Spring Cleaning

Ok. I'm going to clean out the kitchen drawer that grabs the stuff I'm clearing from the counters when company is imminent. That false impression I like to give that it's tidy around here. Sometimes it is.

Receipts are easy. Those go in a folding file. The M-80s I took away from the teenagers can stay there until July. Here's the silver plumeria earring I thought I lost. And here's a sample of barbecue rub... I'll just put that on the counter. I might use it tonight.

Here are two ticket stubs from July 2006. Crosby Stills Nash & Young at Red Rocks Ampitheater, Denver, Colorado. My adult son, Chris, and I were there. Unforgettable. David Crosby said in his second biography that the Red Rocks Freedom of Speech gig was one of the best they ever played. Hey! We were there!

The itinerary from here to Spearfish, South Dakota was one of my good ideas. Nobody in my household was interested in the Hoverson family reunion but me. "South Dakota in July? Too hot! Are you nuts?" Mom and Dad would drive, as usual, out of consideration for the little dog that goes everywhere they go.

Airfare from Seattle or Bellingham to Rapid City was about $700. But what if I flew into Denver and visit with my friend, Amber, then rent a car and drive from Denver to Spearfish and back? Those airplane tickets are $220. I looked around for things to do in Denver (why not?). Never been to Denver before.

"Hey, Chris. Wanna fly to Denver with me? We can see Crosby Stills Nash and Young at Red Rocks Amphitheater, stay overnight, and then drive up to Spearfish for that family reunion. We'll stay two days and drive back to Denver for the flight home. Wouldn't that be an adventure?"

My 29 year old son has inherited my good sense, so he could see a good time and quickly agreed. After all, we could both fly and ride for less than the cost of one direct ticket. Two for one. And rock and roll superstars in brand new territory.

The Denver airport is not in Denver but quite a ways east in Aurora. Right in the path of lightning storms and blizzards. We avoided the blizzards, it being July, but did arrive with lighting around our heads. Landing was ok, but it was waiting for baggage that took an hour or so. They can't send the baggage carriers out it for fear of lighting strikes, but the clouds move by like trains with several minutes in between.

We got the rental car, and nice stodgy Ford Taurus, and set out for Denver. Not knowing where I'm going has never stopped me and I'm used to surprises. The hotel was in Lakewood, not Denver. The concert was in Morrison, not Denver. "Denver" doesn't mean Denver, necessarily, and all of these places are twenty miles from downtown. Fortunately, Lakewood is on the same side of Denver as Morrison is. Amber lives in Golden. Not too bad.

The hotel clerk suggested we get an early start for Morrison to beat the traffic. She said parking was pretty far from the event, and we might like a taxi. We took her advice and she called one for us. Very easy ride to a place we never would have guessed was there. The amphitheatre is tucked into foothills that rise into the Rocky Mountains.

We stepped out of the cab and looked for the entrance. I bet we walked a mile up switchbacked trail until we reached the seating. Remembering we started upward from "the Mile High City," we took our time. There were paramedics at two stations for those of us whose hearts might seize up from the altitude and aerobics. It happens.

Ah, here we are. We walked through a gauntlet of charitable organization groups occupying booths and practicing free speech. You can speak freely, too, if you agree with them. Otherwise prepare for nasty insults. I'd learned that lesson long ago, so went straight for the beverage vendors. Chris and I each got a tasty beer, then climbed another 70 feet in altitude to our assigned seats.

What a beautiful place! The City of Denver owns this huge, perfectly acoustic venue. Rock formations and boulders make it perfect for the outdoor performances that have been going on since the early 1900s. It can seat over 9,000 people.

We got Kosher hotdogs and waited for the performance.

Rock gods! You can read reviews of the three concerts given that weekend at Red Rocks, so I won't even attempt one. As the sky grew dark, we could see lightning storms over the city of Denver and its skyscrapers twenty miles or so away. There were no clouds where we sat.

"Guinevere" and "Helplessly Hoping" gave me goosebumps. "Almost Cut my Hair" made me laugh. The old guys played until almost midnight.

Back at the entrance, we looked around for a taxi. Someone said there'd be plenty of them arriving soon. We observed tour buses near where we stood. A van unloaded six cases of Stella Artois. I asked one of the drivers, "Is the band here?" He said heck no, they'd left for their hotel right after the last note played. Hmmm... well, I wouldn't bother them, but at least I was standing pretty close. That's kinda exciting.

We got up the next morning as early as we could stand it and found the road to Spearfish woven through greater Denver, past the airport and north on Interstate 25. About two hours into the drive, we thought we could eat. Fort Collins Next Exit. Hey, that's where Dan's Bake Sale was! Let's go check it out!

For those of you in Rio Linda who don't know what Dan's Bake Sale was about, I should spare you the story... but those of us who know would want to check it out.

There aren't any signs of that 1993 event in Fort Collins now, but it is a really nice little college town (University of Colorado). It's also the home of New Belgium Brewery and a bunch of tech companies. It's got to be one of the prettiest places I've seen, with the Pouder River running through it, lots of green park area, and the Colorado Front Range alongside.

We found a really great Japanese restaurant with sidewalk tables. We watched the slow and easy downtown traffic and enjoyed the warm breezes, just right. Ok, we'll stop at one brewery.

O'Dell Brewery for just a few minutes... we shared a sampler. Pretty darned competent brewer. I bought a six pack to take home to John, without thinking about the season and outside temperatures. As a result, I carried it with me the whole trip to avoid letting it sit in the car and overheat. Just like a handbag.

Back in the car for hours and hours. Cheyenne, Wyoming was interesting, but we couldn't stop because we'd lost too much time in Fort Collins. Prairie dog towns line the freeway... hundreds of miles of rodent condos. Holes and mounds. A sentinel here, a sentinel there. No trees, no water, no cell phone signal. They could send a good 30% of Wyoming up to Alaska and no one would miss it, I think. Big ranch lands with long gravel driveways that disappear into seemingly nothing. One driveway had a billboard that said "Boner Ranch 10 Miles East." Chris made me turn around and stop the car so he I could take his photo standing next to it. There were other ranches that had signs mentioning an ownership by the Boner Family Ranch. You couldn't help but think... oh, never mind.

You can google "Boner Ranch" and you can find that lots of people have found this photo op irresistible. Amazing, since you can drive over an hour at a time and not meet another car.

The map required us to leave I-25 at US-85, which leads one from Lusk to Newcastle. My cousin told me that from Newcastle we had three choices of highway to Spearfish, but she couldn't give me a preference having never traveled to Newcastle herself.

You won't see much town in Lusk. Newcastle is clearly the center of activity for a hundred miles in any direction. There may be 3,000 people there but you'll only see 25 of them, maybe. We found a cafe on the top floor of an old granary. There was a drive-through liquor store on the ground level. What are you going to do?

The Old Mill Inn is probably the cleanest eatery I've ever set foot in. All paneled in melamine, it really shines. There is a dining room in the rear that has antelope antler chandeliers and a prime rib buffet on special nights. We waived the ambiance for the efficiency of the cafe front and had some pretty good cheeseburgers.

We asked around for directions to Spearfish using road map we got at the last gas stop. Everyone we asked peered at it and pointed at one of the three routes saying things like, "This one looks the shortest," "This one goes through the prairie and around the hills." "I think I've been on this one once." It turned out that no one we asked had ever been to Spearfish even though it was only about 60 miles away! We chose the one that went through the prairie and around the Black Hills just because someone said antelope are active at night and like to jump out in front of cars. We'd seen the carcasses positioned along the freeway, about one every five miles in differing states of decomposition. Straight, flat road sounded like the best visibility now that it was nighttime. Could someone have mentioned that 20 miles of that road was in gravel because of a repaving project? How would they know?

Three hours later we found Spearfish, the motel, and the boxy beds. But we slept very, very soundly. Chris came out of his room first and brought me coffee, sweet thing. Then we went to meet the relatives at the Booth History Fish Hatchery, where my cousin Randi is curator. Tours and lunch, then on your own until dinner for everyone at the Bay Leaf Cafe, $20 per person.

Mom and Dad arrived just in time for dinner, after an engine change in Billings, Montana. That's another story, and so many bad things could have happened to them except for the good nature of so many small town Americans. May God bless that mechanic.

I won't describe the town of Spearfish and the family reunion except to say that the Black Hills is beautiful country and there are lots of really old people who go to those things. We had a very nice visit and even got to see the Reptile Gardens in Rapid City. If you get a chance, be sure and see this most famous roadside attraction. It's been perpetuated with great class since 1937.

The car ride back to Denver was long and dull. It was hard to miss anything on the first pass through because there is so little to see. Lots of odometer watching. Cheyenne might be worth exploring someday.

We spent that night at Amber's house (she was back from a business trip), got a mini tour of Golden and downtown Denver the next day, then back to the friendly skies. We were home just after midnight and thoroughly worn out.

So today, I'm staring at these concert tickets and the messy drawer. I've wasted a half hour daydreaming, remembering... now I need a nap.

There's still enough room in the drawer for more junk. Why worry?

Trio

Three Canadian geese are on the pond this morning. These are migrators, not the crowd that hang around golf courses and wear out their welcome. They'll be here just today, maybe tomorrow for awhile and will continue their travel north.

When we bought this house four years ago, the pond was a big attraction to us. It's about two and a half acres and has a quarter acre island in the middle. It was created by the contractor who built the Scimitar estate up on the ridge. He quarried the rock under a wet area (all permitted by the state) to build the access road for the Scimitar mansion. What was once swampy is now nicely drained. The pond is home to frogs, herons, beavers and an otter . The waterfowl that you see are migratory, and it's interesting to watch the parade through the calendar months.

Two pair of mallards raise their babies on the far side of the pond. They stay pretty close to the beaver dam and only when it's really quiet do they enter my sight. Wood ducks nest somewhere on the ridge. I see the family throughout the summer. Six babies, then five babies, then four babies... no doubt the otter thins them out. Two of them will likely reach adulthood.

I've only seen a beaver twice. They work at night, I think. You can see bits of alder floating in the water. These are evidence of food gathering.

The first summer of our residence, John placed a floating trampoline mid-way to the island. It needed an anchor to stay put, and that was easily done. The boys enjoyed bouncing on it in the warm months. When the Fall arrived John retrieved it to storage for the next summer.

What should we mark the anchor with? What kind of buoy? I thought a duck decoy would look charming out there, so John went to Ace Hardware and picked out a big plastic Canadian goose. It worked very well through the freezes and thaws of winter into spring.

One April morning a trio of Canadian geese splashed down. I watched them from the kitchen table as they pulled themselves up to the lawn for breakfast. They are herbivores, and find nothing tastier than the grass blends we plant on developed plots. They eat alot of lawn and they... well, you know if you've ever walked around where they hang out. Watch your step!

Back into the water, the trio noticed the buoy sitting still about 50 feet away. Very cautiously, they approached, swimming big circles, then smaller circles. Two of the geese went back to the lawn and the one lingered next to the plastic bird.

She splashed. She nudged. She splashed some more and made a submissive mating posture in front of the stoic figure. She swam slow circles around it for awhile, then joined the other two geese on the lawn. She gazed longingly across the water to her new interest.

At the mid-afternoon, two of the geese took to the air for the next stop on their flight plan. The third bird did not join them. She settled down on the edge of the pond without taking her eyes off the decoy. Once or twice she swam around "him" but did not appear to notice the others had left her.

Early the next morning, she was sitting in the water next to her beau. The pair returned and swam close to the single in greeting. She lowered her head and chased them away. The pair stayed all day, flying up and trying to pursuade the single to budge. She would not.

John came home around 4:00 and I briefed him on the story.

"You'll have to go out there and get that decoy. 'He's' breaking her heart." I said.

John took one of the peddleboats from the dock and did the job, taking the plastic goose and replacing it with a nondescript oblong buoy. The single stood on the island and watched the departure.

She swam to where he'd been moored. And stayed.

About an hour later the pair returned. They approached her again. She faced them, but did not chase.

The pair rose to flight and made a circle around the pond, while the single remained where she'd last seen the decoy.

Another circle around the pond. Then one more.

Suddenly the single flapped her wings. She became airborneand connected her flight with the pair's. The three flew west, out of sight. I have to admit I got a little teary-eyed.

For third consecutive April, the three geese are here. I can't be sure it's the same trio, of course, but I like to think so. I'll enjoy their company as long as they stay today.

They are favorites.

Departure

Not long ago, an acquaintence of mine took his own life. He was well-known to most of the town, but no one could see this coming. Not me, not any of his friends, not close associates in the business community.

And there were many, many people who loved him.

In late middle age, Chad had a catering business. Chad had been a florist, a landscaper, and a general building contractor. He worked with his hands, and although you couldn't say his work was that much better than his competitors, it was his charm that won him clients. And he was our first openly homosexual business leader. He was matter-of-fact about it, and he didn't "look like one." Chad could act a little "swishy" if he thought that's what you wanted to see, but really he was a fairly modest man.

"Some of them are as good as me, some of them are better than me, but they don't have that faggot touch," he'd laugh.

Not so good with money. He loved fine food, fine wine, and beautiful surroundings. His mother left him her house, which was a 50's working-class single level home on an average lot a couple of blocks from downtown. He'd put loads of money into it. Stuccoed interior walls with coved ceilings, Brazilian cherry cabinets, French doors, oriental rugs and a commercial kitchen inside. Meticulous plantings, terra cotta tile and even a brick oven outside. Many pieces of art were purchased from local artists because he loved to socialize with them and sponsor them. The piece de resistance was a ten year old Bentley parked in the driveway.

Rob Peter to pay Paul was his financial practice. I'm sure it enraged some people, but Chad could pull the fat out of the fire, so to speak, at the last moment most times.

Chad often donated his services at charity events. He might offer a dinner for eight in his home to the highest bidder at a live auction for, say, Youth Sports Coalition, and that would be one of the most popular and highest premium items.

I used to visit with one of his secretaries who is a good friend of mine. Cheryl and I had worked on political fundraisers in years past, so we'd talk about current events, how people we knew in politics were faring, the weather, family news... Sometimes Chad would join us, always in good cheer.

I remember one day we were talking about gay issues. I asked Chad those things a person might typically ask like "How and when did you know? "Are gay men any kind of threat to young boys?" "Should gay people marry?" He said I could ask him anything. But what I remember most, was the saddness in his voice when he told me he was lonely.

I said I didn't understand that because I knew he lived with a man named Jacob and they were seen everywhere together.

Not everyone knew, he explained, that he and Jacob were not lovers, but were friends.

"We're like a couple of old ladies." I remember those words very well, although I wasn't sure what he meant.

I heard through the buzz around town that Chad sold his business to pay IRS liens. I heard he put his beautiful home up for sale and leased it to a family until it could sell. He was renting a room somewhere. Someone said Jacob moved to Oregon.

I don't know who it was that found Chad's body. He was in his Bentley in a closed up garage with the engine still running. He had been drinking a twenty-year-old Bordeaux and listening to opera cds.

There was a big Catholic funeral. The church overflowed and the wake went well past midnight.

Then life went on. Months later, the house is still on the market like so many houses are in this recession, and the catering company is struggling. Some say it's closing it's doors.

I guess it's lost it's touch.