In the late 1970s, my dad began buying molasses from a sugar beet processing plant in Idaho Falls, Idaho. He would drive to the plant in Idaho Falls with empty 55-gallon drums, fill them with molasses, and come back home. We stored the barrels in the little granary. We would use the loader tractor to move one barrel to the "big" granary (aka the granary). Then, we placed the barrel on a stand that would allow us to tip the barrel on its side. We had a valve that we put in the fill hole that allowed us to run molasses out of the barrel into buckets. We would fill one 5-gallon bucket with molasses that we poured in the grain trough on top of the rolled oats and rolled corn mixture of grain we fed the steers.
One summer before Kelly graduated from High School (1977 or 1978), Dad sent Kelly and me to Idaho Falls to get the molasses. I do not know how much Kelly had driven in the city before that trip. I remember Dad giving Kelly detailed instructions about which roads to take to get to the feed store in Idaho Falls to pick up the molasses. I was told to watch the road to help Kelly navigate. My memory is that Kelly was really nervous to drive in such a big city.
Idaho Falls was about 90 miles away from our home in Thayne. Kelly and I drove there, filled the barrels, paid the check, and drove back home. We did not take time for anything else.
I have two memories from the drive back home.
First, I remember that we did not stop on the way going or coming home. On the way home, we both needed to go to the bathroom. So, we made a game of trying not to think about going to the bathroom. Each mile of the trip led to increasing pressure on our bladders. When we both got home we both jumped out of the truck to pee as soon as we pulled into the yard. In retrospect, it was kind of silly that we did not stop to pee along the road.
SIDE NOTE: On the ranch, we were often away from the house working in the fields. Mom had a large (about 18 inches by 30 inches) mirror with one corner broken out that she used to call us to lunch when she had it ready. She would stand in the yard by the house and use the sun reflecting off of the mirror to flash reflected sun in the general direction of where we were working in the field. We called this "flashing for lunch". Those who were working away from the house would wave their arms to indicate they saw the flash and then come to the house for lunch.
Second, I remember that we caught up to a big tractor/trailer truck as we were driving around Palisades Lake. The truck had polished silver rear mudflaps. The sun was positioned just right that the reflection of the sun would frequently flash our eyes and the interior of the truck we were driving. One of the strategies we used to not think about our need to go to the bathroom was that we talked about Mom flashing the mirror to call us to lunch. So we needed to get home as soon as possible to eat.
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