On the morning of Wednesday, March 26, 1958, a farmer east of Arbon pushed a car out of the mud. Then he telephoned the sheriff. Forty minutes after his call, two teenage boys driving a car taken from Pocatello were stopped by the state patrol at Downey. The Idaho State Journal ran the story that same day, in a short column on a front page that also carried a photograph of the Army's Explorer III satellite going up on its Jupiter C rocket.
To the Journal the farmer was simply Mr. Bradley; it had no first name for him. The car had been stuck on the Mercer Creek road, which the Journal placed east of Arbon. Once Bradley had pushed it free, he found both plates caked with mud, yet the number could still be read. He passed it on by telephone to Sheriff Rulon Neal.
The plate number led the sheriff's office to the owner, James Leese Jr. of Pocatello, whose 1956 Ford it was, and a call went out to him. Leese's discovery that his car was gone was only about fifteen minutes old, he told them, and he had not yet reported the theft. At 10:10 that morning State Patrolman Victor Barfuss stopped the Ford at Downey. In it were a 17-year-old from Pocatello and a 16-year-old whom the first report called a Californian.
A week later, on April 2, the Journal reported what had become of them. Both boys were now at the State Industrial Training School in St. Anthony, to stay there until their cases were decided; the paper gave Juvenile Court Judge W. H. (Pete) Jensen as its authority. With a juvenile court petition on file, the State Board of Health had been asked to study the case and advise. Police questioning had also brought a statement from the boys that they took $7 from the Ideal Market in Pocatello. This second report called both boys Pocatello youths, aged 16 and 17. Neither article printed their names, and they are not named here.
Who was Mr. Bradley?
The Journal never gave his first name, but the place points to one family. The Bradley ranch, homesteaded by George Willard Bradley in the Rattlesnake Creek country of the Crystal area, lies near the foot of Mercer Creek Road. George died in a road accident in December 1937. His son, George Willard Bradley Jr., known as Willard, came home after serving in the Marines and took over the ranch. In 1951 a teacher signing herself Mrs. G. W. Bradley wrote to the Journal from the Mercer Creek school. No other Bradley is known in that part of the valley in the 1950s. The farmer who made the call was very probably Willard Bradley, then about thirty, but no paper of 1958 says so.
Rulon Neal, the sheriff he called, appears in the Journal as sheriff of Power County in 1954. That October he called the meeting at which valley ranchers formed a winter patrol; earlier the same year a stolen pickup and a man's body had been found in Arbon Valley. The 1958 report does not name his county.
The papers do not say where the boys were heading, why they had taken the Mercer Creek road, or how their cases ended. Nor do they say whether Bradley was ever thanked. What they record is a farmer who noticed muddied plates and made a telephone call.
On this site: Mercer Creek also appears in the blizzard of February 1949, when a weasel had to bring a sick man out from there.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, March 26, 1958, page 1. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
A phone call from an Arbon Valley farmer put the state patrol onto two teenage boys at Downey on the morning of Wednesday, March 26; the car they were driving had been taken from Pocatello.
State Patrolman Victor Barfuss stopped the car, a 1956 Ford, at 10:10 a.m. The older boy, 17, was from Pocatello; the paper gave the younger one's age as 16 and his home as California. The car belonged to James Leese Jr. of Pocatello.
About 40 minutes before the stop, Sheriff Rulon Neal had a telephone call from a farmer the paper identified only as Mr. Bradley. Bradley had come upon the Ford mired on the Mercer Creek road, east of Arbon, and pushed it free. Only then did he spot that its license plates were plastered with mud. The number showed through well enough for him to report it.
From the plate number the sheriff's office worked out who owned the car and got him on the telephone. Leese's own report to the police had not yet been made; he told the sheriff's office he had found the car gone only some 15 minutes earlier.
A follow-up on April 2 described the pair as Pocatello youths aged 16 and 17. Juvenile Court Judge W. H. (Pete) Jensen was the paper's source for word that both had been sent to the State Industrial Training School at St. Anthony to await the outcome of their cases. With a juvenile court petition on file, the case had gone to the State Board of Health, which was to evaluate it and make a recommendation. Police questioning produced one more statement: by the boys' own account, they had taken $7 from the Ideal Market in Pocatello.