Looking back: Mom, daughter rescued after falling through bridge and man misses crashing car into girl’s bed by 3 feet

IDAHO FALLS — EastIdahoNews.com is looking back at what life was like during the week of May 16 to May 22 in east Idaho history.

1900-1925

IDAHO FALLS — A hailstorm of “unusual severity” swept over Idaho Falls, the Blackfoot Idaho Republican said on May 19, 1921.

“The hailstones, some of them an inch and a half in circumference and weighing as much as an ounce and a half, stripped leaves and small branches from trees and broke window glass to the value of hundreds of dollars,” the article stated.

The local paper said practically every light globe in the downtown district was broken. The city estimated damage to light globes at more then $1,000.

“Windows on the west side of the courthouse were broken,” the paper said. “Plate glass in business houses were broken in many places and hundreds of windows in homes.”

1926-1950

SALMON — A mom and daughter were saved from drowning after falling through a bridge, the Salmon Recorder Herald reported on May 20, 1936.

Mrs. Royal Waller was carrying her “little daughter” while crossing over the bridge at Warm Springs Creek in Salmon when a board broke and they were both thrown into the water.

“Mrs. Waller’s foot was caught in the bridge and she was unable to extricate it, but she managed to hold the baby above water until assistance came,” the paper explained.

A man working nearby saw Waller when she first started crossing the bridge but “an instant later,” he noticed she disappeared and began “investigating.”

“Mrs. Waller states that she and the child would no doubt have been drowned if they had not received assistance,” the Salmon Recorder Herald said.

1951-1975

RIGBY — A man who fell asleep while driving crashed into a power pole, car and house before coming to a stop, The Rigby Star wrote on May 21, 1953.

Darrell Ashbocker, 22, of Thornton, was driving a 1941 Chevrolet Sedan when he fell asleep south of the old Riverside pavilion site on Highway 191 at 4:35 a.m.

The car was being “driven at a high speed” when it left the road and hit a power line pole. The car continued north 126 feet where it collided with a parked car belonging to Therm Peterson before it crashed into the Peterson’s home.

“(The car tore) off a corner of the house, and rolled up right another 44 feet north before stopping in the edge of a pasture,” the paper mentioned. “The driver, unharmed, awoke about that time.”

When the car crashed through the home, it missed the Peterson’s eight-year-old daughter’s bed by three feet. The paper noted she was not injured.

“The force of the collision tore an electric range loose from its place as well as an oil stove,” the article said. “Dishes and food in the house were also scattered about as result of the crash.”

1976-2000

POCATELLO — The Pocatello Public Library started a new project where a librarian took weekly book trips to the Bannock County Jail.

The Idaho State Journal said on May 20, 1976, Susan Overton, who was the “librarian for the immobile patron,” would visit the jail on Monday and gather a request list. The next day, she would bring the books and magazines that inmates requested.

“Books were taken to the jail under this program for the first time April 1,” the article explained. “Before then, the library had taken a box of paperback books to the jail every three weeks, but a prisoner request program, especially on a weekly basis, was not developed.”

David Friend, librarian for the Pocatello Public Library, said he was especially concerned about what he called “prisoners’ human needs.” He explained “the fact someone may be in a barred box doesn’t imply that his mind is automatically turned off.”

The inmates asked for a variety of different genres including western, algebra, rhetoric and the Bible. Overton said Bibles in Spanish and English were requested constantly but the library didn’t have enough to provide.

“They’ve (the prisoners) always had reading materials available to them,” Deputy Shirley Gameson pointed out. “We try to restrict it (the program) to books that we don’t have to be responsive for or to return.”