Tag: Life Stories

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Public Places, by Betsy

I recently had occasion to kill some time in downtown Denver. Gill and I were meeting family for brunch one Sunday morning. The restaurant was on the 16th St. mall so we took the W line train to Union Station, hopped a mall shuttle and arrived on time, fresh, unstressed, and hassle-free— made possible by our choice of public transportation—no fighting traffic, no searching for a place to park, etc.

After breakfast and visiting, Gill returned home on the W line. The others went their way. I had two hours to wait before attending the 1:00 pm performance of Carmina Burana by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and Chorus at Boettcher Concert Hall.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning so I decided to amble down 16th St. mall and see what I could see.

I was immediately reminded of how I love downtown Denver. I was struck by the numbers of people bustling about on a Sunday morning. Half the stores were closed it seemed. So, what were all these people doing? Going somewhere and most of them in a hurry. Many were sitting in restaurant patios drinking whatever or eating, but mostly just enjoying the environment, the clear blue sky, and warm temperatures.

I immediately realized that the magic about this mall environment is made possible by the fact that there is no automobile traffic. Only and occasional shuttle bus, bicycles, skateboards, and scooters. Even the hand/foot propelled vehicles are not allowed to be ridden on the mall. Everyone is required to be a pedestrian.

There appears pop art at every turn of the head—the buffalo herd near Wazee St.—six or eight life-size buffalo silhouettes standing on the side walk, musicians at almost every block playing guitar on one corner, flute on the next. And then there are the brightly painted upright pianos sparsely scattered throughout the mall waiting to be played by anyone who cares to try.

The center of the mall strip is a cultural center of its own: people playing board games on the stationary checkerboards, permanent concrete fixtures in the center of the mall strip, people reading the Sunday morning paper, people reading a local map, people playing the pianos. I’ve often wondered what they do with those pianos when it rains or worse when it hails which we all noticed it has a tendency to do here.

In spite of its location in the heart of downtown, the mall is amazingly peaceful, at least one gets that sense. The benches and chairs and tables and especially the plantings make it so. The trees, grown to maturity now, are plentiful complemented by the ever-present giant flower pots displaying a splash of color here and there.

I almost ran into a steer on the mall. Beautifully painted light blue with colorful depictions of the Denver skyline, DIA, some trees and mountains representing our beautiful area parks. These words were written clearly on its rump.

“DIA Denver International Airport is the nation’s largest—53 square miles

Denver has the nation’s largest city park system with more than 200 parks within its city limits.

Not to mention the 300 days of sunshine each year.”

No wonder I love this place. Especially in the summer. I love the park-and-ride bicycles standing neatly in a row on their racks waiting for the next rider to jump on. What a great idea. I’m glad to see this grab-a bike-program being used and persisting. If I were in a real hurry, I could pay the fee pull a bike out of its stall jump on and pedal to Botcher, deposit my borrowed vehicle and be in my seat in 10 minutes. But I have plenty of time so I continue with my amble.

Arriving at the DCPA I am struck immediately by the awesome view straight ahead of me—the snow-covered peaks of the Front Range between a bright blue sky behind and the green foot hills in front. All this from a vantage point in the midst of downtown Denver. Takes your breath away. Again, now on the main concourse of the DCPA, I realize that it is the absence of traffic that makes this environment so special—relaxing and hassle free in spite of the numbers of people moving about.

It was time to go into the concert hall and take my seat. Soon I was again transposed momentarily to some other world by the awesome beauty of this powerful piece of music by Carl Orff, Carmina Burana. There is something so special about listening to live music. The performance was inspiring. I felt a wave of pride in MY orchestra, MY chorus, MY concert hall—all mine because we all belong to MY hometown.

I have been to many awesome public places most in this country and some in other countries. On this day, I could easily say that downtown Denver is just about my favorite.

© 6 June 2016

About the Author

Betsy has been active in
the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been
retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major
activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a
volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading,
writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage.
She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren.
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her
life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.
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The Solar System, by Gillian

I don’t think we had a Solar System back in the day. We had the sun, the moon, and the stars, with a few planets thrown in. We had galaxies, I think, and we had The Universe, which we believed to be infinite and now we think not, which is OK with me because I never could completely get my head around that concept anyway. Then we were sure it was ever expanding; now we’re not so sure.

Courtesy of The Bible we had The Heavens and, better still, The Firmament; a word, one among many, that my mother loved. She would roll it lovingly around her tongue and tuck it, for later use, in her cheek. The word occurs several times in the King James Version of The Bible, and my mother, not generally given to biblical quotations, would trot out her favorites while gazing skyward in wonder.

“The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork,” she would expound, giving The Book of Psalms it’s due.

Or, turning her mind to The Book of Daniel, she would sometimes respond to one of my know-it-all moments with a touch of Biblical sarcasm:

“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.”

Fortunately, Mum died before her local church replaced the magical words of the ‘old’ Bible with the soul-less heretical ones of the ‘new’. Had she still been around at that time, I fear she would have exposed her true religious colors and never attended church again.

With our exponentially-increasing knowledge of what we now choose to call the Solar System, the mysteries, the very mysticism, of it, have gone the way of the King James Bible. Oh, yes, knowledge is a wonderful thing, but is does not sit comfortably with mysticism and mystique; nor, come to that, with romance.

Much poetry has been written about the moon and the stars. Frank Sinatra, along with many others, sang romantic ballads extolling their magic.

“Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby, kiss me ..”

I fear even old blue eyes himself could not have created a classic love song out of, “Fly me to the Solar System …”

© October 2016

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Here and There, by Ricky

Well, here I am. Where else would I be, over there? “Over There” reminds me of the WWI hubristic song proclaiming to the Germans and their allies that the Yanks are coming over there to finish the war. Finish it we did, not by force of arms, but by governments, over there, finally succumbing to the horrific and catastrophic amount of death – basically just agreeing to stop the killing and negotiate what turned out to be an unjust peace treaty. The same peace treaty which set the conditions making WWII inevitable to begin over there and dragging us over here into the conflict.

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, California

Well, here I am still in the here and now but wishing I could be back there in an earlier time – a time when I only had juvenile worries and few responsibilities – a time when I lived at The Emerald Bay Resort at Lake Tahoe in 1958. I can close my eyes and suddenly, there I am. I had no playmates there at the resort, but I still had the best time being the deckhand on my step-father’s tour boat, Skipalong. We would take people on an all-day cruise around the lake.

The Skipalong

I listened to the tour spiel my step-father, Paul, gave our passengers and quickly memorized it. I would spend most of my time in the bow “cockpit” talking to any children or adults who wanted to ride there. (The cockpit was the lookout’s station during the time the boat was used as a rum-runner in San Francisco.) I would give adults the tour spiel and talk to the kids about kid stuff.

While living at Emerald Bay that summer of ’58, I saw Jerry Colonna in the restaurant where my mother worked. She was able to meet several Hollywood stars there, because the resort was popular among the rich and famous.

Jerry Colonna

Other than seeing Jerry Colonna, my only other star sighting that I can recall from that period of time and place, I will relate to you. I was there so I am the proverbial eye witness in this case.

My step-father and I just had docked Skipalong along the resort’s pier at the half-way point of our tour so our passengers could have lunch at the restaurant. While securing the bow of the boat to the pier, I looked up and saw a family walking down the bank to the pier. The parents apparently had bought tickets to ride in the Chris Craft speed-boat, Effie Moon, which was also tied up at the pier. I immediately recognized the boy walking with his parents.

Back then and there, I faithfully watched the Mickey Mouse Club on TV. Being a boy, I loved the club’s serial shorts and the child actors within them, forming a wistful attachment to them. Oh be still my pounding heart, for there he was walking towards me, in the flesh, David Stollery III.

David Stollery III (left) & Tim Considine (right)

Of course at that time, I knew him as Marty Markham from Disney’s Spin and Marty famed series. The best thing was that he was telling his parents that he wanted to ride on the “big boat” (my boat). I was hoping he would get to ride. My fervent hope was dashed a moment later when his mother told him, “No” and he began to scream repeatedly, “I want to ride on the big boat!” I was only 10 and David was a short and small 17, but I had already learned by age 3 that yelling at one’s parents demanding to get something was not going to work; at least it never did for me.

David had to ride the Effie Moon that day, but he apparently learned the “don’t yell at your parents” lesson. He grew up to become an automobile designer with GM and Toyota. At Toyota, he designed the second generation A40 series Toyota Celica in 1978. He then continued to design 22 other models for Toyota.

But that was there and then. I am here now, but I would rather be there.

© 4 May 2015

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Clubs, by Phillip Hoyle

For me clubs have always been about responsibility: treasurer, president, secretary, vice-president, committee chair, on and on. I am sure I learned this from the outset when we neighborhood boys formed the Ark Club. But that was play, kind of like Cowboys and Indians or Army but with paperwork. Then adults began to organize us in a moral effort to control kids and their activities: Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, choirs, and youth groups. These clubs attracted me for their activities but not their group pride, personal recognition, or promised advantages. I don’t say this as a matter of criticism but simply as a description of my introverted preference and deep independence. I liked having things to do if they matched my interests, I got along well with peers, and I was respectful to adult leaders. Often I became some kind of leader although I didn’t seek such leadership preferring simply to help and to enjoy. I didn’t care to beat a drum for attention. I could tolerate
responsibility for short periods of time, but mostly I wanted to learn and to experience.

Around age thirty, my career was on the line demanding of me a choice between doing church work and teaching music history. I gave myself six months to figure out which way I’d go. In so doing, I realized I needed to give the church career a better chance. So I attended some religious education events, first, an intense training program organized by the Regional and General levels of the church and second, the meeting of a professional association of religious educators. Over-all the groups did not do much for me, the former seeming too much related to the status quo of congregational life, the latter seeming just a bit too embarrassing to me to make a strong identification. Still at each of these meetings I met some nice people and at each event a couple of very impressive individuals. Furthermore I observed interactions that attracted me, not relationships I wanted but ones that revealed these leaders were as complicated as I was and as bright or brighter. Certainly some of them were living life rather largely (a term I will not address in this story).

I compared these religious educators with the professors I knew, that other professional group I was observing, and found as much or more creativity among the church educators. Plus for me, I realized, I needed the stimulation of working with people of all ages rather than the small age range of undergrads in college. Church offered more freewheeling educational leadership opportunities. I opted for a career in congregations.

Some years later I was recruited to run for president elect in the professional association, a group that still slightly embarrassed me. Beyond the embarrassment I had friends in the group and annual meetings had become an important time away from work and family. I thought over the offer and realized it came with a four to five year sentence: attendance at annual meetings for running for office, serving as president-elect, serving as president, serving as immediate past president whose responsibility it was to oversee the next elections, and my requirement to show up at the following meeting unlike almost every past president I had known in the group. Did I really want to do this? I thought I saw an opportunity to help the organization become less an in-group and more open to the paraprofessional educators most congregations were hiring to organize and oversee their programs. There were fewer and fewer full-time jobs for seminary-trained educators on the horizon. Still the nomination promised mostly a bunch of work.

I did that work and stayed through my sentence. I didn’t regret it and learned so much during the five years, but I also got too close to the bared emotions of people for whom such a position was seen as a great honor that took them on a power trip. Yuck. This work was important—okay—but to take oneself so seriously in its execution seemed hopeless to me, too much like what I observed in some pastors, preachers, and evangelists. Worse than embarrassing!

Clubs: for the most part, I’m not interested. Still today I am leading a program and attend several gatherings of artists, writers, and storytellers. And I go out with a gang of guys for happy hour every Friday night. But the real attraction in these groups is the interesting people I see and the new things I learn as we write, read, tell stories, and make art together.

Denver, © 30 March 2015

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Help, by Gillian

I, like many of us, I suspect, am not very good at asking for help – though perhaps, with me in my fourth week of putting no weight on my broken ankle, Betsy might not find that statement to ring quite true right now!

No, most of us prefer to maintain our independence; I can do it, whether in large things or small. I walk into the kitchen to find Betsy, wielding our three-foot long ‘grabber’, or standing precariously on a step-stool, reaching for an item on the top shelf.

‘Why didn’t you call me? I can reach it,’ I say from my lofty height of a slowly shrinking 5’6”.

‘I know,’ she shrugs, ‘but I can do it.’

Our general reluctance to ask for help seems strange, given the fact that we humans are apparently programmed to offer it. We have an innate need to help our fellow beings. If you don’t believe me, go and buy a five dollar pair of battered old crutches at the thrift shop, keep one knee bent double, and go hop around the store for a while. You will have more offers of assistance than you know what to do with. Frequently, faced with disasters, our urge to help is stronger, apparently, than either the fight or flight response. How often do we witness live scenes on TV where so many people ignore the risk of toppling buildings in order to help those already in trouble.

Our general reluctance to ask for help seems even stranger, given the fact that giving yourself up completely to the power of those who wish to help you, is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. Once Betsy and I had gazed at my still-swelling ankle for long enough and come to the reluctant conclusion that Urgent Care was the only option, and I had hopped on our old crutches to the car, I let go of all pretense of self-determination. I relaxed completely. I sat contentedly in the car as she parked and then went off in search of a wheelchair from the Kaiser lobby, returned with it and assisted me in. By this time I had reached an almost rag-doll stage of relaxation. Nothing complicated remained to do. Just follow orders: sign here, wait there, sit here, put you leg up here, place your foot there. Just relax, they kept saying, and effortlessly I complied. I was carried away on a comforting cloud of caring. The only decision I was called upon to make was the color of my cast.

After almost five weeks of Betsy would you just …… and Betsy can you fetch …. I suppose my faithful caregiver has had enough. More than enough. That basic human need to offer help and support to others can run pretty thin pretty fast. She denies this, however, and says she is not in any way tired of being my helper. She’d better be careful with statements like that, as I find I could happily float along on my comforting cloud of care indefinitely. But something tells me I had better be over it before the snow hits the ski slopes – and My Beautiful Betsy with it!

© September 2016

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Smoking, by Will Stanton

James died of lung cancer. They took out part of his lung. Then, it spread to his brain, and they had to operate on his brain. It spread more throughout his remaining lungs. He suffered for six years. I cared for him. He struggled hard the whole time. I understand that he struggled so hard because he did not want to leave me alone. He felt leaving was a betrayal. He said so as he lay dying.

When he was very young, a long time ago, his father (who always addressed James by his middle name) warned him, “Howard, never take up smoking.” His father was a terribly poor Georgian and did not know how to read; but, in his own way, he was very wise. And, this was long before the tobacco companies finally were forced to admit that smoking kills. Sociopaths as they were, those tobacco-men made billions of dollars over many years, selling an addictive poison. And, poor James fell for it. After all, everyone in the movies was smoking. Everyone smoked on the streets, in the shops, and in the work-places where James went.

Later in San Antonio, James was eagerly accepted into the classy social crowd, which is not surprising. James was exceedingly handsome, intelligent, and charismatic. Everybody wanted James to come to their parties. Of course, there always was lots of booze, and it was regarded as the smart thing to smoke. Everyone else was, so James started smoking, too. With so much influence from all his good friends, why would he heed his father’s early warning?

I can’t say that I was much wiser. I never bothered to take up smoking and, as a consequence, did not really know much about it. This was still before the cigarette drug-dealers admitted that smoking could cause cancer.

When I met James, his affect was that of a very educated, elegant gentleman. When he smoked, that was just part of his persona. For him, of course, it was a deep-seated addiction.

So, for his birthday, I gave him a gold Tiffany cigarette lighter and a gold cigarette case. In my ignorance, I became an enabler.

Several years went by, and James developed a chronic cough. He went to see a doctor, who told him, “I don’t like the architecture of your lungs.” I shall never forget those words. James had developed chronic bronchitis and was ordered to stop smoking. Within just a few days, James’ face no longer looked so gray, but the damage was done.

In 1991, James came home from the doctor and told me the news: he had lung cancer. He cried. All I could do then, and for the rest of his life, was to stand by him, to help him in every way I could. Some acquaintances actually asked me, “Why don’t you leave him?” I was shocked. How could I? I took care of him for six years and was with him when he drew his last breath.

Those final days happened already two decades ago; yet, in some ways, it seems like just yesterday. The years have gone by; I have grown older. When I think back, we had some good years together, fourteen out of twenty. But I keep wondering, “What would it have been like to have continued together to this very day in good health?”

© 6 July 2016

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Eavesdrop Follow Up, by Ray S

At lunch the other day I was concentrating on my ham on rye when I couldn’t avoid overhearing two men on the adjoining bar stools. Maybe their two-martini lunches encouraged their animated conversation when one exclaimed to the other, “But I don’t understand, how after all these years she could do that to Harry? What about the business? What about the children?”

His friend responded, “She’s been that way all her life—so they say.” I wonder who ‘they’ were and why Harry didn’t have a clue.

“Guess not, be damned if the two of them aren’t friendly with each other, all three of them, that is.”

The next response was something like: “Look, you ought to know. You’re married. Women are so flighty and unpredictable, like lovey dovey and then ‘Not tonight, I’ve got a headache,’ or ‘We did it last Wednesday.’”

I’ve got experience, what with a wife and two daughters. I can’t figure them out. So I just grin and bear it. The other guy followed with something like, “I’d throw the bitch out—after marriage counseling. Ha!”

By this time the ham on rye was finished and so was I. I felt like an intruder, unwanted guest, and personally imposed upon by their noise. I picked up my check and headed for the cashier, and back to the office. Somehow the experience at lunch hung over my thoughts all afternoon—so much so that that evening I called a longtime friend who is a counselor at the GLBT Center here in town. She and her partner were the first lesbians I ever met and a real eye opening pleasure for a straight man.

We talked for quite awhile. The over-heard story at lunch time made me wonder too about their question—idle curiosity I guess, because when I met Nel and Liz I simply accepted them as another new couple of acquaintances to add to my list of good friends.

Nel was quite open in her reply—after she regained her composure from smiling knowingly and a controlled laugh. “Jim,” she replied, “It isn’t that complicated, just a lifetime of misguided, badly twisted, confusing thoughts about who you really are. And that condition isn’t exclusively homosexual information. From our previous talks about you and Doris, it is something that comes early or sometimes late in life. It’s the relationship between two people who have discovered how much they mean to each other, not how much they need each other. Being needy isn’t being in love, so perhaps the woman who was the subject of your accidental eavesdropping had that epiphany and started to live honestly and authentically with her new wife.”

“Nel, I thank you from the bottom of my heart and with that same heart wish that your thoughts could penetrate the alcohol hanging over those two guys’ heads. And maybe filter through to their unfortunate wives.”

Next time I’ll pass on lunch at the bar. Think I’ll take Doris to lunch. The company will be superior, and I’ll be with my most-loved one.

© 18 July 2016

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Setting Up House, by Pat Gourley

Having moved many times in my adult life and once while still living at home with my parents I am quite familiar with setting up house. The first move in my teenage years was when my family left Northern Indiana and relocated to NE Illinois in 1965, I was 16 years old at the time. This was as it turned out a great change getting me out of rural Indiana. Unfortunately, Mike Pence is really not an anomaly back there, and into a new home and school. At Marion Central Catholic High School, I was taught by a great radical Holy Cross nun who to this day influences my world view. Oh, and there was the older gentleman I met in my new surroundings who became my first queer love.

Though I have been very fortunate for never having to “set up house” after any sort of natural or manmade disaster I think this move as a teenager really set a tone for me later in life making frequent moves much easier. All but one of my moves since age 18 has involved setting up home with other folks and a wide variety of individuals at that. Two moves in the last 50 years, totally 28 years, have involved setting up shop with a male lover. Having a loving companion in your life with whom you decide to share living space with is always a bit different than moving in with people who are just roommates.

My most recent move, now a little over three years ago, is unique in my adult life in that it has involved no one else – not a lover or any roommates. I really do yearn for more companionship in my day-to-day living situation and would prefer this be somebody or somebodies on site. A lover at this time is fraught with hurtles and unlikely to happen. My HIV status complicates this certainly but really the big issue is finding someone who could stand to share a bed with me. I get up to pee at night an inordinate number of times and my propensity to fart in bed occurs often enough each night to be a contribution to global warming, a form of methane one step from being weaponized: the one and really only drawback to a largely plant-based diet.

Even my cat has had to adjust to these frequent nightly wind emissions. He will only sleep spooning my belly even though it is just as cozy in the crook of my leg. The leg position however puts him directly in the line of fire and is avoided it seems at all costs.

So, if I am to avoid one of my greatest fears of aging, living out my last years alone, it will need to be with roommates and individual bedrooms. I have many years of experience living communally and do hope that these last few years of going it alone have not made me into such a fussy old queen that sharing living space is now out of the question.

Though I have certainly learned to never say never I find the prospect of any sort of assisted living very unsettling and something I hope to avoid at all costs. Let’s be honest “assisted living” has become the politically correct euphemism for nursing home. Oh, sure a few assisted living situations come with a supported modicum of independence but these often involve significant financial resources. Ending up in such a place is something I personally dread more than dying alone and being eaten by my cat before someone finds my body. I am therefore in support of ballot initiative 106, the medical aid in dying proposal on the November 2016 ballot here in Colorado. [It passed.]

I have, I think, walked a fine line in this writing group acknowledging the reality of my HIV status while trying to avoid weaving it into everything I have to say. It is far from everything I have to say and I feel stating it too often can really be disingenuous to say the least. Having said that my options for finding like-minded individuals these days to set up house with has been severely limited by the many individuals l have lost out of my life from AIDS. I would therefore find it a bit cathartic to have us write some time about taking down a house after the death of a lover, parent perhaps or simply a roommate. This would I think be something most if not all of us could write about.

© 11 September 2016

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Pack Rats, by Louis Brown

The Disappearance of a Museum

You could say my parents were a kind of pack rats. They inherited a large volume of furnishings, oil paintings, gowns, chinaware, crystal ware, jewelry, silverware and a large volume of 19th century photographs. My mother tried desperately to sort the photos out and put them in chronological order. Since there was just too much, she finally gave up.

The photos depicted the members of two prominent puritanical families, the Browns and the Wilcox’s. Actually they were Presbyterians. Prudence Aldrich’s portrait was particularly intriguing. She looked particularly dour. My grandmother told me that she looked “dour” and “bitter” because she had had lost three children in childbirth, i.e. 3 miscarriages, 3 still births. So despite her otherwise comfortable circumstances, she was not a happy person. Prudence was born toward the end of the 18th century and lived to be ninety years old. Prudence’s husband was the right reverend James Bishop Wilcox who founded the Middlebury Presbyterian Seminary in Middlebury, Vermont.

My parents were poor, my grandparents were poor, but my great grandfather was a millionaire. His name was Captain Francis Leicester Brown who served in the Unin Army in the Civil War. Mark Hanna of the Republican Party of post-Civil War USA offered my great grandfather an opportunity to become a U. S. presidential candidate. My great grandfather turned him down. Francis Leicester tended to give his money to the Union soldier veterans in his regiment, to set them up in business or just to pay bills. By the time he died there was not much left to leave his son, my grandfather, Arthur August Brown.

I remember that, among the Chinaware, there were several sets of Limoges demi-tasse cups that were truly magnificent works of art. And the Wedgwood blue chocolate pitcher and the Wedgwood green cream pitcher with the dryads dancing on the outside. And the dazzling sterling silverware. And then the jewelry. During the last 4 years of my father’s life, DeWitt Brown became senile and suspicious. He let perfect strangers run around our house. I could not live home all the time. My father never listened to me. I told my brothers in California about my father’s self-destructive behaviors, but they did not believe me.

Included in the vast pile of papers were signed letters from President Abraham Lincoln. Another letter signed Aaron Burr (my great great great great uncle). Another letter was written by Horace Greeley that he had sent to Karl Marx. How it got back into the Brown papers I do not know.

Another antique was a sampler stitched by my great great great great grandmother, Hannah Hopkins Hodge, Prudence Aldrich’s mother. She spelled out a fifteen line religious poem, then the alphabet in capital then small letters. She finished the sampler on her 13th birthday, May 10th, 1819, according to the sampler. So the sampler was not only dated, it gave the birthday of the young girl who completed it. An appraiser saw the sampler and said it was worth a small fortune and belonged in a museum.

By the time my father died, all this stuff had disappeared. I could have opened a Victorian museum with the Victorian furnishings and documents I had. And then, if my father’s visitors were out to exploit him, how could any of them been educated enough to understand the actual value of these documents and antiques?

Francis Leicester Brown’s father was Hiram Brown who was a multi-millionaire due to the success of the Shortsville Drill Company, a precursor of what later became the International Harvester Company. He was also founder of the Owosso Manufacturing Company, in Owosso, Michigan. He founded another profitable company in Chanute, Kansas. But he continued to live in Shortsville, NY. Hiram’s father was Charles Brown, a poor farmer.

Pack rats are usually very poor and accumulate piles of junk to symbolize imaginary wealth. My parents do not quite fit that definition, but we did sort of live in a past of affluence and social status. Also did you know there is a category of elder abuse called “exploitation of the elderly.” It should be taken seriously although my brothers did not take me seriously.

© 20 October 2016

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Strange Vibrations, by Gillian

I was driving north on Wadsworth, probably somewhere about 80th street. It was April 10th 1967. I was working swing shift at IBM’s new facility located between Boulder and Longmont. I lived in Lakewood on 32nd street so it was a long commute, but I enjoyed the drive through what was mostly, at that time, still peaceful farming country. Suddenly my car fell victim to some very strange vibrations. It shook. It bounced. The steering wheel wrenched free of my grip. Shit, I thought, I must have a flat. Now I would be late for work. I regained control of the wheel, breaking hard, and pulled the car off onto the shoulder where I came to a stop and turned off the engine. Strangely, the car still seemed to be shaking. Or maybe it was I who was shaking. I stepped out onto the road, immediately loosing my footing and almost falling. What was the matter with me?

With one hand on the car, I gingerly walked around it, still feeling very wobbly on my feet. No flat tire. At the same time, I was gradually realizing that I was not alone in pulling over. Other vehicles, both ahead of and behind me, had also stopped. Other drivers were standing beside their cars looking confused and puzzled. Then I saw it was the same story across the street; southbound traffic had also come to a standstill.

An older man and woman leaned warily against a pick-up a few feet from me. They peered questioningly at me, he from under a big, battered, cowboy hat.

‘What in Hell was that?’ he asked, querulously.

I shrugged, helpless.

‘I never felt nothin’ like that before,’ offered a young man sitting coiled astride his motorcycle as if ready to spring off at the first signs of any further misbehavior.

‘I’d guess it had to be an earthquake,’ offered a woman, pointing meaningfully to the California license plate on her bumper. I have experience with such things, she implied.

We all digested that in silence, pondering, but we don’t have those here, do we?

Slowly, we all returned to our vehicles and went unsurely on our way.

In August of that same year, I was once more heading north on Wadsworth, this time in the half-light of early morning as I was by then working the day shift. Suddenly my car fell victim to some very strange vibrations. It shook. It bounced. The steering wheel wrenched free of my grip.

Shit, I thought, I must have a flat. But just as quickly followed another thought. Oh no you don’t, you don’t fool me twice like that – fool me once, etcetera – this is another bloody earthquake.

As I, and other drivers, hurriedly pulled off the road, I could see myself as that California woman: experienced, blasé. But I rather fell down on sophistication by checking out the tires anyway, immediately I was out of the car. No flat. I was too slow off the mark, anyhow, to impress anybody.

‘Another goddamn earthquake,’ grumbled a voice.

‘Guess so,’ agreed another.

With world-weary shrugs we drove off.

The quake of April 10th was determined to be a magnitude 5.0. The second one I experienced later that year, the strongest ever felt in Denver, was 5.3. These two were the strongest of a whole series of relatively minor quakes over several years; The Colorado School of Mines recorded more than 300 earthquakes here in 1967 alone. This unexpected surge in earthquake activity was determined by the USGS to have been induced by pumping waste fluids into a deep disposal well at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, and as a result this practice was discontinued.

Those were, indeed, strange vibrations. Mercifully they remained relatively small and no major damage resulted. But the population of the entire Denver Metro area at that time was at most 800,000. Now it is three million. If the current crowded high-speed highways shook now as they did then, it is hard to imagine there would not be many multi-car pileups.

Alas, however, we don’t seem to have learned a thing from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal saga.

Fracking results in the same kind of fluid injection deep below the surface, many areas involved in fracking operations are suffering incredibly large numbers of small quakes and yet we refuse to accept any possible cause and effect here. Oklahoma, as if that poor state didn’t suffer enough from tornadoes, is a case in point. In 2009 there were 20 earthquakes recorded in Oklahoma measuring 3.0 and above. Since then, as fracking continues, the number has risen steadily to a count of 890 in 2015. As William Yardley, a reporter for the LA Times put it* –

‘Yet even as many anxious Oklahomans now track seismic data on their smartphones and struggle to sleep through the long, rumbling nights, there has been one notable location where people rarely seemed rattled. That is here, in the state capital, where the oil industry holds so much sway that for decades drill rigs have extracted crude from directly beneath the Capitol building.’

[To view the statistics, go to http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-sej-oklahoma-quakes-fracking-20160302-story.html ]

The famed Erin Brockovich is now deeply involved, and the Sierra Club is suing energy companies involved in fracking, but legal wheels grind slowly and many fear that it will all be too little too late. These numerous small quakes, especially in areas where there are already large faults, may lead to ever larger ones and eventually to a seriously damaging quake. Well, duh! I’m not a geologist, but that seems pretty elementary to me, even if we don’t have statistics to prove it.

My sincerest hope is that the legislators, if not the energy companies themselves, will pay attention to the abundant messages being sent by these countless strange vibrations, before we end up with very big vibrations which no-one will be able to ignore. The Beach Boys once sang heartily and happily about good vibrations and excitations. Alas, I fear nobody will sing, or be happy, about these vibrations; and the excitations are liable to be much too exciting.

© May 2016

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.