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Several friends have accused me of selling out and joining the bourgeois, with dire warnings that a seat on the county Republican central committee looms if I don't repent.
This involves a vehicular political statement, but I did not get a Harley. We merely bought an eight-year-old to replace a 34-year-old. The elder car, a 1965 Dodge Dart, went to one of our daughters -- as it should, since it's an heirloom that belonged to my grandmother. Its slant six now purrs for its fourth generation of Quillens.
The new vehicle is a 1991 Chevy S-10 Blazer -- one of those accursed sport-utes that either ravages the landscape when used as directed in the ads, or else doesn't need four-wheel-drive because it never leaves the pavement.
In my defense, I will point out that it already has dings and rattles, along with rust spots and chipping paint. Realtors assure me that, when parked before the house, it will depress neighborhood property values, although perhaps not as well as the Dodge did. Further, it gets better gas mileage -- about 22 mpg while the Dart got 17 going downhill with a tailwind.
As for serious vehicular overkill, the Blazer is nothing compared to what we saw Saturday morning on our way to Montrose.
Waiting to pull onto U.S. 50 from a side road, some hunters were driving a big pickup with dual rear wheels which pulled a long fifth-wheel camping trailer. Attached to a tow bar behind the trailer was a small four-wheel-drive pickup, and in the bed of the little pickup was a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle.
(The late Sen. Barry Goldwater once referred to ATV's as
Japan's revenge for losing World War II,
because
they could tear up the American landscape in retaliation
for what Allied bombing did to Japan.)
It had been my understanding that it was illegal to tow
anything behind the first trailer, but that was just
folklore, so I later called state patrol headquarters in
Denver. You can legally link as many as four units in a
highway train,
I learned, as long as the total
length is less than 70 feet.
In the interest of science (Darwinian selection), I wanted to follow and watch them try to back that rig on a muddy shelf road, or nurse it without jack-knifing around the tighter bends while downbound on Cochetopa Pass or Cerro Summit, but an appointment beckoned.
We were bound for Montrose, not merely to enjoy a splendid fall day, but for commerce (another symptom of creeping Republicanism?) -- I was scheduled to sign books there, in the hope of enhancing a future royalty statement.
But my appearance was like having the local garage band
follow the Rolling Stones, since John Nichols, author of
The Magic Journey
and several other excellent works
about the pathologies of little mountain towns, preceded me
in signing books there that afternoon.
Our two college daughters, along with a friend, met us at the bookstore as my slow hour ended. To practice family values (more Republicanism?) we all went to Ridgway to hear Nichols speak to a convention of the Western Colorado Congress, an umbrella group for troublemakers on the Western Slope.
Nichols is a socialist who tries to live frugally in Taos. He delivered the only interesting and challenging speech I've heard all campaign season, about hard choices, how he has friends fighting to keep water in the streams of northern New Mexico and other friends who need that water for their little farms and thus their livelihood.
Continued growth means there won't be enough to go
around, he said, and yet continued growth is the ideology
of what he called climax capitalism.
Sad to say,
many people laughed when he observed that persons unknown
had addressed some of Colorado's burning issues
at
Vail.
Concerned about allowing my impressionable children to be exposed to this sedition, I felt rather relieved when I ran into a plain old Democrat after the speech.
It was about the fifth time in the past two months that I've seen Reed Kelly, one challenger for the Third Congressional District seat now held by Scott McInnis.
Kelly, a Meeker rancher, pops up all over this huge district. As for our incumbent who now sits on the mighty House Rules Committee, you're more likely to see a UFO.
Reed has energy but no money, and the safest political prediction of 1998 is that he'll get beaten like a gong next week.
But like Nichols and the rest of the WCC audience, including even us decadent Blazer folks, he seems to enjoy the struggle to keep our places somewhat livable in the face of the invasion by the People of Money.
Take your pleasure where you find it -- and you'd better find it in the struggle, because there won't be many triumphs worth celebrating next Wednesday.
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