Journal

Let me just start by saying that credit for the clever title of this column goes to Joanne Teeple, who ran for town council. Ironically, Joanne was the only one at the recent council meeting to point out the issue of the bus stop— or rather lack thereof, at the sparkling new Carbondale Aquatic Center.

As I don’t live within town limits, I don’t get to vote on anything, but I’m still going to tell you what I think. I didn’t want a new summer-only pool with a price tag of $13 million. At least if it was year-round, the high school could have a swim team. And as long as I’m being honest, the way things are going in town, I’m not even sure I want the Pour House to reopen. I mean, how could it ever possibly live up to all the remarkable memories?

Years ago, I was in the Pour House regularly— I don’t want to say nightly because it gives the impression I drank a lot, which I did. I was a bartender, my husband was a bartender, our friends were bartenders… We were still too young to know better, and we hung out in all the bars in Carbondale. Especially the Pour House. Skip Bell owned it then and I can see him standing there with a big grin on his face, welcoming us into the corner booth in the front window.

We could easily fit 8 or 9 people in that booth, and we still had room to add a chair on the end if someone else showed up. The game was Drunken English Chicken, and we played it religiously. Sorta like a loud verbal Uno, we either played that or charades, with one person going outside to stand on the sidewalk and act out their clues while the rest of us kept guessing and drinking and laughing on the other side of the window.

Back then, the Pour House was a place you could walk in and 90% of the time you would see someone you knew. John Martin had his usual spot at the far end of the bar, even before he convinced Sue Rogers to go in with him; buying out Skip, who stayed on as manager for several years. And the bar itself played a big part in the ‘good-old-days’ feeling you got by just walking through the door.

With all the cowboy memorabilia on the walls, and the giant room-length mirror behind the bar, it truly felt timeless. Maybe the mirror played a bigger part in the atmosphere than I realized at the time; reflecting a rosy image of all of us hanging out together, in a rustic restaurant where anything and everything was not only possible, but had probably been done before.

We’ve all heard Carbondale’s sordid red-light district stories, and some of us who have been down under the Dinkel building even believe said stories. While we all want to see local businesses succeed, it’s important we don’t change our town’s story and end up like Aspen. Those poor chuckleheads are building a whole new airport with taxpayer money to accommodate billionaires’ private jets, like the kind made by General Dynamics. Yep, that Crown family. So many coincidences for such a small town!

In Aspen, the rich get richer and the poor can take the bus. But Carbondale has always been more of a working-class town. Rodeo Thursdays, random Tuesdays, Last Saturdays— in response to the tourist success of First Fridays, we went to the Pour House on the last Saturday of each month to get a proper martini from Bert Meyers. Dancing on the bar, flipping endlessly through the jukebox, or even just sharing nachos while watching hockey with the rest of the locals bellied up to the bar, there was always a strong sense of place. The Pour House embodied the suspension in time that Carbondale experienced from my childhood until covid. A good long run, in a great place to be.

Okay, you’re right. I do want to go to the Pour House again and sit in the corner booth… Maybe even resurrect a round of Drunken English Chicken for old times’ sake.

Long before RVR was a posh golf course neighborhood, it actually was a ranch in a valley along the river. My younger sister, Annie, remembers sitting in the big comfy chair in our grandparents’ living room when some men showed up in clean western-style shirts and brand-new cowboy hats. Thirty-odd years ago, she witnessed the initial investors negotiating with our grandfather for land and water rights they would need to build their golf course community. They all took a seat at the dining table with Gan, in his usual spot at the head of the large table that easily sat 10. They were merely steps away from where she sank down into the leather armchair— not exactly hiding, but Annie knew she could stay and listen, unnoticed as long as she kept still.

When we were kids, staying at the ranch came with a heightened awareness. More like trepidation than fear, it was the uncertainty of ranch life: what was in that simmering crockpot that we would be expected to completely clean off our plates? What kind of mood was Gan’s dog, Bogie, in? Does fluorescent lighting make every room feel this sad…

Today, when I stand at the southern edge of RVR, I can still see the ranch of my childhood. The back of the two-story house and basement garage, the pool with a giant rock for diving in the deep end, the tennis court surrounded by weeds, and the little rock wall enclosure where they burned the trash. Back then there wasn’t nearly as much packaging as today, and glass and plastic containers were washed and reused, so all the paper, cardboard, etc. was burned behind the house.

“What about the food waste,” you ask? Well, there wasn’t any. Sunday supper was as reliable as death and taxes, and we had just as much control over the portion put on our plates. Finishing your dinner was non-negotiable and rummaging through the fridge later was not a thing on the ranch.

Beef was the centerpiece of every meal, seeing as it was a cattle ranch and all. The blood running across my plate was the only dipping sauce available, and it inevitably ran into the rest of the standard food pyramid: lima beans, bare baked potato, etc. An insurmountable amount of my least favorite foods that I was expected to finish completely, especially if I wanted dessert. Luckily, there were always hungry ranch dogs under the table, circling like sharks at a capsized cruise ship. Sneaking food into my napkin, then to my lap where it magically disappeared was the only way I was ever gonna see an ice cream sandwich. And this was one time Bogie could be counted on to be gentle, eating our scraps under the dining room table. He didn’t want to get caught any more than we did.

Whether or not my grandfather knew this was going on, is debatable. Not much got by him. I often wonder what he would think of Carbondale these days, but I’ve got a pretty good idea what he would say about a Florida crew buying RVR and “elevating the experience.” Anyone who has experienced Carbondale already knows that this community is the real deal. Ranchers and golfers living together in harmony; hippies and hipsters coexisting on mountain town time.

Carbondale knows how to have a good time, and anyone wanting to Aspenify us will learn that our connectivity roots run deep. All the way back to pre-RVR days, like the time Josh and Justin Lent (Mal’s boys) and their friends helped my grandfather wrangle some loose horses in their black leather jackets and combat boots. Or when their ride broke down, and Gan came along in his old FORD pickup— with Bogie riding shotgun no doubt. He pulled over without hesitation, telling them all to climb in the back. As he pulled out onto the road, a couple of men watched them go by and one said to the other, “There goes Bob Perry with a load of punks in his truck.”

That image lives rent-free in my mind, capturing the essence of the Carbondale community. All of us, enjoying this ranch in a valley along the river.

This June marks the 10^th annual Redneck Olympics in my neighborhood. Satank is in unincorporated Garfield County, about a twenty-minute walk from downtown Carbondale, i.e., 4th and Main. Satank, née the Townsite of Cooperton, predates Carbondale and was named for Isaac Cooper who ventured down the valley from Aspen in the late 1800s. Still lawless as far as HOA constraints, Satank has a long and distinguished history of crazy characters who worked hard for a living.

As for the Redneck Olympics, it began innocently enough in Mark Taylor’s yard with two lawn chairs set about fifteen feet apart, each with an empty 5-gallon bucket placed on the ground in front. Satankers sat in each chair with a pile of small rocks at their feet, which they proceeded to flick into the opposite bucket between sips of beer. Hence the first ever event of the inaugural Redneck Olympics: ‘flickin rocks.’ Obviously, the winner was the neighbor with the most rocks in said bucket, but as with most events in Satank, crowd participation plays a big part by assigning points for attitude and/or costume.

Over the years the best-dressed have shown up in quintessential redneck attire: bathrobe and slippers, spike heels and leopard print, sleeveless denim on denim, (giving away free tickets to the gun show!) and long hair rolled up in empty beer cans for curlers. Our neighborhood goes all out with redneck themed activities like Spam carving contests and toilet plunger relay races. Snacks are simple and filling: Fish ‘n Chips = a big bowl of goldfish crackers mixed with potato chips.

Every year I look forward to this event as I, myself, come from a long line of proletarian posers. My great aunt Zinny was, in the words of Frank Smotherman, “the first woman to put a modular in Starwood.” In the late 1960s Uncle Dick and Aunt Zinny brought their house into that neighborhood in pieces, forming a neomodern structure that was dubbed ‘the trainwreck.’ Their furniture store, Bethune & Moore, was housed in the old Aspen train station (now located across from FedEx in the AABC.)

My own parents were married at Dick and Zin’s house in 1969, and it is great fun to watch the sporadic video running over the crowd in their cat’s-eye glasses, skimmer dresses, and Big & Tall sized suits; ranchers wearing their “good” felt cowboy hats— saved for special occasions. Pure gold: this black and white footage of rednecks looking sharp, milling around with city slickers in the hills above Aspen, like a vintage Taylor Sheridan show.

Boy, that guy sure can write a western drama! He’s really got a hold of ranch-life usurped by wealth, and what I like most is the favorable light he shines on Ag people. They’re hardworking, easy-going guys and gals who will always stop to lend a hand with a flat tire and probably end up inviting you to supper. The kind of people who welcome a stranger to town.

I think that’s exactly what happened to Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley. A Billie (local term of endearment for billionaires) got a flat tire on Highway 82 and that was that. The valley morphed from a place where everyone could play in privacy, into a place to BE SEEN. Back in the day, actual stars would come to town to get away from the spotlight and enjoy a real vacation. Even Starwood was unpretentious, as illustrated by my cousin Mac Moore’s Just Married ride in an Aspen Trash truck, thanks to his best man, Billy Goodhard. Today it feels more exclusive, as though standing alone at the top of the mountain is more rewarding than climbing with others. How long Aspen will continue to believe her own legend, I cannot say.

What I do know, is that there won’t be any paparazzi at this year’s Redneck Olympics. In Satank, these are still the good old days with neighbors who care more about how you are than how you look. And how fast you can shotgun a beer, set the empty on the firepit and run back to hit it with a slingshot. That is, unless you need to save the can for curling your hair up real pretty.

When it comes to human nature: all our peaceful sit-ins and flat-out wars for war’s sake, the goody-goodies and the Machiavellian masterminds, altruism and flagrant greed, humanity is patient. We can look back and see how the ship was righted throughout history many times… But I’m worried that mining an endless cul-de-sac of everyone’s ideas and essays over the years may not be the kind of thing we can totally come back from. As much as I want to like AI, its access to knowledge is limited by human conception. Don’t get me wrong— I love using it when I’m writing hate mail to the TSA, but you gotta admit, dealing with AI is like playing Go Fish with a younger sibling and they couldn’t find a full deck.

AI is a closed loop. And there is no voice chiming in for nature or animals or random coincidence. You know that extra weight in a body between when it’s alive and dead? Yeah, that thing we still struggle to name: Soul, Atman, Enrique, whatever. Well, AI has no knowledge of that. I’m just saying that entrusting our only planet to something we ourselves invented might not be our smartest play. Especially with our country’s current administration. They’re like if the short bus got lost on a field trip to the coal plant and started a useless war with Iran.

Trump has caused a lot of damage in a short amount of time, no question. But what if all of his antics are simply a distraction from Dr. Evil’s grand scheme? In other words, what if Trump is Number 2?! When I read about the 12 missing and/or dead Americans with direct connections to our nuclear program and top-level clearances I couldn’t help but imagine a terrifying scenario.

Retired US Air Force Major General William ‘Neil’ McCasland was at home in Albuquerque as his wife left the house for an appointment. When she came back an hour later, he was gone. An X account believed to be the General’s “…shockingly claimed just months before McCasland’s disappearance that Maj. Gen. John Rossi, who allegedly committed suicide in 2016, was actually murdered because of refusal to hand over nuclear material to private contractors.”

As much as I want to believe that aliens would intervene to rescue us from ourselves, or that a few intelligent beatniks are gathering a group for an underground think tank, the straight line actually points to someone with little-to-no imagination playing the part of Dr. Evil by eliminating people with access to our nuclear program. And the first suspect that comes to mind is old Poison ‘Em If You Got ’Em, himself.

I’m afraid Putin has watched too many 80s movies and actually believes he can destroy the United States’ nuclear program. Worse yet, I’m not sure he can’t. While his aging orange pawn runs amok, destroying innocent lives— not to mention our country’s reputation around the world, our own scientists are being disappeared or shot point-blank on their porch like Carl Grillmair.

When I’m Trump’s age I hope to be sitting on a porch somewhere, enjoying my Jello and watching the sunset. But not him, No Sir! He bullies his way past everyone, right into the party, helping himself to whatever he wants and acting like the rest of the partygoers are glad to see him. Spoiler: they’re not. The only reason the civilized world puts up with the US— keeps inviting us to the party at all, is because we have the most expensive military pool toys.

One of our submarines can carry 24 nuclear weapons. Just one sub. That’s where most of our tax dollars have gone for decades and we have the teenage pregnancy rates to prove it. We see ourselves as an action hero: Sylvester Stallone, headed into the fray with nothing but a tank top and a big gun. Our reflection in the world’s mirror is a jacked dude with flowing hair, surrounded by huge flames and explosions. But what happens if we are so busy watching all the things go BOOM! that someone (AI?!) steals our weapons of mass destruction? Then what?

AI will just roll the credits, I guess.

Years ago, I wrote a children’s book based on the true story of a lost shoe floating in the Colorado River. I titled it Little Chaco. All of twelve pages with a line or two per page, Little Chaco is an easy and fun read, containing all the magic I gained on my one-and-only river trip through the Grand Canyon.

It was 2009 and I had just shaved my head at Diane Kenney’s champagne-and-shave-your-head party, to support her journey through cancer treatment. We all donated our hair for wigs and drank champagne while comparing our naked skull shapes. (Diane looks fabulous with-or-without hair, by the way.)

That summer my husband was lucky to get a permit for a private trip in the Grand Canyon. Clint started putting together a group of river rats who could just up and leave their lives for three straight weeks. At the same time, Tai Jacober was working for Tom Bailey on the ranch that used to belong to my grandparents, just south of town. They were building a new house for the ranch manager and the last remaining structure from the Mt Sopris Hereford Ranch sat too close to the building envelope. It would have to be gone in order to obtain a C.O. from Garfield County.

Tai offered Clint the house right there on the jobsite, with the condition that we could move it on a day’s notice. So, that’s what we did. We hired Bill Bailey to pick up Nancy’s house (as it was always called on the Ranch) and move it down the road to Satank. Of course, the timing coincided with the river permit and so one of us would have to stay in town to oversee the house move, while the other would float down the Grand Canyon for 21 days. I‘ll give you one guess…

Yes, that’s why I have only done the second half of the Grand; walking in with friends to meet up with the rest of our group and float for about ten days. It turns out ten days was plenty of time for me to reach a Zen level of daily life on the river. In fact, the trip was so profound, I came home and wrote a children’s book about it.

There’s a children’s book by Ingersoll Lockwood that keeps resurfacing, just like Little Chaco stuck in a wave. Written in 1889, Travels and adventures of Little Baron Trump and his wonderful dog Bulger bears a striking resemblance to Trump’s life story. That’s right, Big Orange Baby himself, or BOB, for those of you listening at home.

The coincidence of this has been dissected over and over again on the internet, and there are rabbit holes galore talking about the possibilities of time travel, alternate universes, and just plain black magic. I say magic is real and we have to hold onto it for as long as possible— especially because our current society hangs by a thread, only as strong as our weakest link. Speaking of our weakest link, I’m inspired to write another children’s book.

Whadd’ya think of this storyline: as BOB sails through his waterworld neighborhood, bullying and robbing his friends and family, he ends up with nothing but dirt and dust bunnies in his pockets. He travels farther and farther away from home, trying to collect enough gold to buy his way into the lighthouse tower, where he imagines all the really rich guys live like ketchup kings. But every time he steals someone else’s gold, it turns to dust.

Finally, BOB arrives at the gates (made of pearl) and starts trying to talk his way in… when— poof! He suddenly disappears through a wormhole, sucking with him all the negativity and hate that follows him like a permeating odor. Just gone, as if through an open door on a plane in mid-air. Bye! Then the good villagers go back to navigating life on the river, with all its currents and eddies, even taking a break to picnic on the shore together now and then.

Because really, the story of life on this planet is that water moves through the canyon. The end.

We’ve only scraped the surface of the Epstein files and it’s already like I can’t get the water hot enough to feel clean. How I long for the good ole days, when Dick Cheney shooting someone on a hunting trip was the Big Coverup. Nothing so innocent with these fuckin guys. Not like Paul Newman and Robert Redford hiding out in a cabin together and riding a bike in flirtatious circles, no sir. I’ve seen the pictures of Jeffrey and Donald flying private to party with the rich and famous.

Apparently, what they lacked in morality, they more than made up for with greed and perversion. Newsflash: pedophiles are the lowest rung on the ladder of human condition— just ask anyone who has been to prison. It’s rape every time it’s not consensual, especially when the victims are under the legal age of consent. Yet here we are, watching Trump rape and pillage Americans with no repercussions.

It isn’t enough that we work 40 hours a week, some of us piece-mealing more than one job at a time to make ends meet. (That way, the companies we work for aren’t required to pay benefits.) And it isn’t enough that we fill our homes with so much holiday flair on a seasonal schedule to keep the juggernaut of useless consumerism running. It isn’t even enough that we pay our taxes but have to start a GoFundMe whenever someone in our community gets injured or sick. Trump will never be satiated. He just keeps squeezing America by the throat, tighter and tighter.

The demented narcissist is using our tax money to pay private security firms like Allied Universal* to kidnap people and detain them indefinitely. And the conditions of these human warehouses are much worse than most of us can even imagine. People packed into standing-room-only: held for days, weeks, months, without adequate food or medicine, and not allowed outside. Our country is at DEFCON 1 for authoritarian takeover and even some of Dick Cheney’s cohorts are realizing we might not be able to hold it together for free and fair midterms.

I can’t really understand what happened to congressional Republicans. Did they all drink from the same water cooler? They are acting like those little whistle pigs who freeze while looking at you with side-eye, in complete denial of the fact that they are facing imminent death from Dad’s gun.

My dad just turned eighty-five, and whenever someone asks how he’s doing, I say, “He’s good. He retired from Ski Patrol, now he sits on his porch shooting varmints in the yard— and no, that’s not a metaphor.”

I remember the first (and only!) time my dad took me hunting. We got up super early and headed up Mount Sopris in his truck, which always had random tools, rope, and ski boundary tape bouncing around by my feet. But I couldn’t give that my full attention, because I had to concentrate on not hitting the back of my head on the gunrack mounted to the window behind me.

We parked the truck and started walking into the Aspen trees. I followed him closely, so excited to be going hunting with Dad that I didn’t even complain about how far we had to walk through the brush and bramble. I was never what you would call a Tomboy, let’s be honest. Nature can be so uncomfortable, unforgiving in her disdain.

Finally, we stopped and hunkered down in the tall grass, waiting and watching… Then I saw it: a deer walking hesitantly towards the creek, her path crossing right in front of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my dad start to bring his rifle up to his eye and I instinctively called out in horror, “Daad!”

Both my dad and the deer looked at me before the deer leapt off into the trees and Dad shook his head slowly, starting to pack up to go home. In my naïve little imagination, I had not thought ‘hunting’ all the way through. Hard to imagine, at the same age I was empathizing with Bambi, other kids are kidnapped and trafficked. Meanwhile, the people charged with protecting us all— and our country, do nothing.

Arrest the President.

*”Allied Universal, the nation’s third-largest private employer, provides vehicles and armed security guards to ICE through its subsidiary, G4S Secure Solutions.”