The main reason for this road trip was to see important people in our lives. Susan, Laurence, Doug, Becky, Don, Maryanne, Kathy, Tonia, David, Deborah, Marina, Stella, Candice, and Adam. Whew. In our next lives we aren't going to grow so attached to so many people so we can sit around more in airport lounges.
We wanted to see Marina's final high school performance. She's in the middle.
Another part of our trip, one planned by Vicky, was to see the beautiful sights on our trip to Boulder/Fort Collins and back. And we did. The drive wasn't at all difficult. We talked and talked about what we were seeing along the way.
It was a fantastic trip: Our roadtrip to Colorado and back
And then there was her desire to connect me with important pieces of my childhood and adolescence. As is her usual way of showing love to me and her family, she planned it well ahead of time. Spending lots of time. I'm a lucky man.
So, on the way out from Arizona, Vicky found an exit for a place called Echo Lake. It's in Colorado.
And why is this small lake so important to me? A lake I have never seen?
In the 1950s, my parents, along with everyone else, collected S & H Green Stamps. You got them with grocery store purchases, with gasoline purchases, with our orders from the milk man, etc.
Then, you would paste them into small booklets, until the booklets were full.
And go to an S & H store and "cash them in" for small household items.
One time, 1957ish, I remember going to an S & H store in Guthrie, Oklahoma to cash in our Green Stamps. Our entire family went--it was a big deal. We "bought "a large framed photo of Echo Lake. The "frame" was mirrored.
Somehow this photo/picture stayed with me through all of our parents' moves. I have had it for years.....don't even remember when I acquired it. In the 1980s I removed the mirrors from the frame and took the pieces to a glass store. The backing on the mirrors had rubbed off, leaving them black. I re-glued the new pieces, and they are still fine today.
It now hangs in our bedroom in our cabin in Pine--an appropriate place for it.
But I never knew where Echo Lake was. It was not identified as being in Colorado, but Vicky found one there. So we went to it to see if it was the lake in my family's living-room picture.
It is clearly the lake in the picture, although the photo was taken higher on the mountain than the road took us.
There it was. 67 years after I remember "purchasing it" and it hanging on the wall in our living room. Wish my parents could see the real Echo Lake.
Then we got to Boulder to visit the girls, Candice, and Adam.
Candice and Adam were still in California crewing for our friend Tasha who was running a 100 mile race. So the girls and we did a lot of things together. One excursion was to visit a memory from my childhood.
In 1956 my father got a summer job teaching at the University of Colorado. We stayed in a place called Chautauqua park, which had a number of cabins for rent. We spent a lot of time there with Aunt Laura and Uncle Homer Good, and their boys Rick and Randy. Rick was old enough that he stayed with us for part of the summer. He died over 35 years ago from a freak accident. So wrong. I miss him. He and Randy were good cousins.
There was a movie theater at Chautauqua Park where we saw movies every week, including Somebody Up There Likes Me, Carousel, The Last Wagon, and a film that is important to Vicky and me: Brigadoon.
Here we are in front of our cabin in 1956. Looks just like it did 67 years ago, just like I do.
Kathy in front of the cabin (picture quality degraded because it came from an old 8mm film)
Kind of interesting in that with so many places that were important to me (my childhood homes, churches, schools, etc.) looking so bad or completely gone that this one looks as good as it did in 1956.
Then, when we were in Fort Collins, we visited a number of places with Kathy and Tonia that were important to my adolescence and Kathy's adolescence and Tonia's adolescence. It was nice to remember those with both of them because we share so many memories. These memories I am reminiscing about here are also their memories....and now they are Vicky's as well.
When we moved there in 1960, Fort Collins was a sleepy little village of 25,000. Now it has expanded everywhere, reaching a population of 170,000. Needless to say, virtually nothing looks the same. I miss my old village of 25,000.
We started by trying to locate "Ted's Place." It was on the way to Poudre Canyon. It's been gone for many years, replaced by a plaque.
Our family would frequently drive up the Poudre Canyon after church, passing Ted's Place, in the early 60s to eat at the Pine Vu Lodge overlooking the Poudre river.
We found the spot where it used to be. Torn down. Nothing nice replacing it. It only exists now in my and my sister's memories and in our memories of our parents.
Next we drove to Horsetooth Reservoir--a popular place in the early 60s and now. I was hunting for a building that used to be the Heidelburg....basically a bar. We adolescents often went to Horsetooth on Friday and Saturday nights, although not to go to the Heidelburg (which would not let us in--and which I griped about to sound cool but secretly was glad about since I wasn't a drinker).
We had my high school 10th reunion there, in 1976.
It was gone. Just an empty space.
One time, driving to Horsetooth Reservoir, we saw a car upside down on the road. We learned later that one of my friends, Roy, had died in that car crash. Dying at age 16 or 17? Nobody had seat belts. I could remember the spot. How much of life Roy missed.
Here is the horse "tooth" above the reservoir. See it in the middle of the photo? It's small, but visible.
One time some buddies and I climbed to the top...not knowing what we were doing. Now there are trails there for the sissies who want trails---not like the "real men" we were who blazed their own trails. :)
Here we are. I am second from the right, standing..the good looking one.
Then we drove back to town to see Club Tico. "Tico" was the high school hang-out and dance place on Fridays and Saturdays.
For one summer my band, “The Pryde,” played all of the weekend gigs.
The new sign outside of the building:
An addition has been put on the front, with an elevator and offices.
Here I am inside, at the spot I used to stand when I played in The Pryde.
Here is a photo from 67 years ago of me playing in the band in the middle of College Avenue outside the Grand Hotel. You can see where I am standing (playing the red electric piano and organ). It's where I was standing on the stage in the above photo. I wonder where my band-mates are these days. I'd sure like to know. Hope they still enjoy music as much as I still enjoy music.
We drove around and saw my old home and church.
How it looked in 1960s. Funny how, over time, people make houses darker and darker instead of lighter. They also tend to let trees and shrubs take over.
Our church. The church has structural problems, so has to be torn down soon.
Then we walked over to my old high school, which was sold many years ago to Colorado State University. It is a museum and arts center now. It was built exactly 100 years ago.
Here is the tennis court now, where I earned my letter for playing tennis on our team:
I'm the tall handsome one.
We didn't drive by Steele's Market on this trip. Last time we visited Fort Collins it had been torn down, and all that was left was an empty lot. But of all of the places that were important to me in my childhood (my homes, my schools, my churches) there is only one other building that really mattered to me---Steele's Market. I worked there from when I turned 16 until I left for college.
Here is a photo of Steele's from my High School Yearbook in the advertisement section:
On this trip we drove up and down College Avenue, the main street through what is now called "Old Town." (Thanks, Fort Collins for reminding me that where I used to hang out is now called an "Old" town).
College Avenue was unique, as you can see from this old photo:
There was parking in the center. On Friday and Saturday nights, when we weren't at Club Tico, we would cruise from one end of town to the other, and sometimes stop in the median strip and talk. On either end of College Avenue were A&W Root Beer drive-ins where we would turn around and drive back the other way. Back and forth, back and forth.
As I wrote on the photo: American Graffiti. We were cruising with Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams and Harrison Ford. We were all buddies.
I had two cars (truly). That's why I worked so many hours at Steele's (30 hours during the school year and 40 hours during the summer).
I did a lot of work on my cars, spent a lot of money. I used to "drop the clutch" on my Model A, which automatically made me a cool teenager. This means revving up the engine and then letting clutch completely out all at once. Made a nice screech. And the front would raise up. Now you see why I was so popular.
Well, I threw out the differential doing that. So I had to replace the drive train and rear differential. After I got the old one out and the new one in, I had to put it back under the car. The problem was that there was a large spring that sat on the rear drive train, and this spring had to be stretched from one wheel to the other. This meant that I needed use the weight of the car to do it. So, I jacked it up under the differential. It spread it out some.
But I needed more weight on the vehicle to stretch it more. So my mother and father and sister were brought out to sit in the car. I put my weight set inside.
And I was still just an inch shy.
Fortunately, at just that moment, the mailman walked by. So I asked him if he would stand on the rear bumper. He willingly did so, and it was just enough for me to slide in the tube that held it in place. I hope this was a story he could tell to his children and grandchildren. He's probably only done that once in his life.
Me, working on my Model A.
Our next excursion was to Estes Park.
Estes Park is about an hour's drive from Fort Collins. The drive there involves going up Boulder Canyon. We took that drive so many times in the 50s, 60s, and later.
In the early 60s, my cousins Rick and Randy, my Aunt Laura, and my Uncle Homer moved there, so we visited even more frequently. Around 1962 my parents bought a cabin in Estes, which they had for about 20 years.
Many times during my senior year of high school my father would pick me up from my job at Steele's and we would drive up to Estes Park to work on the cabin. Another in an extremely long series of wonderful memories that I retain. I did more on an individual basis with my father than any kid I ever knew, except I hope this is how my own son and daughter feel about me. I loved that as much as my father loved doing things with me. This is an example.
Here is a photo of the cabin from the 60s:
And how it looks now...another example of how, over time, buildings and homes become darker, not lighter.
I also wanted to see Homer and Laura's home in Estes. Homer built it himself in the early 60s, and I spent a lot of time there with Randy.
After a bit of traveling around, we located it. It's darker now, too, than I remember it or in the photo I have when I saw it several years ago.
Our next stop along memory lane was in Palmer Lake, Colorado, near Colorado Springs, on our way home.
In the early 60s I went to church reunions and church youth camps at a place called Pinecrest. It is now a wedding venue.
Then:
Now:
Then:
Now:
Up the road from Pinecrest was Romoca Lodge. It belonged to our church, and we had some youth camps there. We went searching for it, but could not find it. It is gone. I contacted the historical society, and they had no information about it.
Interestingly, and sort of oddly, I found an old postcard of Romoca Lodge on eBay. This is how I remember it.
Here is a photo of me in the lodge doing some kind of performance.
I have a lifetime of good memories, and this trip planned by Vicky helped me cement them even more into who I am. And good memories of people I loved who are gone now, just as I will be gone someday. I hope to have left my family good memories like the people who came before did for me.
Thanks sweetheart.
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