Boise’s Basque Block: Pride, Heritage and Tradition

Basque dancers invite their guests to join the revelry on Boise's Grove Street. Photo © Greg Stahl.

Basque dancers, Boise, Idaho. Photo © Greg Stahl.

I’m 37 years old and, last October, bought my first chair. It’s a sturdy little chair, an antique with varnished wooden legs and embroidered seat. It’s situated at a wooden desk on the second floor of an 1864 brick home in the center of downtown Boise, Idaho.

It’s my eighth month in the house, and I’ve more-or-less been settled for a while. The home’s foundation is constructed of massive whitewashed stones, the walls of horsehair plaster, and a claw-foot bathtub is nestled in the corner of the first-floor bathroom. When I first moved in, I worked to arrange one of the second-floor rooms where my chair now lives. The space has hardwood floors and angled ceilings, two skylights that allow ample sun and offer upward views to the tops of two of Boise’s tallest buildings: the Grove Hotel and US Bank. I arranged the room as a center for my creative activities, and it’s where I put my guitars, pencils, paints, books and–chair.

It’s a handsome piece of furniture, but there’s something disquieting about obtaining my first chair, a place to plant myself, a place to nurture some semblance of roots. And I wonder sometimes: Why here? I never planned to move to Boise in the first place, but I certainly never planned to move onto the property containing the city’s oldest brick home.

An old servant’s quarters, my house is situated behind a larger brick home, and both are owned by the Basque Museum and Cultural Center, an organization that works to perpetuate and celebrate Basque culture in Idaho. The larger home was built by the city’s one-time mayor Cyrus Jacobs before becoming a Basque boarding house in 1910. An early U.S. senator, William Borah, was married here, too, and they say my house might have been a whiskey distillery at some point. The Big House, as I’ve come to call the property’s larger home, is set up as a museum where tours are given on the first Thursday of every month and by appointment.

The Cyrus Jacobs-Uberuaga boarding house, which I call "the Big House," is Boise's oldest remaining brick home. Located on Grove Street downtown, it is maintained by the Basque Museum as an era-accurate museum. Photo © Greg Stahl.

Boise's oldest standing brick home. Photo © Greg Stahl.

The museum administrator gave me a tour of the entire Basque Block shortly after I moved in. She explained that an old outhouse used to be suspended above a stream that meandered through the property. That’s where my truck is now parked. She also shared about the importance of dance, food and tradition to the Basque people. As just one example, she said the museum hosts Euskara classes one or two times a week, and I’d asked what Euskara is.

“Basque language,” she’d explained. “We’re trying to keep it alive in Idaho.”

During my nine years in Sun Valley, which is home to a number of Basque families, I learned that Basque culture is closely tied to sheep ranching in Idaho, and the shepherders’ artistic carvings on aspen trees serve as colorful historic keepsakes in Idaho’s mountains. But that was as much as I knew.

Nestled in the Pyrenees and straddling the border between France and Spain, the Basque homeland measures about 100 miles from end to end. One of the oldest surviving European cultures, the native language, Euskara, dates to 6000 or 7000 B.C. and has no linguistic connection with any other known vocabulary. Scholarly reports on the Basque pre-history vary somewhat, but it’s clear it was a culture steeped in lore, with stories and customs passed orally from one generation to the next. The Basque legend of the Tartaro, for example, could be a predecessor of the story of Cyclops as Homer and Ovid portrayed him. Because the Greeks learned to write things down, they were given credit for the story, which they may have picked up from the Basques during early Mediterranean travels. There’s another story specific to the language: The tale goes that the devil spent seven years among the Basques to learn their language, but he only managed to learn three words. When he crossed a bridge to leave the land of the Basques, he forgot them.

Basques were drawn to the American West to work as sheep herders around the turn of the twentieth century, and Basques in Idaho are among the world’s most populous outside the Basque Country of Europe. In and around Boise the influence of Idaho’s estimated 15,000 Basques is readily apparent. The Basque Block on Grove Street–my home–is a testament to this heritage. There’s a boutique Basque market and three Basque restaurants and watering holes, the Basque museum and the Northwest’s one-time largest indoor paddle sport surface.

Anyway, smitten with the charming brick house with skylights, hardwood floors and a claw-foot bathtub, I decided last fall to become the sole full-time occupant of Boise’s historic Basque Block, and that, like all things, has been a mixed blessing.

The pitfalls have mostly to do with noise, but I expected that when considering the move and therefore consider my own complaints null and void. That doesn’t, however, make them beyond talking about.

Downtown bar traffic can be raucous on weekends, and the Basque Cultural Center’s parties sometimes go to midnight. There’s a glass recycling dumpster just a ways down the alley, and the sound of hundreds of shattering bottles occasionally tenders an unexpected jolt. Drunks sometimes stop in the alley behind my house to shout at the 2 a.m. sky, and a nearby cleaning company has employees coming and going at all hours of the day.

The most obnoxious and unanticipated, however, is the garbage man. I learned early last October to loath the garbage man’s 5 a.m. pick-up in the alley just outside my back windows. The old bricks and mortar rumble with the garbage man’s arrival. I used to hear him from blocks away, the faint but forceful groan of a large motor ebbing and flowing as it crept its way from one far-off dumpster to another. I imagined it as a razor-toothed creature gnawing its way through downtown Boise’s alleys, clawing its way across intersections and devouring innocent dumpsters in its path. Then, the inevitable. The groan would arrive outside my house, and the garbage man would roll the dumpster, thundering as it moved, to the back of his truck. The sounds of hydraulic arms ensued. (Eeeeerrrrroooowwww: Boom-Ba-Boom-Boom.) The dumpster is suspended in mid-air to dispel its contents. (Eeeeerrrrroooowwww-Boom-Ba-Boom-Boom.) The dumpster is returned to the ground. If there happens to be a glass of water on my bed stand during this chaotic early-morning episode, it will shake and chatter with the garbage truck’s deafening vibrations.

The strange thing is, I learned to sleep through this amazing racket. It took a month or two, but I began waking at 8 or 9 a.m., long after the garbage man had vanished into the early-morning darkness, and I’m actually pleasantly surprised anymore when I wake to the bizarre alley rumble of the dumpsters being emptied.

Basque dance, Grove Street in Boise. Photo © Greg Stahl.

Among the many boons is the house’s wonderfully eclectic old-world character and unique (indeed creative) rooms and spaces. There are antique light fixtures and furnishings and more than enough space for my (now growing) collection of keepsakes. My nine-to-five office is a mere mile away, and even in the dead of winter I found it easy to walk to work. I walk four blocks to the grocery store, amble two blocks to a coffee shop and can easily forward roll to any number of about two-dozen bars and restaurants. More important, perhaps, I can forward roll home. The noises are sometimes nice, too. In the dead of winter I returned to discover a parade of costumed Basque singers milling about my parking space. I climbed out to talk with them and made a few friends. This was the Basque Choir, a group that sings A-capella, and they invited me in to the banquet where they performed in stunning choral harmonies. Last fall the pungent–though not offensive–and ubiquitous smell of blood sausage (called morcilla) filled the street. A few days ago, I returned from a few hours on an Idaho river to discover Basque dancers wearing traditional robes and performing old-world dances in the street to the notes of an accordion. Yesterday, I returned from a hike to find a group of musicians working to film a documentary about traditional Basque music. They played a traditional three-hole pipe called a txistu, and among them was Kepa Junkera, who won a Grammy for his prowess with the Basque trikitixa diatonic accordion.

I used to thrive on the dead-still silence of the mountains at night, but I wonder if, when I return, it will require a few months to adjust to the absence of sirens and chattering people and thundering dumpsters and breaking glass. I’m sure, anyway, I’ll miss the quirky arrival of unexpected history and culture lessons in my front yard.

Out in front of the Big House, there’s a white-picket fence that divides the property from the sidewalk, where carefully placed blocks are imprinted with significant names, songs and a peculiar artistic diagram with four outstretched lobes emanating from a single, central point. This Lauburu, as it’s called, is a symbol that’s been with the Basque people for as long as anyone can remember. There are a variety of interpretations about its meaning, but one of them goes like this: The vertical heads are called sunset and represent female energy like emotion and perception, to which are assigned the elements of fire and water. The horizontal heads are called sunrise and represent male energy like mental and physical abilities, to which are assigned the elements of air and earth. Some say the Lauburu is synonymous with the sun, but most importantly, perhaps, the Lauburu symbolizes vitality, prosperity and life. In reverse, if flipped to create a mirror image, it signifies the opposite, and that form is generally found on Basque tombstones.

The Lauburu is an ancient Basque sign symbolizing vitality. Grove Street, Boise, Idaho. Photo © Greg Stahl.

The printed sidewalk also includes several songs, which look to be portrayed in Euskara, but there are inscriptions beneath them. One reads:

The tree of Gernika is blessed. It is much-loved among Basque people. Blossom and spread your fruit to the world. We honor you, sacred tree.

There’s an oak tree in the Big House’s front lawn, and I’m told this is Boise’s Gernika tree, an enduring symbol of freedom and prosperity. Other sidewalk engravings include names like Galdos, Bicondis, Uberuaga, Onaietorri and Bipuzkoa, which I assume to be Basque family names. The center of the street has two more much larger depictions of the Lauburu, and they’re interspersed with colored red and green diamonds inlaid in the concrete. The red, green and white of the Basque flag hangs from the street’s lampposts.

If living in this peculiar location has been compelling thus far, it will become more interesting still. This summer marks the arrival of a once-every-five-years international Basque Festival, and the street in front of the Big House will be closed to host music, dance, sporting events and parties. I’ve been enlisted as a potential Basque Block tour guide during the event, and though friends have offered me alternative places to rest my head during the festival I’m sort of looking forward to living in the middle of something with so much historical and cultural significance. Called Jaialdi (Hi-al-dy), the event will host 30,000 to 40,000 people from around the globe from July 27 to August 1. Conceived as a one-time event in 1987 to celebrate local and international aspects of Basque culture, then-Governor Cecil Andrus asked the Boise Basque community to hold another Jaialdi as part of the state’s 100th anniversary celebration in 1990. The 1990 festival was so successful that the once-every-five-year format was established, and the last weekend of July selected to coincide with the Boise Basque community’s celebration saint, San Inazio de Loyola.

Although I’ve intentionally filled these lines with my own sense of awe and mystery with Basque culture and tradition (along with a few of my typical introspective quirks and observations), a very important point remains: The Basque people of Boise, Idaho, are some of the most welcoming, friendly, family-oriented and hard-working people I’ve met. I’ve been welcomed with big smiles and open arms and hold the work being done here to preserve history and culture in very high regard.

In a day and age of increasing globalization, homogenization and capital pursuits, many of the world’s cultures have been diluted, not distilled. In downtown Boise the opposite is apparent. There’s a pride of heritage here that’s not found on many of the country’s main streets, and this heritage is being celebrated with grace and fortitude. In this melting pot called the United States of America, we are all beneficiaries.

© Greg Stahl