Last weekend a couple things happened that got me thinking. First, as I was driving away for my long Memorial Day weekend, I heard a couple songs on the radio performed by icons from my home state, New Jersey. Stop — can you name a few famous singers from New Jersey? Not too hard, huh? (answers to follow)

That got me thinking; Idaho, the state where I currently live, lacks icons. Most people can rattle off at least a few famous people from New Jersey, and most Jerseyans can rattle off A TON of famous people from their home state. Frank Sinatra, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Willis, Whitney Houston, John Travolta, Paul Simon, Kirsten Dunst, Jason Alexander (aka George Costanza) - and Jersey doesn’t just have singers and movie stars - to add some repute to the list, Jersey claims two sitting Supreme Court justices (Alito and Scalia). Of course, New Jersey is about five times larger in population than Idaho - but still, that’s a lot of icons. So, I got thinking, maybe the state has a bit of an inferiority complex because of its diminutive size and bad rap for toxic waste and pollution, which makes everyone more aware of the famous people from there. So, maybe Idaho has some famous icons that I don’t know about?

Well, I started to think of some Idaho icons and my brain quickly jumped to JR Simplot. He’s the guy who put Idaho on the map as the potato capital of the world, but you probably never heard of him. I was thinking this on Saturday night. Then, to my surprise, I woke up Sunday to hear that JR passed away. He was 99-years old and left behind quite a legacy. I’m certainly not trying to make light of this - on the contrary - he probably did more for Idaho than any other person and was an incredibly impressive businessman and philanthropist, to say the least.

In case you don’t know much about Mr. Simplot or his namesake company, he made a fortune by pioneering the freeze-dried French fry in the 1950’s and began to supply a fledgling company called McDonalds with these fries. He quickly amassed a French fry fortune and an agriculture empire, which turned Idaho into the potato producing behemoth that it is today. Interestingly, very few (if any?) potatoes are grown anywhere near Boise, but eastern Idaho is veritably the potato growing capital in the world - each year Idaho produces 120 Million sacks of potatoes! You can learn all you want to know about Potatoes here: http://www.ag.uidaho.edu/potato/

So, back to my original train of thought. I figured there were some pretty well-known Idaho icons beyond JR Simplot and the other few that I do know: Picabo Street (Olympic skier), Jake Plummer (former NFL quarterback), and Harmon Killebrew (hall of fame baseball player). I realized these are all athletes and it’s a very short list, so I scoured the web and found several other important people, but none of greater notoriety than the aforementioned threesome.

But, in thinking about this, I realized that’s why I love living in Idaho so much. It’s such a great place to live that we don’t need to brag about the people who come from here. Nothing against New Jersey, but who needs all those movie stars and icons to represent their state? They didn’t choose where they were born, but I realized that many of them choose to come here to vacation, or own a second home, in places like Sun Valley and Coeur D’Alene. So, Idaho is not so well-known for its people, but it is better known for interesting facts about the state: it has the most federal land in the lower 48, the largest sand dunes, the most beautiful mountains (the Sawtooths, in my humble opinion - see picture above), the television was invented here, etc. I’d rather live in a place with such incredibly high quality of life, low-hassle, low social pressure, and incredible access to recreation.

Sorry for the rambling thought, but hey, isn’t that what blogs are for?

BTW - the two songs I heard were Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory.