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Several years ago, some academics on the nether side of
the Mason-Dixon line issued an Encyclopedia of Southern
Culture
with everything from Moon pies to Delta
blues.
At the time, I hoped our own professors might find that
an inspiration for an Encyclopedia of Western
Culture,
so that our traditional ways might be recorded
before America is totally homogenized.
Our universities cared more about football than regional culture. One sad result is that last week, a high-powered consultant discovered Denver's latest problem.
According to Bill Siegel, Denver is an original
Western town that seems to be walking away from its
heritage.
He said it would draw more free-spending
tourists if it quit trying to be generic white-bread
Everycity USA, and began promoting historic architecture,
local cuisine, the National Western Stock Show, the Museum
of Western Art and Red Rocks.
In other words, nobody goes to Santa Fe to eat at McDonald's and shop at Wal-Mart.
Since Hispanic and Indian are already taken by Santa Fe, Denver will have to find another ethnic group prominent in the history of the American West -- the little-studied Migratory White Trash Culture, whence emerged most of the miners, teamsters, trappers, soldiers and cowboys so vital to the development of the West as we know it.
The Queen City of the Plains could turn to Nucla for
cultural advice. Two organizers of last summer's Top Dog
World Championship Prairie Dog Shoot plan to publish
Vigilance,
a nation-wide newsletter offering
Western points of view
on mining, logging and
hunting.
They may have trouble filling more than one edition with the traditional Western point of view -- it all fits in one paragraph.
Mining: file a claim on government land, and shoot the first two-bit ribbon clerk that interferes with your divine right to dynamite the mountains. Logging: get the government to build the road so you can get the timber to the mill that belches formaldehyde, the smell of prosperity. Hunting: if it moves, shoot it.
Denver already reflects this rich legacy. Cowboys never
walked when they could ride, and real Denverites never walk
when they can get behind a wheel and add to congestion and
pollution. Miners never cared what they ripped up in the
name of profit, and neither did the Grand Prix organizers.
Empty skyscrapers and foreclosed houses are a result of the
traditional Western boom and bust
cycle, as well as
the pioneer attitude that when times get bad, we'll just
move on.
Denver spent decades trying to shed its cowtown
image,
only to be told that it now needs its Original
Western Heritage. Good thing there's so much of it,
right?
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