
After sitting on the collection for more than 20 years, I decided maybe it should be shared.
I contacted the historical society and Strong assured me they would indeed like to have the items.
The Potlatch Historical Society is on the second floor of the old Washington, Idaho and Montana Railroad depot. The old building was saved and restored while the big lumber mill west of the depot was razed long ago.
The society isn’t focused on preserving the history of just Potlatch but also the surrounding area. That includes Princeton, which has no such society, so Strong was pleased to get Dad’s collection.
It included paychecks from the lumber mill dated 1913. The workers’ wages then were $3 a day.
My first hometown, Princeton, was 3 miles east. Leaving Potlatch, I glanced at my old high school, a two-story building long ago turned into apartments.
In Princeton, I pulled to a stop across the street where the post office stood when I was a boy. Our home used to be right next to it. Both were gone. A different house stood where I grew up.
Thomas Wolfe was right, I thought. You can’t go home again. Especially if there’s nothing left standing of it.
I was through with Princeton.
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Instead of returning to Clarkston through Moscow and down the Lewiston grade, we took an alternate route through Kendrick and Juliaetta. The sun was out and the traffic light as we took our time and enjoyed the scenery.
We looked forward to stopping at a winery in Juliaetta, one of several we’d read about that sprouted up in the valley since we left. It was closed Tuesdays. Rats.
We drove on.
Just where Potlatch Creek joins the Clearwater River, we saw a small sign beside the road advertising Rivaura Estates Vineyard and pointing to a narrow road. We hadn’t heard of this one.
We followed the road up a hill and found a newly built winery in a beautiful setting. The views of the river and looming hills with the vineyard in front were stunning.
We sat outside on a deck, relaxed with a glass of wine and talked with a longtime local and his friend from out of the area. I forgot all about Princeton.
Back in Lewiston, we found our old house on Normal Hill. It had been an attractive place with a fireplace, hardwood floors, wrought iron gate and many bushes, flowers and trees. The gate was gone, the hedge hadn’t been trimmed for so long it looked like scraggly trees, and the beautiful redwood trim around the windows was painted black.
Bummer.
That night, we zeroed in on the mother lode of sauerkraut. We knew where we found it many years before but feared it might be gone or replaced. There was one way to find out.
We entered Fazzari’s Finest in Clarkston and grabbed a menu, scanning it quickly. There it was: “Shotsy” — a most unique pizza made with mustard sauce, instead of tomato sauce, Swiss cheese, mozzarella cheese, smoked polish sausage, onions and sauerkraut, all on a handmade crust.
We quickly ordered and waited breathlessly until our order was called. I grabbed the pizza pan filled with our steaming treasure and carefully set it down at the table.
I took my first bite hoping it would be as delicious as I remembered.
My taste buds exploded. Ambrosia. It was delicious, as delicious as so many years ago.
We finished the pizza off in minutes, only pausing to take sips of cold beer.
The next day we visited the Nez Perce National Historical Park at Spalding before driving to Lapwai to see a longtime friend, Frank Broncheau. He had the day off from his job at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Frank and I have known each other since he was a young boy and I was a young man. Like me, Frank has an avid interest in sports and sees a lot of humor in life. It had been too long since we had a good visit, sharing stories from the past and present punctuated with lots of laughter.
It was a special moment in that day.
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Soon it was time to head south to the Wallowa area where we were spending the night, so we said goodbye to the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley. The next day it was on through the middle of Oregon, seeing the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, including the Painted Hills section. It was a new experience for both of us.
Finally, we found ourselves outside of Creswell, pulling up the driveway to our little house.
It was good to shed the pandemic travel restrictions of the past few years and see family, familiar places and new places. And find our favorite pizza in the world still being made and as tasty as ever.
We watched a beautiful sunset that night from our place in Oregon.
It was good to be home.
Bull is a former sports reporter for the Tribune as well as a longtime free-lance contributer who now lives in Oregon. He may be contacted at andybull253@gmail.com.
