Contemporaries of mine who are products of a Catholic education were more than likely taught by Nuns; at the least, all of you have very strong Nun recollections, and most have more than a few good Nun stories. Some of the stories would involve acts of faith, kindness and charity; most would be stories of brutality, physical and mental abuse and in some cases, incidences of sadistic torture.
In spite of the irreverence and blasphemy that will follow, know that my recollections are borne from admiration and respect, for at the core of these Nun’s daily reign of terror was their heartfelt desire to transform us from slovenly, unappreciative little pagan babies into educated, unquestionably committed Roman Catholics – with the ultimate goal being our individual quest for Sainthood; nothing less was acceptable. In 1962, in Johnson County, KS, at Cure of Ars’ Parish School, we were taught to believe that Sainthood was attainable – it was all up to us.
I blew my chance at Sainthood early on, in the spring of my 2nd Grade year. I’d recently been blessed with God’s Grace, having confessed my sins to that point of my life, and then having taken my First Holy Communion. To those of you who aren’t Catholic and haven’t experienced this physical and spiritual transformation, as 7-year olds, we took this Sacrament, this Holy ritual, deadly serious, and for most Catholics, the seriousness of the ritual doesn’t diminish with age. Though as a newly Catholicized 7-year old, there was a bit more at stake with keeping up my end of the bargain with regards to being good, being Christian – I still at that time had Sainthood in my sights.
My 2nd grade fall from grace started with a lie – a big, spur-of-the-moment whopper; a lie that I still to this day am uncertain as to source of its summonance. It ended with the heretofore kind, reasoning, patient and all-knowing Sister Mary Joseph, Principal of Cure of Ars Parish School, kicking me square in the ass soccer-style, (way ahead of her time!) with the force of an NFL kicker going for a 65-yard field goal; jettisoning me out of her office and into the hall, tumbling once, twice…probably three times, head over heels. I knew at the end of the second tumble that my chance at Sainthood was shot, and it’s been downhill for me ever since.
It was a sunny spring day, lunchtime recess; the mid-day break consisting of twenty minutes to eat your lunch (which you ate in six minutes and fidgeted for the next fourteen minutes), and forty minutes out on the playground. On this particular day, I was treated in my lunch to a box of Cracker Jacks – which of course, in addition to caramel coated popcorn and peanuts, came with a ‘prize in every box’. My prize was a small, plastic magnifying glass. The lens was maybe ½” in diameter and the whole thing might have been 1 ½” long; with my current old man vision, I would need a big magnifying glass to even see this magnifying glass. Anyway, it was a prize, and I found myself absent-mindedly standing in the warm spring sun, farting around with it on the playground.
Were this a film, you would see me in a long shot; a sweet, innocent blond-haired little guy standing on the playground, minding his own business, and then, the soundtrack would begin playing something not unlike the theme from Jaws, as unaware to me, the class fat kid/bully was waddling his way towards me from behind. Totally unannounced, the ogre whammed me in the back, his two fat paws simultaneously colliding with my two shoulder blades, sending me face first towards the pavement; in short, the fat bastard walked up behind me and without provocation pushed me to the ground. With cat-quick reflexes I shot my arms forward in time to prevent myself from falling face-first, but the downside result of this nanosecond reflexive act of facial self-preservation was the loss of the little magnifying glass, as it flew from my hands and was never to be seen again.
I didn’t cry, but was on the verge of crying; I was for a fact pissed and quickly decided that this fat jackass had to have some payback. Unfortunately none of the Nuns or teachers who had playground duty witnessed this wanton act of aggression, and I didn’t feel that much would happen to him if I ratted him out for simply pushing me to the ground, so I decided, as I walked towards one of the teachers, angry and wounded, to sweeten the pot a little. This pot-sweetening would require that I lie.
“Mrs. Daly, Claude Oafbutt pushed me and when I hit the ground, I....I...I lost my contact lenses!”
I had no idea what contact lenses were, I just knew that they were small, expensive and hard to find when lost. Seems I saw something about this on TV the evening before.
Mrs. Daly instantly sprang into action, blowing her whistle and herding all of the other kids away from the scene of the crime. She cleared out an area that was about 200 square feet, and instructed everyone to stand back.
“Where did you fall?” she asked, panicked, all but breathless.
“Uh… right over there.” I pointed in a direction but to no spot in particular.
In short order, there were six Nuns on the spot, getting the lowdown from Mrs. Daly. Before my very eyes, and the eyes of the entire grades 1-8 recess crowd, the Nuns got down on their hands and knees and slowly began crawling in the cordoned-off area, their noses inches from the pavement as they scanned the ground; like a huddle of arctic penguins searching the desert sands for ice cubes, they diligently poured over every inch of the playground, looking in vain for something that, like ice in the desert, never existed.
I didn’t cuss at that tender age, especially having just made my First Holy Communion, but I knew the sight that lay before me caused me to mutter under my breath something very close to “Holy Shit, what have I got going on here, and how am I gonna get my ass out of it?” Even at that tender age, I knew that if you caused a Nun to crawl around on the playground,in her habit on her hands and knees because you lied, there would be unimaginably huge repercussions. HUGE!
Enter Sister Mary Joseph, Principal of Cure of Ars.
After getting the skinny from Mrs. Daly, she turned and headed slowly over to me.
“Richard, I’m very sorry this has happened, but we don’t seem to be able to find your lenses. Could there be a chance that you left them at your desk, or in the bathroom?”
“Uh, nope, I’m pretty sure I had ‘em on when I came out here.” Another lie.
“Well….maybe we should go inside and have a look, just to make sure. Don’t you think?”
So I followed Sister Mary Joseph into the empty school, down the hall and towards my classroom, knowing with every step that I was a dead kid walkin’.
Standing me before my desk, Sister asked “How about your pencil box, can you look in there for me?”
I pulled out my cigar-box, which held pencils, crayons, erasers – stuff that we used to write with before we had computers. I opened the lid and slowly fished around among the contents, thinking, hoping and praying that maybe I actually had contact lenses; ‘By Golly Sister! Here they are right here! How lucky was that?’
Instead, of course, I said “No Sister, I can’t find them in here…”
“Let’s go look in the bathroom. Maybe you left them in there.”
“Yeah… maybe I left them in there…..” I said, barely audible as we headed down the hall to look one more place for my fictional lenses. I think I remember starting to pray a bit harder at this point.
Needless to say, neither did I score the non-existent lenses in the bathroom.
Back up in the school office, Sister had me sit while she called home to give my Mom the bad news.
“Mrs. Paradise, this is Sister Mary Joseph at Cure….no, no…your children are all fine. But we do have a small problem. It seems that Richard lost his contact lenses on the playground during recess and….(my Mother became very audible on the other end of the phone, and although not intelligible, I knew exactly what she was saying)….Oh really. Is that so? I see….Yes, I’d be happy to let you talk to Richard.”
“Hullo?”
“What in the world are you doing?? What in God’s Name are you thinking?? Contact lenses?? What on earth are you talking about??” She was yelling these questions at me pretty loudly. She had probably been leisurely ironing my Dad’s handkerchiefs, thinking about what she was going to cook for dinner that evening, and then this call comes in!
“You know Mom….those contact lenses I had. I lost them when Claude Oafbutt pushed me for no reason...sniff…and I scraped my hands and knees…sniff…and it hurts really bad…..sniff….” I started to whimper a little, hoping the tears might allow me to buy some sympathy, but Mom didn’t have any sympathy for sale.
I handed the phone to Sister, my head down, waiting for God knows what to come. I’d seen Nuns draw and quarter kids for snickering in the bathroom line; I couldn’t imagine the hell that awaited me from the Head Knucklebuster for this infraction. I assumed she got the top position because she could out-sadist all of the other sadists, and I’d done some really bad stuff; stuff that would test her mettle as an administrator of punishment.
To my immediate surprise, all I got was a stern look and an outstretched arm, finger pointing down the hall as she hissed “Back to your classroom… young man!…”
Just as I was walking out the door, starting to think “Wow, that wasn’t so bad”, Sister Mary Joseph made her attempt at putting her name in the NFL record books.
As I lay dazed on the other end of the hall, I recall hearing one of the other Nuns in the office say something like “Excellent form Sister, and what solid follow-thru! And did I count three tumbles???"”
Sister Mary Joseph coolly nodded her head, wordlessly acknowledging the compliment, then said “Sister Ann.... go get the tape measure.”
At the end of the ordeal, Sister Mary Joseph was immortalized in the Official Record Book of Nun Brutality for ‘Longest Distance Kicked with Accompanied Somersaults, male, less than 60 lbs – 13 feet, 8 inches, 3 tumbles.’; all I got out of the deal was an early exit from the Sainthood sweepstakes.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Mr. Abner Renta.....Dinner is Served
After a brief attempt at trout fishing in the Colorado River, a clean up and a few quick cocktails, we found ourselves in The River Room Restaurant, the early 1970’s addendum to the western edge of the original 1903 structure which overlooked the stretch of river upon which I’d just unsuccessfully attempted to angle.
Our group of nine – four adults and five children - was seated at a large table, hungry, anxious and eager to order; more accurately, the kids were ready to order, as the adults with the cocktails were less eager to do anything substantive beyond enjoying the moment. The adult mood was sublime, brought on more by the place than the booze, as this warm room and its immediate proximity to the mountain and the river had a wonderful affect on the best part of your psyche.
WHAM!!!
Abner’s easel/chalkboard, which contained the evening’s food offerings, slammed down next to our table for the threefold purpose of 1) abruptly/rudely getting our attention, 2) temporarily shutting up the kids and 3) letting the adults know that their brief stay in La-La Land was now over….Welcome to Abnerville!
“I’m pretty busy so I don’t have a lot of time.” (The restaurant was nearly empty.) “Our soup tonight is Ham & Veg…A...Ta…Ble.” (He said the word ‘vegetable’ not only as if it had four syllables, but as if it was four separate words.) “We have fried pork chops, fried trout or New York Strip Steak, all served with Spanish rice. We had some wonderful Cornish Game hens, but unfortunately we’re out of the game hens.” As Abner delivered the Cornish Game Hen news, his eyes rolled skyward as if an old friend had just passed. Oh….the drama.
(Again, we were at our table early, and the restaurant was empty. So I’m guessing that Jamie – Abner’s cook, plumber, landscaper and….I’ll leave it at that, prepared but one Cornish Game Hen, and Jamie and Abner had eaten it before the dinner service began.)
“Is the trout fresh from the river?” I asked.
“It’s from a river.... What do you know about fresh trout, or rivers….and why would you care where it’s from?”
“Could we ask about…?”
“MAKE YOUR CHOICES!! I’m VERY BUSY! I’ll leave you the board but be back in a minute…. FOR YOUR ORDER!!”
‘Wow, did I miss something? We’re in this guy’s place of business, ready to spend money, and he seems pissed that we’re here? How could this be?’
From grades 1 through 8, I had the honor of being educated by Nuns – real Nuns, from the 50’s and 60’s - not these new age Nuns that were all about peace, love and wearing civilian clothes. My Nuns were first and foremost about knuckle-busting, skull-rapping discipline whilst they were adorned in restrictive costumes that obviously brought them to the point of wanting to torture the rest of the world as a way of getting things on an even keel.
Abner Renta’s customer service style made me feel as if one of those All-Pro 1950 Nuns was standing at the edge of the table, not-so-gently tugging at the tender part of my upper ear, asking, no, demanding, “You don’t want the trout,…whap!... you want the fried pork chop, and if you think you don’t want the fried pork chop, …whap…put your knuckles on the table and I’ll make you wish….whap…whap…whap… you’d have ordered and enjoyed the fried pork chop.”
Seven minutes later, Mr. Renta reappears with an order pad in hand, noticeably very testy. (Had Abner been dressed like a Nun, I wouldn’t have been surprised, nor would I have found it out of character.)
“Alright, who’s ready to order???”
I decide to jump right in to the fray…
“I’ll have the New York strip steak, medium rare.”
Abner’s response…” I’ll bring it cooked, but there’s no guess as to how it will be cooked. You won’t get sick if you eat it… that’s about all I’ll guarantee. Bwa HA HA HA … (an over-the-top, hysterically theatrical laugh, unlike any you've ever heard).
“Ok, who’s next?” I say.
My fictional wife Julie steps up to the plate, and orders..”How about the trout? How’s the trout?”
“We’re out of trout. But we’ve got a few pork chops left, and a few steaks, cooked to the chefs liking…Bwa..Ha..Ha ..Ha!.”
“But your chalkboard had trout, and…”
“WE’RE OUT OF TROUT!!! DID YOU NOT HEAR ME? WE’VE GOT STEAKS AND A FEW PORK CHOPS!!!”
Sheepishly, my fictional wife orders the pork chop, and we order pork chops for the kids, as the $30, 8-ounce frozen steaks are but a bit beyond our budget.
The food was decent (being both famished as well as a little inebriated might have helped to soften the requirements of a particular palate), but the previously sublime atmosphere was darkened by the SS-like discipline that was practiced by the owner. Possibly at this point, the first seeds to growing the ultimate flowers of our eventual demise were planted….
“Wow. This place is awesome. If we owned this place, we wouldn’t be mean and shitty to our customers. We’d try to accommodate their desires, rather than verbally beating them up for expressing their desires. Gotta think that attitude would ultimately be better for business……If only we owned this place….”
To be continued......
Our group of nine – four adults and five children - was seated at a large table, hungry, anxious and eager to order; more accurately, the kids were ready to order, as the adults with the cocktails were less eager to do anything substantive beyond enjoying the moment. The adult mood was sublime, brought on more by the place than the booze, as this warm room and its immediate proximity to the mountain and the river had a wonderful affect on the best part of your psyche.
WHAM!!!
Abner’s easel/chalkboard, which contained the evening’s food offerings, slammed down next to our table for the threefold purpose of 1) abruptly/rudely getting our attention, 2) temporarily shutting up the kids and 3) letting the adults know that their brief stay in La-La Land was now over….Welcome to Abnerville!
“I’m pretty busy so I don’t have a lot of time.” (The restaurant was nearly empty.) “Our soup tonight is Ham & Veg…A...Ta…Ble.” (He said the word ‘vegetable’ not only as if it had four syllables, but as if it was four separate words.) “We have fried pork chops, fried trout or New York Strip Steak, all served with Spanish rice. We had some wonderful Cornish Game hens, but unfortunately we’re out of the game hens.” As Abner delivered the Cornish Game Hen news, his eyes rolled skyward as if an old friend had just passed. Oh….the drama.
(Again, we were at our table early, and the restaurant was empty. So I’m guessing that Jamie – Abner’s cook, plumber, landscaper and….I’ll leave it at that, prepared but one Cornish Game Hen, and Jamie and Abner had eaten it before the dinner service began.)
“Is the trout fresh from the river?” I asked.
“It’s from a river.... What do you know about fresh trout, or rivers….and why would you care where it’s from?”
“Could we ask about…?”
“MAKE YOUR CHOICES!! I’m VERY BUSY! I’ll leave you the board but be back in a minute…. FOR YOUR ORDER!!”
‘Wow, did I miss something? We’re in this guy’s place of business, ready to spend money, and he seems pissed that we’re here? How could this be?’
From grades 1 through 8, I had the honor of being educated by Nuns – real Nuns, from the 50’s and 60’s - not these new age Nuns that were all about peace, love and wearing civilian clothes. My Nuns were first and foremost about knuckle-busting, skull-rapping discipline whilst they were adorned in restrictive costumes that obviously brought them to the point of wanting to torture the rest of the world as a way of getting things on an even keel.
Abner Renta’s customer service style made me feel as if one of those All-Pro 1950 Nuns was standing at the edge of the table, not-so-gently tugging at the tender part of my upper ear, asking, no, demanding, “You don’t want the trout,…whap!... you want the fried pork chop, and if you think you don’t want the fried pork chop, …whap…put your knuckles on the table and I’ll make you wish….whap…whap…whap… you’d have ordered and enjoyed the fried pork chop.”
Seven minutes later, Mr. Renta reappears with an order pad in hand, noticeably very testy. (Had Abner been dressed like a Nun, I wouldn’t have been surprised, nor would I have found it out of character.)
“Alright, who’s ready to order???”
I decide to jump right in to the fray…
“I’ll have the New York strip steak, medium rare.”
Abner’s response…” I’ll bring it cooked, but there’s no guess as to how it will be cooked. You won’t get sick if you eat it… that’s about all I’ll guarantee. Bwa HA HA HA … (an over-the-top, hysterically theatrical laugh, unlike any you've ever heard).
“Ok, who’s next?” I say.
My fictional wife Julie steps up to the plate, and orders..”How about the trout? How’s the trout?”
“We’re out of trout. But we’ve got a few pork chops left, and a few steaks, cooked to the chefs liking…Bwa..Ha..Ha ..Ha!.”
“But your chalkboard had trout, and…”
“WE’RE OUT OF TROUT!!! DID YOU NOT HEAR ME? WE’VE GOT STEAKS AND A FEW PORK CHOPS!!!”
Sheepishly, my fictional wife orders the pork chop, and we order pork chops for the kids, as the $30, 8-ounce frozen steaks are but a bit beyond our budget.
The food was decent (being both famished as well as a little inebriated might have helped to soften the requirements of a particular palate), but the previously sublime atmosphere was darkened by the SS-like discipline that was practiced by the owner. Possibly at this point, the first seeds to growing the ultimate flowers of our eventual demise were planted….
“Wow. This place is awesome. If we owned this place, we wouldn’t be mean and shitty to our customers. We’d try to accommodate their desires, rather than verbally beating them up for expressing their desires. Gotta think that attitude would ultimately be better for business……If only we owned this place….”
To be continued......
Friday, September 16, 2011
Mr. Abner Renta....Introduction
After a slow rise, and a dramatic flourish of the arm, Mr. Renta all but exploded….
“Welcome to The Riverside! Go upstairs and pick any room you like!”
“Abner! Good to see you! It’s Roscoe Cowerd. Remember me??”
“Of course I do. Is the rest of your family with you? Have you brought your dogs? I don’t want the dogs down here.”
“No Abner, no dogs; just our friends from Kansas City and their kids.”
“Wonderful! How nice. Nice to meet you. Will you be having dinner with us tonight?”
“We wouldn’t miss it” interjected Roscoe, before I had the chance to say “Hell No!”
“What’s for dinner tonight, Abner? We’re all starved!”
“We’ve got Ham & Veg…a…ta…ble soup, Pork Chops, Trout and Strip Steak…all served with Spanish Rice.”
“That sounds great Abner. Sounds like what was on the menu the last 30 times we were here.”
“Well, yeah, I guess that’s true; we got it down pretty good. Dinner is at 6:00 O’Clock. Don’t be late! And make sure you put the bath mat on the back of the chair after you shower!”
And so went my brief introduction to Abner Renta. Not in a billion, trillion, ka-zillion years at that time would I have ever imagined that 14-years later, two days after our final Christmas feast in the family homestead that we built and in which we raised our children, my wife and I would have just driven 700 miles across an icy I-70, over a snowy Berthoud Pass, having pulled a U-Haul trailer loaded with lots of our precious stuff, to ultimately be standing in this very room giving this grimy little man a check comprised of the better part of our lives savings, in return for the honor of sitting in this lobby, greeting strangers and telling them where they would be sleeping, what they would be eating for dinner and at what time they would be eating it.
Who amongst us can at any time imagine and say what will ultimately be?
Not one of us; if we could, we would be King eternally.
Yet we can all accurately make pronouncements as to what absolutely will not be.
It’s funny how the unknown can so soundly trump the absolute.
To be continued....
“Welcome to The Riverside! Go upstairs and pick any room you like!”
“Abner! Good to see you! It’s Roscoe Cowerd. Remember me??”
“Of course I do. Is the rest of your family with you? Have you brought your dogs? I don’t want the dogs down here.”
“No Abner, no dogs; just our friends from Kansas City and their kids.”
“Wonderful! How nice. Nice to meet you. Will you be having dinner with us tonight?”
“We wouldn’t miss it” interjected Roscoe, before I had the chance to say “Hell No!”
“What’s for dinner tonight, Abner? We’re all starved!”
“We’ve got Ham & Veg…a…ta…ble soup, Pork Chops, Trout and Strip Steak…all served with Spanish Rice.”
“That sounds great Abner. Sounds like what was on the menu the last 30 times we were here.”
“Well, yeah, I guess that’s true; we got it down pretty good. Dinner is at 6:00 O’Clock. Don’t be late! And make sure you put the bath mat on the back of the chair after you shower!”
And so went my brief introduction to Abner Renta. Not in a billion, trillion, ka-zillion years at that time would I have ever imagined that 14-years later, two days after our final Christmas feast in the family homestead that we built and in which we raised our children, my wife and I would have just driven 700 miles across an icy I-70, over a snowy Berthoud Pass, having pulled a U-Haul trailer loaded with lots of our precious stuff, to ultimately be standing in this very room giving this grimy little man a check comprised of the better part of our lives savings, in return for the honor of sitting in this lobby, greeting strangers and telling them where they would be sleeping, what they would be eating for dinner and at what time they would be eating it.
Who amongst us can at any time imagine and say what will ultimately be?
Not one of us; if we could, we would be King eternally.
Yet we can all accurately make pronouncements as to what absolutely will not be.
It’s funny how the unknown can so soundly trump the absolute.
To be continued....
Monday, September 12, 2011
Mr. Abner Renta.......Proprietor
Note: As with all of the previous chapters of this blog, it is important to reiterate with the next few chapters that all of the characters featured in these stories are purely fictional. This next series of stories are about a fictional man who owned a fictional hotel in a fictional town in Colorado, which was ultimately purchased by a fictional family. Any resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental; just good old fashioned, honest-to-God, blind-ass happenstance.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the summer of 1993, we made our first visit to The Riverside Hotel. It was the first stop in an extended trip where the ultimate destination was a five day visit to Julie’s family reunion (my fictional wife) in Anaconda, MT. A lot of driving in a 1992 Chevy Astro Van with my 8-year old daughter and my 5-year old son; this before they’d started installing DVD players in cars – having lived through the trip I can now say that was a good thing, as the kids were forced to drink in the scenery, as were we and any other of my generation fortunate enough to take a driving vacation. Remember, this form of recreation was pretty much new to the Post-WWII civilized world after the relatively recent advent of the car, the paved road and the job where you got time off. How quickly we’ve degenerated to the point where our offspring are entertained not by nature’s beauty and familial interaction, but only by Hi-Def 3D Pixar stuff.
The summer of 1993 was also famous for the Flood of 1993 – the heartland of our Country from the mouth of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, through Iowa to the heart of the Mississippi Delta, and the mighty Missouri River back through the upper reaches of the Dakota’s – was devastated by a 500-year flood, not seen again until 18 years later. The flood threatened my business, which was a few short miles from the point where the Kansas River (aka The Kaw) hooked up with the Missouri River; 3 miles downstream from our plant, trailer parks and a few businesses that had been there since the 1940’s were literally wiped from the map by the overflow of the Kaw – the land remains barren today.
We headed west from Kansas City towards Denver and the Rocky Mountains on I-70 – to many this stretch of road is the punch line to “What is the shittiest section of interstate highway in the US?” Having now made this trek I can’t remember how many times – 30, probably closer to 40 – I can tell you that stretches of this ride are singularly spectacular; 10-fold more scenic than the I-70 that stretches through the equally Kansas-flat cornfields of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. Driving west out of Topeka to Salina, you will experience a nice stretch of the Flint Hills; hit them early in the morning or during a purple fall dusk, and you will experience a vision like no other. Mountains are quietly envious of this spectacle. The latter part of Kansas into the eastern stretches of Colorado gives you the gentle rumblings of the Chalk Hills, truncated by the jagged cuts and arroyos that exist with a vibrant purpose in the rainy spring, only to turn to wasted, unimportant ditches in the summer and fall. It is a barren land, hard and spent, but its starkness whets your appetite for the beautiful, yet brutal peaks and spires that lay ahead.
The summer of 1993 was the third time I’d made this trip, and the first time in my adult life. The first trip was in 1959 as a three-year old in the back of a brand new 1959 Chevy Station Wagon, (my memories of this trip are vague), the second in 1973 as a 17-year old protesting the fact that he had to go on a family vacation (my memories of this trip are also vague), and now, as the head of the family, I was essentially heading into lands unknown.
Our lunch stop off of I-70 was Wilson Lake Reservoir, about 200 miles west of KC, halfway between Salina and Hays, KS. I’d picked the place out on a map because it was right off the interstate and it had some decent looking picnic areas where our kids could run off some steam. Unbeknownst to me, two weeks before our visit an F-4 tornado had torched through the area. Shortly off the interstate, driving towards the picnic areas, the devastation from the storm was otherworldly – a shell of an old gas station, the pumps and its spidery twisted canopy turned on its side, a large stand of cottonwood trees turned into a spot for a massive fall bonfire, picnic tables and fire grills a jumble of iron and wood nested 10’ off the shore of the lake, forty yards from their original point of purpose. Add to the aura the fact that there was no evidence at this ‘park’ of any other human – we had the place so to ourselves that it felt as if we’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. Who would have expected such a surreal setting for the two month-prior planned consumption of our Underwood Deviled-Ham sandwiches, crunchified with straight-up Lay’s Potato Chips and washed down with Sunkist Orange Soda?
A deeper portent of things to come on this trip and our ultimate western journey..…. Perhaps.
Two nights were spent in Denver, me doing some business while Julie and the offspring hit the zoo and the Children’s Museum. My doing business was central to our being in Denver, and totally central to our ultimate involvement with The Riverside Hotel. My boss lived and operated several other businesses in Denver; in one of those businesses I found a kindred spirit, Roscoe, who became one of my closest friends. We were both at similar points in our lives with working wives and young children while toiling away for the same boss in related industries; tied into the package was our mutual love of sports, fishing, literature and fine food and booze.
When I’d mentioned to Roscoe that we were driving west on vacation for a family reunion, a stop in Denver followed by a night at The Historic Riverside Hotel – a getaway staple for my Colorado buddy since his youth – was etched into the trip. One of the things I love most about Roscoe is his tendency to embrace his knowledge of prose and literature and infuse it into every fragment of conversation. He can make a trip down the driveway to pick up the morning paper into an event….”the morning sun sparked the glistening snow into a field of blinding diamonds as I made my way towards the bundled journal, treading carefully…cautious not to disturb the surrounding glitter as I bent to gather the previous days’ news.” Roscoe’s propensity to elucidate on the most ordinary of tasks and events (certainly not a fault, as it is borne from the most genuine joie de vivre that I’ve ever encountered) made a trip to the Colorado mountains and an eventual visit to The Riverside seem as if we were in fact heading to Shangri-La.
The drive seemed endless, up and over Berthoud Pass, through one small town after another, before we took a right turn onto the main street of Hot Sulphur Springs, CO, heading slowly west towards Mt. Bross, the Colorado River and The Riverside Hotel. The white clapboard façade bared itself to the south and the rest of the town as if it were one of the worlds’ last outposts. It was truly as if all roads in Grand County led to this end, the juncture of farm, burg and field, river and mountain. I stood before the place awestruck; I knew that I was in the presence of time, history and past generations. Good Lord, but the place had a feel!
As I walked into The Riverside for the first time, bags in tow and eager for the experience, and more importantly eager for a cocktail after the long drive, I was greeted by the visage of this fantastically musty, cluttered old place – half-dead climbing vines clinging to the walls, window ledges and door jambs, a homey living area dominated by a massive limestone fireplace and a mounted trophy 7-point Elk-rack lording over the room. It was certainly as if the old-timey feel of the outside had pulsed its veins straight through the interior. I’m certain that if you’d have walked into the place in 1930, not much would be different, save for the raging 19” television in the corner, and the old man who sat in the chair, his eyes glued to that television; he wanly greeting us as we entered.
Meet Mr. Abner Renta, the proprietor of The Riverside Hotel.
At that time (before Peter Jackson’s rendering, and to the truth, Mr. Jackson and I were eerily on the same page) Mr. Renta would have been my vision for the Gollum character in Tolkien’s works; bloodshot bulging bug-eyes, sallow skin and rotting teeth under a wild unmanageable tangle of wispy, wiry hair. His lilting high-pitched welcome and his hysterical falsetto of a following laugh would have most certainly further chilled Gollum’s icy blood. I clutched onto my bags, forgot about having cocktails, and looked nervously for the exit.
On the spot I began to question the accuracy of my friend Roscoe’s tendency to creatively describe his past and present, thinking possibly that some serious drugs had played into his utopian world view way more than I’d imagined.
To be continued…..
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the summer of 1993, we made our first visit to The Riverside Hotel. It was the first stop in an extended trip where the ultimate destination was a five day visit to Julie’s family reunion (my fictional wife) in Anaconda, MT. A lot of driving in a 1992 Chevy Astro Van with my 8-year old daughter and my 5-year old son; this before they’d started installing DVD players in cars – having lived through the trip I can now say that was a good thing, as the kids were forced to drink in the scenery, as were we and any other of my generation fortunate enough to take a driving vacation. Remember, this form of recreation was pretty much new to the Post-WWII civilized world after the relatively recent advent of the car, the paved road and the job where you got time off. How quickly we’ve degenerated to the point where our offspring are entertained not by nature’s beauty and familial interaction, but only by Hi-Def 3D Pixar stuff.
The summer of 1993 was also famous for the Flood of 1993 – the heartland of our Country from the mouth of the Mississippi River in Minnesota, through Iowa to the heart of the Mississippi Delta, and the mighty Missouri River back through the upper reaches of the Dakota’s – was devastated by a 500-year flood, not seen again until 18 years later. The flood threatened my business, which was a few short miles from the point where the Kansas River (aka The Kaw) hooked up with the Missouri River; 3 miles downstream from our plant, trailer parks and a few businesses that had been there since the 1940’s were literally wiped from the map by the overflow of the Kaw – the land remains barren today.
We headed west from Kansas City towards Denver and the Rocky Mountains on I-70 – to many this stretch of road is the punch line to “What is the shittiest section of interstate highway in the US?” Having now made this trek I can’t remember how many times – 30, probably closer to 40 – I can tell you that stretches of this ride are singularly spectacular; 10-fold more scenic than the I-70 that stretches through the equally Kansas-flat cornfields of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. Driving west out of Topeka to Salina, you will experience a nice stretch of the Flint Hills; hit them early in the morning or during a purple fall dusk, and you will experience a vision like no other. Mountains are quietly envious of this spectacle. The latter part of Kansas into the eastern stretches of Colorado gives you the gentle rumblings of the Chalk Hills, truncated by the jagged cuts and arroyos that exist with a vibrant purpose in the rainy spring, only to turn to wasted, unimportant ditches in the summer and fall. It is a barren land, hard and spent, but its starkness whets your appetite for the beautiful, yet brutal peaks and spires that lay ahead.
The summer of 1993 was the third time I’d made this trip, and the first time in my adult life. The first trip was in 1959 as a three-year old in the back of a brand new 1959 Chevy Station Wagon, (my memories of this trip are vague), the second in 1973 as a 17-year old protesting the fact that he had to go on a family vacation (my memories of this trip are also vague), and now, as the head of the family, I was essentially heading into lands unknown.
Our lunch stop off of I-70 was Wilson Lake Reservoir, about 200 miles west of KC, halfway between Salina and Hays, KS. I’d picked the place out on a map because it was right off the interstate and it had some decent looking picnic areas where our kids could run off some steam. Unbeknownst to me, two weeks before our visit an F-4 tornado had torched through the area. Shortly off the interstate, driving towards the picnic areas, the devastation from the storm was otherworldly – a shell of an old gas station, the pumps and its spidery twisted canopy turned on its side, a large stand of cottonwood trees turned into a spot for a massive fall bonfire, picnic tables and fire grills a jumble of iron and wood nested 10’ off the shore of the lake, forty yards from their original point of purpose. Add to the aura the fact that there was no evidence at this ‘park’ of any other human – we had the place so to ourselves that it felt as if we’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. Who would have expected such a surreal setting for the two month-prior planned consumption of our Underwood Deviled-Ham sandwiches, crunchified with straight-up Lay’s Potato Chips and washed down with Sunkist Orange Soda?
A deeper portent of things to come on this trip and our ultimate western journey..…. Perhaps.
Two nights were spent in Denver, me doing some business while Julie and the offspring hit the zoo and the Children’s Museum. My doing business was central to our being in Denver, and totally central to our ultimate involvement with The Riverside Hotel. My boss lived and operated several other businesses in Denver; in one of those businesses I found a kindred spirit, Roscoe, who became one of my closest friends. We were both at similar points in our lives with working wives and young children while toiling away for the same boss in related industries; tied into the package was our mutual love of sports, fishing, literature and fine food and booze.
When I’d mentioned to Roscoe that we were driving west on vacation for a family reunion, a stop in Denver followed by a night at The Historic Riverside Hotel – a getaway staple for my Colorado buddy since his youth – was etched into the trip. One of the things I love most about Roscoe is his tendency to embrace his knowledge of prose and literature and infuse it into every fragment of conversation. He can make a trip down the driveway to pick up the morning paper into an event….”the morning sun sparked the glistening snow into a field of blinding diamonds as I made my way towards the bundled journal, treading carefully…cautious not to disturb the surrounding glitter as I bent to gather the previous days’ news.” Roscoe’s propensity to elucidate on the most ordinary of tasks and events (certainly not a fault, as it is borne from the most genuine joie de vivre that I’ve ever encountered) made a trip to the Colorado mountains and an eventual visit to The Riverside seem as if we were in fact heading to Shangri-La.
The drive seemed endless, up and over Berthoud Pass, through one small town after another, before we took a right turn onto the main street of Hot Sulphur Springs, CO, heading slowly west towards Mt. Bross, the Colorado River and The Riverside Hotel. The white clapboard façade bared itself to the south and the rest of the town as if it were one of the worlds’ last outposts. It was truly as if all roads in Grand County led to this end, the juncture of farm, burg and field, river and mountain. I stood before the place awestruck; I knew that I was in the presence of time, history and past generations. Good Lord, but the place had a feel!
As I walked into The Riverside for the first time, bags in tow and eager for the experience, and more importantly eager for a cocktail after the long drive, I was greeted by the visage of this fantastically musty, cluttered old place – half-dead climbing vines clinging to the walls, window ledges and door jambs, a homey living area dominated by a massive limestone fireplace and a mounted trophy 7-point Elk-rack lording over the room. It was certainly as if the old-timey feel of the outside had pulsed its veins straight through the interior. I’m certain that if you’d have walked into the place in 1930, not much would be different, save for the raging 19” television in the corner, and the old man who sat in the chair, his eyes glued to that television; he wanly greeting us as we entered.
Meet Mr. Abner Renta, the proprietor of The Riverside Hotel.
At that time (before Peter Jackson’s rendering, and to the truth, Mr. Jackson and I were eerily on the same page) Mr. Renta would have been my vision for the Gollum character in Tolkien’s works; bloodshot bulging bug-eyes, sallow skin and rotting teeth under a wild unmanageable tangle of wispy, wiry hair. His lilting high-pitched welcome and his hysterical falsetto of a following laugh would have most certainly further chilled Gollum’s icy blood. I clutched onto my bags, forgot about having cocktails, and looked nervously for the exit.
On the spot I began to question the accuracy of my friend Roscoe’s tendency to creatively describe his past and present, thinking possibly that some serious drugs had played into his utopian world view way more than I’d imagined.
To be continued…..
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
