How I Came to Grow Up in Pocatello

I was born in Pocatello, but, of course, that is not how I came to grow up there. My father had attended high school and college in Pocatello, but, like so many others, he had been driven by the Depression to seek greener pastures. The greener pastures were for him, as for many others, to be found in Washington D.C. He had gone there to work and get a law degree, which he did at George Washington University. He had in the process also managed to find a wife, my mother, who had been driven from Preston, Idaho by the very same Depression. After getting his degree, Dad had returned to Pocatello as the regional director of Social Security. While there, I and my sister Loni were born. If he had stayed on in Pocatello, he might have had a very large family, but shortly after having Loni, he moved to Boise to become the assistant Federal attorney for Idaho. It turns out, for some reason known only to people who know about such things, that my parents could only have children in Pocatello.

After WWII ended, Dad jumped at the chance to become involved with the Nazi War Crimes Trials, so we moved to Germany where we lived for two years. After the trials ended, Dad reported back to Washington, thinking that the powers that be would give him back his old job as assistant Federal attorney, or maybe even, considering that he had so much experience prosecuting ne'er do wells in the Nazi trials, make him the full fledged Federal attorney for Idaho, but, it turns out, the Nazi trials had become very unpopular and to have participated in them was to be branded as a sort of ne'er do well yourself. So instead of being promoted or even allowed to return to his old job as regional director for Social Security, Dad was told he would have to lay low in Washington D.C. hiding out in some large government building, receiving a salary, of course, but doing what everyone else who is hiding out in large government buildings in Washington D.C. is doing, viz. nothing. Of course, Dad was assured that after several years, the fact of his having been involved with the Nazi trials was bound to more or less blow over and he might be allowed to return to the field.

Dad told me (years later) that after getting that piece of news, he wandered around Washington--more or less looked the place over--and decided that he could not raise a family there. So he did what almost nobody ever does. He quit his safe, secure government job, and returned to his home town to set up a private practice, hoping, no doubt, that if things got really bad, that his dad would pass along a loaf of bread or two and let him use the family tent. Fortunately, it never came to that, but to hear him talk, it came close in the first few years.

Anyway, that is how I came to grow up in Pocatello.