It was during the 50s when I first met Jim Harris, who died last week, and his wife Nan. They, and Ned and I, were in our peak years of bringing forth children into the world, and we had mirror image families—each with three girls and a boy. The girls, even before they started school, found the hand of her counterpart, and as a pair grew up doing all the good kid things in Ketchum, which at that time was only a few blocks of unpaved streets.
In the 60s, Edward "Ski Pole" Scott hired me to work in his factory. Scotty paid better, way better, than other businesses in town, and he expected and got from his crew all day every day gung-ho effort. Jim headed the shipping department and became my mentor in gung-ho. Jim could pull a 60-pair order, slide them down his palm and into a box one after another to nestle as cozily as soul mates in bed, slap on the lid and a shipping label, strap three steel bands tight, and weigh and muscle the order to the shipping dock all while I'd still be getting my 30-pair order together.
I made so much money at Scotty's I bought a thousand dollar airplane, and after I'd learned just enough to get a license to teach others, I got a job at Sun Valley Aviation. I put scads of Learn to Fly brochures around town and stayed close to the phone, but nobody called. So I called Jim, and Jim said "Sure, you can teach me to fly."
We got right to it, and one morning after we'd been in the pattern practicing touch-and-goes for so long that both of us got stiff necks from all the left turns, Jim turned off the runway, taxied to the office, and shut-down.
"What're you doing, Jim?"
"I'm letting you out," he said.
"Whaddaya mean, you're letting me out?"
"Get out. I'm soloing."
And so he did. And in three turns around the patch, his wings didn't wobble on take-off, and he didn't bounce, and he didn't burn rubber, and he didn't veer when he landed. When he'd finished and shut down, I pumped his dry hand in my sweaty one, and he let me cut the shirttail from his favorite shirt. Jim became a good pilot so easily I figured it proved I was a gifted instructor.
In the early 70s, I started a cross-country ski school on the Bigwood golf course, and once again I turned to Jim, and once more he came through. He instructed and was also the tour guide everyone asked for. Jim was a supreme PR man, and I sure needed that. I laid tracks all over the golf course and down by the Wood River where there was nary a house, only silence and beauty. The track was a bear to lay with a behemoth old snowmobile ready to croak. When we could keep it belching along it had to pull a pieced-together iron track-maker that weighed 80 pounds. When the first skiers came to try our beautiful new tracks, they were stunned to learn it cost a dollar. "A buck for two tracks in the snow!" they'd cry. I left it to Jim to convince them the tracks were worth the measly four quarters—maybe even five. The cross-country ski business was a fun way to lose money, but I could only afford to do it for three winters.
A big slice in Jim's life about which I knew nothing was his water-world. He studied hard, put in his time on ships, and got his Captain's papers. But it's easy for me to visualize him standing tall on an exotic schooner while he slipped in to berth at some exotic port.
During the last months of his life I went often to see Jim. I'd coax hairy water-world tales from him, and we'd talk books...we'd talk politics...we'd remember old times. And when I'd leave, I'd be the one uplifted.
One afternoon near the end Jim opened his eyes, looked square at his daughter, and in that ever-soft voice he had, said, "This isn't going to be scary."
Jim remained courageous and thoughtful and a pleasure to be with right up until the few last days when the inner struggle to let-go took every effort. His courage and consideration were the last gifts he gave to his daughters and to his son—and to those of us, too, who came to share last times with him.
Betty Bell
