Faith Katseanes:Hello, this is Faith Katseanes and I am here with Rich Bowman. It is 5:04pm on October 5 2022. This interview is completely voluntary and will be recorded. You have the right at any time to opt out. Do you consent to being recorded?
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Rich Bowman:Yes.
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FK:So let's start stating where you were born and talking a little bit about your hometown.
RB:Sure. I was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho in 1954 at Sacred Heart Hospital. My parents lived in Montana. And my mother came to Idaho Falls because the little town that they lived in, in Montana didn't have a hospital. So I was actually born in Idaho. I didn't realize until two years ago when I went to apply for the Star License, we have that now the star driver's license. I took a closer look at my birth certificate and I'm actually considered a Montana native. Because my birth certificate said I had full residence on the land of Montana. I had a nonresident Idaho birth certificate. Nonresident tickled me to death. I was proud of that.
RB:As much time as I spent in Montana, I always wanted to be Montana native and by gosh, I didn't learn until two years ago. Believe it or not. I am a native.
FK:So did you spend most of your time here in Idaho?
RB:Yes, I grew up in Idaho Falls most of the time. My parents lived in Montana until I was about four. My dad got it got a job at the INL test site. West of town, and we moved here then and I lived here ever since then. And went all the way through school through high school. And I actually went back to Montana when I was in college.
FK:Interesting. All right. So what jobs did your parents hold in the 60s?
RB:It was different times than today. My father worked as a reactor operator. When he moved to the Idaho test site prior to that when I was born, he was actually a chef in Montana. And he got a job at the INL because they were paying more money in accident benefit insurance. He was interested in starting a family, that's the job he worked, as a reactor operator until he retired. And my mother actually was a housekeeper and a mom. She worked part time at a restaurant as a waitress when both my brother and I got into school because then we were gone. She was alone. She worked part time at a restaurant for like a year, and she decided to be a homemaker and a mom. Yeah, so that is pretty common. All my friends did. Most of their parents were the same way. My father worked full time. The mother was a homemaker. It was quite common in those days unlike like today.
FK:Did you have any sort of childhood job like a paperboy or anything like that?
RB:Yeah, I worked. My uncle owns a ranch outside of Dillon, Montana, and when I was 15, I went to work for them. I moved pipe for a little bit and I drove a tractor with a buck rake on it and I lifted bales up to the stack so that the stacker could stack them. We did that for two crops of summer, along with moving pipe off and on when I got my first paying job. The second job I had was here when I was 16. I worked for the city of Idaho Falls on the road patching crew shoveling hot asphalt out of the back of the truck in the holes in the road. It was the hardest job I've ever had. And the hottest job because it was in the summer, obviously. But I made $1.65 an hour doing that. So three of us would shovel seven tons of hot asphalt. But it was a real steady summertime paycheck. That was in the summer of '69.
FK:That's interesting. What do you remember about your schooling that decade and what kind of information were they teaching you in classes? Was it just standard or do you feel like it might have changed when you think of what we're learning in school now?
RB:Sure. I think grade school is pretty consistent, pretty standard. The classes we took and that kind of stuff and compare that to like my kids who went to school and also what they took in grade school and what I took in grade school, I think it's overall pretty similar. You learn the cursive in third grade, you learned basic math, we learned how to count the numbers and got the flashcard things in grade school. I think my own kids' generation was kind of similar to that. As time went by with technology it's changed surely. That was great school. Pretty consistent. By the time you got out of sixth grade you basically covered those four or five main classes pretty consistently. I liked history and the science classes. It wasn't just basic science, like in fifth and sixth grade it was just basic science, usually a general science. In seventh grade, it was basic science which covered you know, basic sets of issues like electricity and stuff like that. Ninth grade were the requirement to take biology as a freshman for everybody. Everybody in the city of Idaho Falls, we all took biology as freshmen. Otherwise it was algebra basic math. in seventh grade was intro to algebra in eighth grade it was algebra one pretty consistently throughout the city during my time. We started earning high school credits as a freshman. You went to a junior high school when I was a freshman, It was seventh, eighth, and ninth grade at the same school. But other than that, again, it was pretty consistent. I think English math, science, reading, writing was book reports a lot and those kinds of courses. Pretty basic, pretty consistent.
FK:So, in terms of the books you were reading, do you remember what any of those were? Were they mostly classic books, or did you guys use some of the contemporary kind of stuff that
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RB:From what I remember we went to the library, City Library. That's where we went to get books. We ordered them from the Weekly Reader. We would order them and purchase them and we read them and then we get to report on them. Well, we could go to the city library and check them out. Just pick something to read and just want to get a read in junior high. To be honest, it was pretty much the pain. There was I'm trying to think in my English classes in junior high. And my English teachers, by the way, were outstanding. There were two English teachers in junior high. English became one of my favorite courses because of those two of them, those two of those teachers, but as far as reading goes, I don't remember. I remember them, mostly not telling us what to read, like classic books to read in junior high. They would identify a topic like "Go to the library and check out a book on some sort of a history subject or a fiction book." And then write a book report. In high school of course it got a little more detailed that they would tell you which books to read because they were into more of the classic books then.
FK:We'll switch now to a little bit more about the decade itself. What big events do you remember hearing about the most during the 60s. What was in the mainstream talk of Idaho Falls during that time?
RB:There are several that I'm going to talk about and they were not necessarily subjects or incidences. That were just for Idaho Falls. Looking back, you know, the 60s was a very complicated decade. There was a lot of stuff going on, and it was not all necessarily good, but it sure made the news. There were a few things that I think when I first started school, grade school, we were not taught, we weren't taught the topic, but it was a topic that we had to deal with. And it was the Cold War. The result of World War Two between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world. Basically, with the Cold War, Because they do fire drills for kids now. We did nuclear bomb war drills in grades. Like first grade, they were just like a fire drill. But we would ultimately just not go outside and stand outside in line. They would send us to, under my grade school was a certified shelter, a bomb shelter. And we would go down there like we would go outside for a fire drill. And they would tell us "Go against this wall, we have sealed barrels of water over here, we have canned and dried foods. And there's blankets over here," and sending us the message that if something like that happened, this is where we would go, this is where we immediately go to check the messages that we may have to stay there for a while.
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And when you're in first grade, it's like, "What?" you know, it was kind of weird, but you just did it and you got used to it. But as time went by, you know and I got further into junior high school. Obviously the Cold War was that I understood Oh, this is what was going on. So starting in the 60s, the Cold War was an issue that you didn't necessarily begin teaching about it just existed and you heard about it and you heard about it a lot on the news even on TV. The Cold War and nuclear weapons and the development and those kinds of things. Not that it wasn't something that personally frightened me. It just I recognized "Oh, wow. This is what's going on." Another thing in the 60s, one of the things that caught a lot of my attention personally was assassinations. Gross, I know. JFK died when I was in third grade. You never forget that in, third grade because, of seeing it on TV in school. Being sent home from school, when that happened. Seeing it on TV after that for several days until the funeral and then his body being laid in state at the capital of the Rotunda in Washington DC. We watched on TV the whole grade school.
RB:That was something that was different. That was in '63. In '68. another assassination, of Martin Luther King. Woke up on a Sunday morning, my bedroom was downstairs, walked up the stairs turned on the TV. Nobody was up yet. Turned on the TV and it's a special report. I hated those of the kids because it interrupted the shows I wanted to watch. But I understood what happened. It was Martin Luther King had been shot that morning. Another one in June, Robert Kennedy. I woke up on a Sunday morning walk upstairs, turned the TV on and it was a special report on Robert Kennedy had been shot and killed during a campaign. Those three assassinations were on TV and on the news a lot. JFK, because he was President, Martin Luther King because of the civil rights issues going on in the country during that decade. And everybody knew who Martin Luther King was even an eighth grader. And of course, RFK just because he was John Kennedy's brother and he was running for president. I learned about it when I turn on the TV first thing on a Sunday morning for both of them. It always struck me funny. Another event that, personally I still kind of live with, would be the Beatles came to America. They were on our TV in January of 1964.
And I say that because it was after Christmas, was right after Christmas and I had heard of The Beatles because I'm starting to listen to music other than what everybody else has. So that was another incident. I got to watch them on TV on Ed Sullivan and so that was to me a major incident in my life. And it was on TV. Not a whole bunch, but everybody would watch the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday evening to see the Beatles. The last one after that event was the Vietnam War. That included the protests around the country, college campuses. All the time. The Vietnam War was on the front page of the newspaper every single day. The Vietnam War was on our TV every single evening. My dad would turn on the TV to watch the six o'clock news, and for the first 10 minutes it was the national news or international news, and it was Vietnam. Then 10 minutes of local news, five minutes of sports, and five minutes of weather. That was every single day. Every single day we got to see the number of deaths in Vietnam. That was that was what probably had the most effect on me was Vietnam, because it's something we learned that we lived with every day from 1965-66 through the rest of the 60s.
FK:With the Vietnam War, were you noticing people from your community getting drafted? How do you think Idaho was kind of playing a part in that?
RB:You know, I probably couldn't speak to the whole community. I had a couple of friends that were drafted and went to Vietnam, older brothers. And they came back. They didn't get killed. They came back, they were fine. The biggest thing about Vietnam War for me personally was watching it on TV. And, they showed clips. They showed videos of reporters actually embedded with the troops in Vietnam in the jungle. And then after they report and talk about that then they show the protests at home here in America. And I would see on TV all the time. I do not recall Vietnam protesting here in Idaho Falls, personally. I think overall because of the size of the community. The fact that was in Idaho, more of a rural state. It was kind of unquestioned overall I think of as a culture here in Idaho Falls. If your kids got drafted, they went. They didn't necessarily go to Vietnam, Don't get me wrong.
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They could've just been drafted in the military and gone to Germany. That was quite common. There were 116 combat battalion, in Idaho Falls that here ,and when it was here, then they did go to Vietnam. And maybe a couple of my friends', older brothers were involved in that and went to it. Other than that, I really didn't know anybody that actually went until later on in my life. When I worked with a good number of veterans, Vietnam. But I didn't know what protests were in Idaho Falls. I do know that it still impacted those of us who weren't quite old enough to draft in the 60s. I was old enough to be drafted in '72. I was 16 years old in 1969, the first year they held the draft lottery on TV. I developed my opinion of Vietnam because of the all the TV coverage. All the interstates were covered for three or four years and I'd seen it every day, day in and day out. My dad went to Korea, he was a decorated Korean War veteran.
RB:I was patriotic, but I did not like Vietnam I developed my personal opinion about it. I remember conversation I had with my dad when I was 16. The night they held the draft lottery on TV, I didn't like it. And I'll be honest with you. my dad even told me that night, because I made some smart aleck comment about the lottery on TV. Something a 16 year old kid would probably say, and I said "I'm not going, this is not a war we need to be involved in. This war is causing pain in this country and I'm not going." My dad was in the living room watching the lottery on TV and reading the newspaper. I heard the paper crumbled down and I looked up in here he came into the kitchen. I was the dining room table doing my homework. And he said, "What did you say?" I said, "What do you mean?" He said "Did you say something about Vietnam?" and I said "I don't like it. I think it's not right. I disagree with it." And he said "Okay, you know what Rich? I don't like it either." I said, "You don't dad?" He said "No, it's not a war like when I went to Korea. This is a different war." It's kind of the same reasons as Korea, to stop communism.
He said, "You're not going to go? What would you do? If your draft number comes up, if get a low draft number, say your number is 50?" And low draft numbers guaranteed usually you're going to be drafted. Number one and number two, the lowest numbers are usually the ones that were sent to Vietnam. And I said "You know, I love to fish. Canada might be a good place to live." That's where the draft dodgers were going. Holy cow, that lit a fire under him. Would I have actually done that or not, I'll never know. You know, because I ended up having some major surgery a couple years later and I was declared for 4F because of it. And the military wouldn't take me even if I wanted to enlist. The funny part is when I turned 18 and my draft number was held, my number was like 300. It's unlikely I would have been drafted anyway. I did not like Vietnam as a young person. I did not like it. And it was the biggest event in this country, I believe, in the last half of that century. It had the most impact of anything, music, everything.
FK:So we're going to switch gears a little bit to civil rights issues. Could describe the demographic of Idaho Falls at the time? Was it mostly male, mostly female, was it mostly white? What kind of people were living in Idaho Falls during the 60s?
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RB:Mostly white males. The Nuclear test site was the primary employer for the community then, and probably still is. And at the time, it was made up of laborers. Then they would work their way into it like my dad did. He started in the labor. He became a reactor operator after a few years' worth of training and experience and little bit of education. So most of the people that worked at the site at that time, because It came to be in the 50s, early 50s. Most of the people at that time were males, white males. And in the 60s. I believe it was still primarily white, mostly male. A lot of female too, but primarily white male and white female.
FK:So because it was primarily white, would you say that issues of civil rights were a little removed from the area at that time?
RB:Yes, I do. I think it wasn't something that was an issue in the community of Idaho Falls at the time that I was aware of. Now, having said that, there were black families, Asian families, Hispanic families in Idaho Falls. Farming communities used not as many Hispanic laborers as they do now, but was it was here, but it was still predominantly white. And, I think probably civil rights, as far as what was going on around the rest of the country, in the bigger cities, None of that none of that was here. Was bigotry here? Yeah. There were a few black kids in school and there were some people that would, you know, disgustingly call them names and stuff. But that never became a civil rights issue, per se. It was painful for those folks. And ignorant of people that were doing. Civil Rights was kind of like a product from it. Civil Rights in Idaho Falls is something we'd see on TV. The protests and fights and crimes, the murders and stuff that would go on. It becomes a topic of conversation because, in history and government, whatever class you might be taken in primarily junior high school, those would be topics of discussion and then topics that they would have debate students look at and work on. For the purpose of educating, but it was not something we really lived.
FK:Okay, so I think we're going to wrap it up with a more one off question. What hobbies or kind of extracurricular activities do you remember having during the 60s? What were you doing for fun?
RB:I'm not going to tell you everything, they'd get me in trouble. No, I'm just kidding. Predominantly when I wasn't in school, I was either playing a sport like baseball or basketball. So sports was my primary extracurricular activity. My other extracurricular activity, depending on the season, was hunting and fishing. So basically, it was outside. Because of just where we live, we live in part of the Rocky Mountains. We live close to national parks, beautiful country. And mountains and rivers and streams and lakes. So sports primarily. I love my sports. I loved to play sports when I was a kid, the only sport I never played was football. But I love playing sports. And when I wasn't doing that, it was because I was maybe fishing up in Montana in the summer and hunting in the fall. Music was not a hobby. I but when I was doing my homework, I was listening to music. I loved music when I was a kid. I'm not kidding. The Beatles and rock and roll as a young kid took me by storm and I would do anything to get a Beatles album. So that was kind of a hobby, I guess you could say.
FK:Yeah. Right. I think that's good for my recording. So I'll just stop that. Thank you for your time.
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