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If there had ever been a contest for Most Politically
Incorrect Establishment in Colorado,
the Cattlemen's
Inn in Gunnison would surely have ranked near the top, and
likely at the head of the list. Now it's gone, victim of a
fire last Monday that left only a smoldering brick
shell.
The political incorrectness started with the name. It
wasn't the Diversity Grill or the Veganperson's Salad
Emporium or the Healthy Haven of Low-Calorie Broiled
Skinless Breast of Free-Range Chicken. It was the
Cattlemen's, and the Beef and Barrel restaurant downstairs
certainly lived up to the bovicultural name: brands on the
walls, restrooms labeled Bulls
and Heifers,
a
menu that featured red meat in quantities that just the
aroma could turn your arteries into concrete.
The menu was only the start of the political incorrectness. Given Gunnison's gelid climate, it would have been cruel to send people outdoors to enjoy a cigarette, so the west end of the room was hazy with tobacco smoke. In a time when Colorado has dozens of excellent microbrews, the beer list was short -- as best as I can remember, Killian's Red was about as exotic as it got. There was also a big-screen TV, always tuned to some sports event, but fortunately, the sound was always low.
The restaurant and saloon had many small tables, which you could assemble into one long table when it was time to converse with a crowd, and that happened at every conference I attended in Gunnison: Headwaters, Rural Journalism, Western Water Workshop, Colorado Preservation, to name a few.
The formal events were somewhere on the Western State College campus, but the socializing and the intense conversation and arguments always happened at the Cattlemen's, downtown on Highway 50 next to the Safeway store. Water buffaloes would continue their arguments with environmentalists, deconstructionists would try to convert literalists, Marxists like John Nichols would attack capitalism and conservatives like Linda Chavez would extol it.
The Cattlemen's also had hotel rooms, a dozen of them upstairs. They weren't big or fancy, but they were quite reasonable -- the most I can remember paying was $14 for a night of lodging, and it provided real metal room keys that you could carry in your pocket, instead of those computer-swipe annoyances that are impossible to carry conveniently.
Many of us who attended George Sibley's annual Headwaters Conference would stay there. Not only was it affordable, but there was no risk of improper driving if the trip from saloon to lodging was just two flights of stairs. One year, Kirby and Margo Perschbacher managed to get the $24 honeymoon suite, and of course we all had to see it and marvel at the two rooms, one with a couch and even a TV set.
The other rooms merely held a bed and a chair, although all had private baths (noteworthy for old downtown hotels, because a few years ago, you could get a room at the Palace in Salida for only $6, providing you could handle a bath down the hall).
The rooms did not have those little refrigerators, but we managed anyway when we wanted to continue the conversations after last call downstairs. There was an arcade along the north side, the roof just below the room windows that didn't have screens. Set the beer out there, even in July, and it stayed pleasantly chilled.
These inexpensive rooms offered several benefits to society. As mentioned, they cut down on the number of impaired drivers. And when you're headed home to Salida from Grand Junction or Montrose on a winter night, hoping you're ahead of a predicted pass-closing storm, it's a comfort to know that there's a cheap warm place to hole up. It makes for prudent travel decisions, and fewer people sliding off Monarch Pass.
Although the upstairs rooms had their virtues, and there
was a civilized main-floor restaurant with real tablecloths
and the like, the basement bar and grill really was the
heart of the place, a watering hole for half the Western
Slope and some of us from the other side of the Divide. One
evening, I looked up and saw a Salida woman I knew across
the room. Alas, I loudly bellowed something like Here I
am, in a saloon 65 miles from home, and what do I see? My
children's Sunday School teacher, of all people.
She
may forgive me someday.
At last report, nobody knows how the fire started or if there will be any effort to rebuild the Cattlemen's.
What distinguished the Cattlemen's was something beyond cuisine or architecture -- it offered hospitality. People felt comfortable and welcome, no matter what their politics, or their attitudes about eating meat, or whether they wore Stetsons or Lycra.
Somehow, that seems more important than being smoke-free or cholesterol-conscious, but hospitality doesn't seem to matter much in Colorado these days.
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