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Years ago, when we lived in the same town, my father and I used to go out for coffee two or three times a week. When we had gotten tired of complaining about the weather and our respective employers, the conversation would shift to politics. Seldom did we see things the same way.
One major dispute came in 1972. He was all for having Colorado host the 1976 Winter Olympics, while I, of course, was totally opposed. Once the Olympics had been soundly defeated, though, we were able to agree that the issue was settled. No politician would ever again be foolish enough to bring that up again.
Our biggest political disagreement came two years later, when Colorado was selecting a new governor. Dad was for John Vanderhoof, the Republican incumbent who had moved up from lieutenant governor when John Love resigned to try being the American energy czar. I supported Dick Lamm, whom I had seen walking around the state.
After noticing that the 1986 race had already started to heat up, my dad called me a few days ago to issue a belated apology. He told me that I had been right in 1974.
Remember you told me that if I voted for Vanderhoof,
the mountains would get trashed out?
he said. There
would be overpriced plywood hutches in every accessible
valley, and trailer-house slums outside the ski resorts,
and the roads would be lined with gaudy fast-food
franchises? Fish wouldn't be able to live in some mountain
rivers, because of toxic pollution from mine
wastes?
Feeling smug, I murmured an assent.
He went on. And you said that the Republicans would
run the state government and they would keep taxes so low
that our schools and colleges wouldn't have enough money,
and the highways would fall apart.
Again I agreed.
Besides that, you said that the Front Range would get
even worse thanks to uncontrolled growth. There'd be strip
development with no open space between cities, so that you
wouldn't be able to tell where Loveland ended and Fort
Collins started. Hundreds of acres of some of the world's
most productive farmland would be subdivided and filled up
with tacky houses. To add to that problem, cities would buy
agricultural water rights. The air pollution would grow
into a murky haze so that on many days you wouldn't be able
to see Long's Peak from Greeley.
His almost word-for-word recall of my impassioned speech a dozen years earlier had me so amazed that I couldn't interrupt him as he continued.
While the Front Range environment deteriorated, that
area would at least have economic growth. The rest of
Colorado, except for a few resorts, would slide deeper and
deeper into poverty if we had a governor who generally
limited his visits to rural areas to election years.
And we'd have a governor who was always shooting off
his mouth. He'd do something as dumb as appoint his own
judges to the state supreme court or something, and then
complain about them. He'd always be making insensitive
remarks that offended huge groups of people. Colorado's
governor would be nationally famous, you said.
I was finally able to break in and agree that yes, I had said all those things.
Well, son,
my father concluded, I've had a
long time to think about that argument we had back in 1974.
I owe you an apology, so I called to tell you that you were
right. You said that if I voted for Vanderhoof, that's what
would happen. Sure enough, I voted for Vanderoof, and
that's what did happen.
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