| Letters
to the editor from this week's Chronicle Redneck Review! No. 394 - 11/13/2022 Wow! One of my son in law's stopped by the other days, and we began talking about the wonderful town of Cottonwood, and the great state of Idaho we finally found ourselves in some way coming back to this little town and having the opportunity to live here and raise our families in its wonderful environment! In my own case, I was offered a job in the math department of Caldwell, Idaho shortly after attending a session called PROJECT IDAHO, and making friends with John Briggs, who was at the same session, became a good friend of mine, and was transferring to the Dept of Math and Science in Boise as part of our state government apparatus. I was teaching at SGA here in Cottonwood at the time and turned him down. Later I attended a four-summer math program at Reed College in Portland, followed right after by a yearlong math institute in San Jose, California, both sponsored by the Federal Government Government's, AYI (Academic Year Institute), designed for math teachers throughout the nation. The government believed we should become more aware of the NEW MATH! That was followed by an offer to teach at a large and expensive Catholic school outside of Stanford taught by the Holy Cross brothers, and had a student body of around 400 boys only. But a rather long delay before that offer came from their new principal who was taking place for the one I interviewed with, plus the fact that my wife was pregnant with son Terry who was born the 5th of July that summer, forced us back to my former teaching job in Cottonwood, at SGA where not only had I started my teaching career, but was offered the job I had quit earlier to attend the two new NEW MATH sessions. And I found out later I was born in Cottonwood. Yo yo back - forth for years! We wore masks for a while, some of us, but was fortunate that our school did not close down during the entire time, maybe only for a very brief time, during the advent of the Covid scare. We did limit our attendance at high school games and missed our spring district and state tourney tournaments in 2021 if I remember correctly. We continued on through that season and the rest of the crucial years without closing, and our attendance amazingly, did not drop significantly from the preceding years at our same little school system! So back to the "Wow" at the beginning of this article! We continued our "how lucky we are" to find ourselves in this little town and state, where life nearly went on as usual. We learned that when a town family had a financial struggle with a hospital or doctor bill, that someone in the community would sponsor a "benefit" where often a badly big sum of money was needed, that a big community crown would gather together, eat a donation meal, then bid on donations of all kinds and generate anywhere for $20,000 to $25,000 and often much more to the needy family! My wife and I, parents seven children at the time, had a son who was born with Spina Bifada, and we WITHOUT AN INSURANCE AT THE TIME, teaching at the private Catholic school, St. Gertrude's Academy, were the beneficiaries of an even larger sum at the time, our son in the University Hospital in Seattle for quite a while. For the most part, all our neighbors are the most friendly, our town is deeply religious, around 800 in our last census, with the largest at St. Mary's Catholic Church, but with two other Protestant churches that have significant attendees. Lately however, our town has been flooded with newcomers, who have heard of our community, some coming for the growing Catholic school, K through 12 that has been here from 1997 and is currently building a huge new gym/auditorium to replace the unofficial gym currently in the school. In addition, we have a hospital, several strong commercial corporations, hunting, fishing, a ski area, and a state prison outside of town, providing good employment operations. farming and cattle ranching, and lumber mill operations! Jake Wren
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