Speaking Frankly I have known Frank now for every bit of thirty years. We met by virtue of being next door to each other in condos in a small twelve-unit place called Ontario Lodge on the northern side of the main Deer Valley Mountain, looking down onto Guardsman’s Pass and the old silver mine that was the raison d’et for Park City’s existence. As was emblematic of the two of us, Frank had been there…
In the Half-Light There is a favorite line at the end of Norman Maclean’s A River Runs. Through It where Robert Redford as the narrator talks of the aging of the protagonist, Norman. He references him as a fly fisherman who is too old to fish the big waters of the rivers around Missoula. Montana, but does so anyway. He does it in the half-light of the canyon. Half-light is a wondrous term that implies…
West of Winnemucca The ride down Rt. 80 from Snyderville to Salt Lake City is always fun. It’s a regular roller coaster that drops 2,000 vertical feet. During the fifteen years I owned a place in Park City, I’m guessing I made that ride over 500 times. It’s a big wide highway that makes you want to go fast, but if you know the road like I do, you know that some prudence is suggested…
Without a Clue This process of exiting Ithaca is proving to be even more drawn out than I had previously imagined. I keep saying to myself that I have written my last story about closing down my 26-year home here and moving on, but something always seems to draw me back in. I sincerely hope this is the last of these stories, but I cannot promise that for certain. I have shipped seventeen boxes of…
Back at the Slopes Today was a relatively short driving day from Jackson to Park City. Kim and I got up at our normal roadtrip time of O’Dark Thirty. I did what I always do, which is write a story while staring up at the Grand Tetons. I had been instructed about how to get my own cereal, which I did, and once 8am rolled around, Kim and I decided that it might be best…
Being at Altitude Having owned a home in Park City, Utah for over fifteen years, I made it a point to get a familiar with the impact of altitude on the human body. I actually owned five different homes in Park CIty over those years for various and sundry reasons and they all ranged from being from 6,500 to 8,500 feet in altitude. That is the price of having a western ski house on the…
Crazy Is As Crazy Does Today was spent driving from the middle of Minnesota, from the little town of Austin, which I picked randomly when planning this trip. As I was checking out of the Holiday Inn I noticed a display case in the lobby. It was filled with every manner of promotional item for Spam one could think of. It seems that Austin is the home of that favorite pink canned meat we all…
The Shot Heard Round the World This title is intended to harken us back to our pre-Revolutionary days in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts when the very first militia of American patriots engaged British troops in 1775 and exchanged a volley of musket balls with the red-suited “lobsters” of England and thereby marked the start of the Revolutionary War. There are plenty of conservatives in the country who like to think that their actions on January…
Let the Sun Shine In The day is getting off to a slow start ramping up to its anticipated mid-80s temperatures, but the sun is breaking through as the morning crests its half-way point. It’s a Saturday so the traffic patterns are not following the normal Cornell commutation cycle with cars and trucks heading down Warren Road into Forrest Home in the morning and flowing up and out of Forrest Home in the late afternoon.…
On Wisconsin, On Wisconsin! That is the beginning of the University of Wisconsin fight song. It carries on with “fight on for your fame”. I lived in Wisconsin from 1961 to 1965 and pretty much spent my grade school years at the Spring Harbor Elementary School on the southern shore of Lake Mendota, which, along with Lake Monona, bound the capital city of Madison, where the central University of Wisconsin campus sits. This state took…