Urban Thought Collective

Biases: It’s cold, it’s remote, and I’m the only one here.

Major Players: The wide open nothingness, The Hawk, Mr. Potato Head.

Logline: When you’re called to take a business trip like this, you look forward to getting to know your hotel room really well and hope that nothing goes catastrophically wrong and causes you to have to stay any longer than you’re supposed to. I was here about 3 months ago and was absolutely amazed that I saw no other black people for 48 hours straight. Could it be? “I see gun racks…..shhhhhh!”

The Deal:
I arrived in Boise last Tuesday morning at 8:30am on an almost completely empty Southwest flight out of Seattle. The flight attendant gave us the “Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of Southwest Airlines, we’re proud to be the first to welcome you to” speech and informed us that it was a whopping 28 degrees outside. Not to worry though. I had surely come prepared, in more ways than one actually, because this time I vowed to be on a mission to find some black folks.

I stepped out of the jetway and into the terminal where they were playing Shania Twain’s“I feel like a woman” over the PA system and thought to myself ‘it’s too early for all this achy-breaky stuff already’. I laughed it off and tried to stay focused. Acutely aware that it was just me in the terminal, I couldn’t help but notice the first black face I saw …on a billboard. Yes, the University of Idaho had a sistah named Hannah Wells from Puyallup, Washington on an advertisement for their esteemed institution that read “I am more than wishful thinking” and urged you to go to www.uidaho.edu/hannah to read more about her. She seems like a nice kid, but the fact that she was there on a basketball scholarship reminded me of a story from my days of being recruited by Gonzaga University when I was in high school. During a visit to my home, with a Zags assistant coach, my parents, and my high school coach sitting in my living room, I asked the question, “So…what is the percentage of black students on the campus,” to which the coach replied, “Eight.” Astonished, I said, “Really!??” The ol’ ball coach then proceeded to cock his head to the side and look up and to the right as if trying to figure out some complicated math problem, while extending his hands to count to himself using his fingers and continued on. “Let’s see…there’s Tony, Jamal, Kevin…,” until he had counted off 8 student athletes, clearly having missed the word “percentage” in my question. But, I digress.

As I continued out of the terminal, I noticed that the Boise State University and Idaho Medical Center billboards also had black faces on them in cap and gown and white doctor’s coat respectively. I was last here in August. Perhaps there really are black people here and they just fly south for the summer.

The hawk greeted me when I stepped out of the terminal to retrieve my rental car. I had decided that I would follow up on a tip I had received to take a detour off I-84 to a place called Mountain Home to get breakfast because some of us are rumored to live there. Allegedly, there are some black hair salons there and an Air Force Base. The military angle had me quite hopeful, remembering another time from my playing days when we played an all-black high school team from Anchorage, Alaska that happened to be the closest school to the base up there.

Mountain Home was one of those little “blink and you miss it” type of towns so it wasn’t hard for me to drive around almost all of it in a short time and deduce that no one would ever mistake it for Harlem…or Montgomery, Alabama for that matter. I did see a sistah in a mini-van and a brotha in a Navigator heading for the entrance of the AFB, but no others at any of the establishments, nor at the restaurant where I ate.

Wind almost all the way out of my sails by this point, I pressed on another 130 miles east to the town of Burley where I would check into my Fairfield Inn by Marriott. I would be working 7 miles away for the local cable and telephone provider in a town called Rupert who’s town square looked like the place where Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd revved up the Delorean to 88 miles per hour at the precise moment when the lightning struck the clock, thereby generating 1.21 gigawatts of power and well, you know the rest. I won’t bore you with the sordid details about my work and how the project wasn’t a resounding success, but I will say that the guys that I worked with were fun to work with and did remarkably well not espousing any of their red state doctrines about 99.5% of the time. Red is an understatement. Candy Apple red would probably be a little more accurate. With sparkles on it, even.

Everything closes super early and finding a decent meal is quite the challenge. Several times I asked people where the “best” restaurant is and several times I was steered toward a pizza joint or sports bar. I was definitely not trying to be the only brotha around when vast amounts of alcohol were being consumed. No matter where you eat though, you are sure to get your fill of potatoes. I had hash browns smothered with cheese, tater tots, scalloped potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato soup with bacon, and possibly the best baked potato I’ve ever had. When I finally found a decent place to eat (Rock Creek Restaurant), it was 40 miles away in a town called Twin Falls. This is where I delighted in said baked potato along with a delicious combo of prime rib and scallops. I would be remiss not to acknowledge the smoked trout and red onions appetizer that let me know that the 80 mile roundtrip would not be in vain. To my surprise I saw a brotha restocking the salad bar, or at least I think I did. Somebody obscured my view as they were going for seconds and when they moved, he was gone. Maybe I didn’t really see him. Maybe I wanted to see him. Maybe it was a mirage.

Final note. I made great time on the 151 mile trip back to Boise from Burley (hey, doing 85 will do that for you) so I had time to grab lunch somewhere other than the airport before catching my flight home. It was a rather large barbeque restaurant called Good Wood that was packed with the lunchtime crowd. On the way to the restroom to wash my hands I made sure to look in every corner of the room. I looked again when I came out and walked back to my seat. Yeah, I had to hold it down in this place too.

Weels: 3 weels, or wheels…as in wheels up on the plane. Get me outta here!

Destah Owens is a single father of two from Northern California and proud UCLA Bruin who travels the world for his job as a computer engineer. His blog, “Soufflés in Saigon,” is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.