Just shooting the breeze at a quilt store in Idaho

Letter from Idaho:The story of Idaho state in the Pacific northwest of the United States is told in a relatively short distance along Interstate 55, the road that travels north from the capital Boise through the Payette River valley.

At Horseshoe Bend about 20 miles north of Boise (pronounced Boy-Zee), an easily missed sign announces the local Pioneer Cemetery, perched on a hill overlooking a raggle-taggle clutch of nondescript homes along the main road. The well-tended graveyard covers about two acres and was established in 1870, the year after the transcontinental railroad was finished, linking the eastern US with California. Thereafter, the pace of opening up the West quickened.

Some settlers heading West decided that Horseshoe Bend was far enough; this was where they stopped, put down roots and raised their families. At the end of the 19th century, the little town included a home for the destitute and many of them are buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in a large pit in the centre of the graveyard.

The pit contains an unknown number of people, all unnamed but for 21 men, known as the "early bachelors" whose identities were saved from complete oblivion thanks to Frank Wylie Clarkson, a local man who wanted them remembered, which they are on a slab of inscribed marble.

A corner of the cemetery testifies to the harshness of life just over 100 years ago. The disproportionate number of gravestones recording the deaths of babies and toddlers is evidence of the harshness of life back then. "Alice Hannifin, August 19 1891-April 25 1892" says one; "Andrew McQuade October 8 1883 4 mths 10 days" says another; and there are more - "Infant son of Frank and Molly Clarkson" (Frank Wylie's child perhaps?), "Jensen Baby", "Baby Clarkson", (another) "Baby Clarkson", and "Joseph Francis Penrod 3yrs 17 days".

Elsewhere, the cemetery is dominated by the names of migrants from the European countries from which Idaho drew the majority of her early settlers - names like Smidt, Andersen, Foss, Gunderson, Olsen and Jensen. Their children created the Idaho of yesteryear - the Idaho dominated by logging and ranching, the wild west Rocky Mountains Idaho of cowboy movies and lumberjacks.

A little further along I-55 is Ponderosa Sports, an enterprise that traces its lineage directly back to the spirit of the early pioneers. Ponderosa is a long, low building sitting between the road and the beautiful Payette River. As I drove past with my wife on a recent visit, a sign - Amish Quilts - caught our eye.

We pulled over immediately and found ourselves face to face with a Barrett M82 rifle with the Stars and Stripes flag sticking out of its barrel. The gun was mounted on a tripod on a small pick-up truck as an advertisement.

Now the M82 is a seriously serious weapon. It's a high-powered rifle used by many special forces, including US special forces, and is popular with the military in Scandinavia.

Bullets from the M82 can easily pierce Type IV body armour (the highest body armour classification, according to the US military) as well as level 8 ballistic glass, the strongest glass available. For these reasons, sale of the M82 to non-governmental persons (ie ordinary members of the public) is banned in California.

They do things differently in Idaho. Inside Ponderosa, Cliff and Carey Harrison are tending their store. Carey on the left has the quilts all laid out and displayed neatly. Over on the right (the far right, as it happens), Cliff stands sentinel, arms folded across his chest, behind the counter of . . . not so much a gun store, more an arsenal.

Cliff is actually a very nice, engaging man but his views would make your hair stand on end. I'm still not 100 per cent sure that he wasn't winding me up. But within about five sentences, I'd been given the lowdown on the evil of "tree-hugging environmentalists", wolves (recently reintroduced to Idaho), "gun control liberals" and homosexuals (I can't remember if he used that word or another).

Behind him stood rows of hunting rifles and shotguns (only to be expected in the Rockies where hunting is a popular pursuit), mixed in with assault rifles and, in display cases, handguns big and small. There must have been between 100 and 200 guns and shelves of bullets.

Cliff views the world through the prism of the National Rifle Association, of which he's a member. It's a world full of "good guys" and "bad guys": the good guys have guns because the bad guys have guns and the good guys need to be able to take out the bad guys before the bad guys take out the good guys - it's as simply as that and it's backed by the constitution.

He does a line in what are marketed as "Right Wing Specials". They include a T-shirt for $18 (Front, around the cross hairs of a rifle sight: SET YOUR SIGHTS ON A REAL IDAHO STORE; back: a bullet hole exit wound with crimson paint dribbling from it). Yes, I bought one.

I really do think Cliff is taking the mickey out of me (it was the faux incredulity at the French airport customs officer who wanted to confiscate his flick knife which, said Cliff, he needed to protect himself in Europe seeing as guns weren't allowed . . .) and I'm starting to giggle.

Carey meanwhile has been telling my wife all about the quilts: how they are handmade by the Amish of Pennsylvania, how each one is individually sewn, how each has a unique pattern. They're really beautiful and there's tempting price reductions right now.

And this is the final part of Carey's pitch: with each quilt sale, a donation is made to the fund set up after last year's tragedy at Nickel Mines in Pennsylvania. This was the small Amish community which saw five of its children murdered when a madman walked into a one-room school and sprayed it with bullets. No connection, apparently, between either end of the Ponderosa store.

That Amish shooting tragedy happened a year ago last Monday. Not a lot has changed in the US since then.

Ponderosa Sports, which is for sale by the way, has a website - www.ponderosasports.com - where Cliff's philosophy is let loose.