Growing Up Pine Creek: book review

Book Review: GROWING UP PINECREEK by Ryan Wood, Self-published 2004

Pine Creek is a waterway only a few months of the year, chiefly in March as the twelve-foot deep snow pack on the mountain peaks begins melting in earnest. By July, large stretches of it are dry. “Pine Crick”, to pronunce it correctly, identifies the neighborhood in which two families of boys grew in semi-isolation. Not that they were hill-billies in any sense. One of the fathers, Ron Wood, was a high school teacher. The other, Ray Dose, filled a special niche in commerce, manufacturing aluminum-alloy accessories for the horse-dawn buggies still driven by the Amish folks in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The five boys, Ronnie, Ryan, and Rusty Wood, Dave and Gary Dose spanned ten years in age, the Doses being a lttle older than the Woods. I have known some of them personally as adults, and after reading of their adventures in this book, I think survival may be among their greatest achievements. The birthday wagon kit is a case in point. That started out as two axles, four plastic wheels, and mounting brackets to attach them to wood furnished by the kids.

The “scientist/engineer” among them laid out the dimensions of a 3 ft long x 18 inch wide wagon box, while the artist/historian said, “what about building a [pioneer] covered wagon?” Everyone thought this a great idea; they added several hoops and a sheet, doubled the size to six by three feet, with a two man front seat and a handbrake on the side. “We need something to pull it.”

Figuring a rig to connect the farmyard pony might delay things by a couple days, “Let's just use the motorbike.” They hitched that to the wagon with some rope, and all climbed aboard. After several turns around the yard, they headed down the driveway toward the road, gathering speed. The wagon driver yelled “Slow down!” The one on the motorbike yelled back, “Just three more seconds and we'll be doing thirty miles an hour!” followed by a loud grinding sound and a lurch of the wagon as the plastic wheels melted and axles hit the pavement, shooting sparks like a rocket. “Then all was quiet . . . We just kind of picked up our gravel-coated bodies and gathered around what was left of “Project Wagon Death.”

But that didn't stop their experiment. Ryan analyzes six bad decisions made along the way. Then, after Gary comes up with some twelve-inch rubber tires and they gather around and begin “Project Wagon Death II”. (Bad decision # 1.)

Then there was the boat ride down Pine Creek in full flood one March day, in the remains of a rowbout salvaged from the burn pile behind the barn. Never mind that the wooden keel and gunnels had been burned away, leaving what was essentially a big piece of leaky sheet iron with enough holes in it to require constant bailing. It promised a great ride into the town of Pinehurst, six miles downstream. A pair of oars, a paddle to serve as rudder and a couple of bailing cans, and they were ready to go. Their parents did require them to wear life jackets, and would follow them in the chase vehicle.

The first mile was great. Then the East Fork joined the river, increasing the volume and speed. A white-water stretch crashed them into solid rock that crumpled the bow and tumbled the crew forward to weigh down the front end and raise the stern high to somersault over them as they wisely abandoned ship, diving into the icy water. They needed “less than two dozen stitches to close their wounds, and that is really nothing, up Pinecreek.”

I hate cats, Ryan writes, but I like my kid sister Shelly most of the time. Her pet cat, Shasta, had been missing for four days when Ryan heard a faint meowing, but couldn't locate the source. Two days later, he heard it again, coming from overhead. He finally spotted her, eighty feet high in a fir tree close to the barn. No branches in the lower twenty feet. Only one ladder on the property, about fourteen feet. Solution: pass the ladder from garage roof to tree trunk, with brother Rusty's weight to keep it from sliding. Ryan crawls over to lowest branch without looking down; climbs easily, but discovers six-days-worth of cat crap separating him from his goal. He adds his own vomit; manages to grab the reluctant cat, tucks it in his armpit like a football, climbs down, passes the cat to his sister, and races to the shower. But he remembers the smile on his sister's face to this day.

Ryan concludes this thirteen-chapter book with the overal point, “Growing up Pinecreek is not about the creek or a location. In essence, one could grow up Pinecreek anywhere. . . . a way of life, being able to live the way you want to and not caring about what other people think.”

The Wood and Dose kids not only survived, but thrived. In 2016, Ronnie Wood is now a farrier and heavy equipment operator, near Rose Lake. Ryan teaches consumer economics in Post Falls. Rusty is a physiotherapist in Kellogg. Shelly teaches second grade in Asotin, Washington. Dave Dose pioneered Fort Sherman Academy survival school, teaching overseas workers how to survive or evade capture by terrorists. Dave is also the artist who created the statues that decorate Kellogg, Idaho's streets (Fokker tri-plane, St. George and the Dragon, etc.) Dave currently lives in Coeur d'Alene. Gary Dose is the leader and mentor of the Silver Valley teens' mission trip to Peru in 2016. Rugged individualists one might call them. But that's what they grow, up Pinecreek.