Listing Through Life

El Paso County Fair

Posted on July 20, 2019 by Roger

If you were dropped into the middle of the El Paso County Fair without context, you would not guess that the county was home to a city of 600,000. The fair screams rural in every way. There were eight or nine rides, three games of chance, perhaps twelve food booths, and about 25 vendors. There was a mechanical bull riding attraction, a one-trailer reptile show, a camel ride, and a cheesy magician. A large barn was a quarter filled with 4H competition entries. A small barn displayed three rows of poultry, another had three rows of rabbits. There were two goat barns, perhaps 30 sheep, 15 llamas and alpaca, and maybe 18 cows. And, of course, a demolition derby. I paid $15 for a ticket that gave me entry to the fair and the grandstands.

I chose derby day. I got there at 3:00 when it was sunny and hot, but a storm rolled in slowly and cooled things off without ever delivering enough rain to interrupt anything. I wandered, saw what there was to see, and dined on a corn dog and weak lemonade. I spent perhaps 20 minutes in the auction barn watching people pay surprisingly large amounts for rabbits, turkeys, and goats. Still, two hours was more than sufficient.

The demolition derby began at 6:00. I found a seat in the half-filled grandstands shortly before 5:00. My daughter and son-in-law decided last minute to join me, so I saved them seats. They arrived around 5:30 to discover that the derby was sold out. I encourage them to try to talk their way in. Instead, they happened upon a guy who had decided not to go after all. He sold them his bracelets for $2 more than he’d paid.

The derby, I’m afraid, wasn’t worth the money or the wait. The cars drove around in a football-field-size area and ran into each other until only one was running. There were four rounds. Only three drivers competed in the first round and no more than five competed in any of them. There was a great deal more maneuvering for position than there was crashing. Compared to the derbies I’ve seen at the Walworth County Fair in Wisconsin or especially those I saw years ago at Santa Fe Speedway near Chicago, it was all very tame. But the others had never seen one and had fun, so all was good.

The storm had turned the day prematurely dark. As I drove west toward home, the sun peaked through a crack in the clouds and cast a bright rainbow. It also gave the illusion of driving from night into daytime, which was a bit surreal.

I’m glad I made it to the fair, dinky as it was. It had life — much more than the Colorado State Fair we visited two years ago. And it was fun to get a taste of the other side of El Paso County.

Posted in Amusement Parks and Fairs | Comments Off

This and That

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Roger

This was a day when you could fry an egg on any surface. It was close to 100° in Denver and not much better anywhere east of the mountains. I decided to check off some things on my list that wouldn’t provide a whole day’s worth of entertainment by themselves.

I started at Red Rocks Park where the Barn Owls are nesting again this year. Before going to the cliff where the owls lives, I headed to the cliff where the Peregrine Falcon lives. It took me about four seconds to find it perched high overhead.

At the owl cliff, an American Kestrel was harassing a Prairie Falcon, making this (I believe) my first three-falcon day. The owls were in their hole. I could see the face of one of the adults back in the shadows.

The Barn Owl stood up briefly, and another birder allowed me to look through her scope to see it. I also let a young couple look through my binoculars after they asked me what we were looking at. Their brother-in-law is studying to be an ornithologist, and they were happy to see something cool they could tell him about.

I drove to Superior and arrived at Wayne’s Smoke Shack just after it opened. It was voted by somebody or other to be the best BBQ in Colorado, and I had high hopes. There were a lot of people there, and the place LOOKED like the food ought to be good, but I was disappointed. The brisket had no smokey taste — I didn’t even finish it all. The sauce was bland. The peach cobbler was dull. I won’t be back.

I headed further north again, this time to Longmont, to visit the Dougherty Museum. It’s a smallish, privately-owned museum housing a collection of antique cars, farm equipment, and player pianos gathered by a local turkey farmer named Ray Dougherty. Most of the pieces were found locally. A handful of people were walking about for the first half of my stay, but then I had the museum to myself except for the four or five older folks who sat in the lobby to greet people and take their money. The guide book says, “In 1998 the Boulder County Commissioners offered to include the museum among the sites to which tax-workoff participants could be assigned to serve as desk personnel and tour guides.” Which I think is a funny thing to print in a booklet that the “participants” themselves were handing out.

I took photos of most of the cars and so forth, but I’ll try to limit the number I post.

1902 Mobile Steamer — Perhaps the first car ever seen in Boulder County. It was owned by a bank president. The driver would sit in the backseat and steer with that lever. A mirror allowed the driver to see the water level in the boiler.

1915 Stanley Steamer 12-Passenger Mountain Wagon — This car was owned by a geology professor at the University of Wyoming and used to take his students on field trips. The professor tried to take it to California, but the car broke down in Laramie and was left at a gas station. The prof never returned for his car.

1930 Chevrolet 1½ Ton Truck

1928 American La France Pumper — Purchased in 1928 by the city of Longmont for $12,000 and used until 1955. It “went” to 1,697 fires.

I was mostly impressed by the size of these two tractors, which is why I put myself in the photo. The guide book gives very little information. The one next to me is a 1918 Aultman and Taylor Steam Traction and the one behind it is a 1916 Aultman and Taylor.

1913 Case 12-25 hp — My chief thought when looking at the old farm equipment is that there were a lot of ways to get seriously mangled in the old days.

Case 32-51 Grain Threshing Machine or Separator

1915 Threshing Cook Car — Used by a local farmer to prepare food for his threshing crews. Usually threshing took about a month each year. There’s a wood stove, cabinets for cookware, and bins for apples, potatoes, and ice. The average crew had 20 members.

Mitchell Heavy Duty Farm Wagon with Grain Box — Used to haul grain from the field to the threshing machine.

1867 Concord Overland Coach — Six-horse coach built in New Hampshire and purchased by Wells Fargo. This particular coach ran between Denver and Central City and later between Breckenridge and Fairplay. It was last used in 1910, after which it sat outside at an amusement park for years. It’s been heavily restored.

1908 Rural Mail Carrier One Horse Cart — Used on a mail route northeast of Longmont. There’s a leather seat inside for the mailman. The windows can be rolled or slid open.

From Longmont, I drove into Denver to Mile High Comics, which bills itself as the largest comic book store in the world. About two-thirds of it is storage accessible only by employees. I wandered for about an hour in the mood to buy, but I guess my comic book days are officially over because I saw nothing I wanted for a price I was willing to pay. There were books, clothing, figurines … The inventory wasn’t very well cared for, and many of the shelves were filled with a random mess. I did get a selfie with Sully, so the visit wasn’t a complete loss.

I stopped a couple miles away at Enstrom Candies, known for their toffee — which was indeed very tasty.

Posted in Birds, Food, Museums, Pop Culture, Transportation | Comments Off

Rocky Mountain Vibes vs. Billings Mustangs

Posted on July 10, 2019 by Roger

The AAA Colorado Springs Sky Sox have taken off for greener pastures, or at least for pastures where it doesn’t storm every evening and the ball doesn’t travel ridiculously far. In their place, Colorado Springs is now home to a short-season Rookie-Advanced team, just a half-click above the absolute bottom level of pro ball.

The new team is called the Rocky Mountain Vibes. In the program, the name is explained like this:

In June of 2018, a “Name Your Team” contest was issued to residents of Colorado Springs to engage the community with the rebranding process. the team received over 2000 name suggestions, indicating the excitement about the new team!

In July, we announced the five finalists and allowed our fans and our community to vote on a potential name for the next chapter of baseball. The goal was to represent the different elements of colorful, warm Colorado Springs, but the five remaining finalists didn’t quite seem to fit. So, the search for a new name and brand continued.

President and General Manager Christ Phillips sought a name to represent the region on a greater scale, one that checked all of the boxes. Phillips was intrigued by the “Happy Campers” finalist choice. He often wondered what made the Rocky Mountains such an enjoyable place to experience and live in. Was it the scenery? The weather? The vibe? Therein lies the answer and our eventual name of the team. The Rocky Mountain Vibes. It is an emotion that encapsulates all of Colorado’s beauty and the feeling of enjoying our community and the outdoors, whether it’s hiking a trail or sitting by a campfire.

In other words, who cares about the fans. We’ll just go with some stupid name and logo we came up with ourselves. I suspect “Rocky Mountain Oysters” won the contest, and the team just couldn’t handle that. Along the way, the name of the park changed from Security Service Field to uchealth Park — which any normal person would pronounce as “yooch elth.”

There is certainly more team branding around the park than there was when the Sky Sox played there.

I didn’t buy my tickets ahead of time, but there was no need. I got a seat in the third row behind home plate. It was only $3 more than the seats on the incredibly uncomfortable ridged benches that fill the rest of the park.

Most of the players will never make it to the Majors, but their talent is far above that of the average fan. I found myself rooting for whichever team was at bat. Both teams scored two in the early innings, but then things got flat for a while.

Billings scored three runs in the seventh and again in the ninth to take a big lead. The Vibes scored three in the bottom of the ninth and loaded the bases to bring the winning run to the plate, but the next batter lifted a lazy fly to center and the game was over.

For the last half inning, I moved over to the front row next to the Vibes dugout to get a different perspective. I was about three feet away from the Vibes’ on-deck circle.

Posted in Baseball | Comments Off

Over the Rhine at Ivywild School

Posted on July 5, 2019 by Roger

I got wind that Over the Rhine was coming to Denver on the Saturday after the Fourth of July. I went online to buy tickets and discovered they were appearing in Colorado Springs a night earlier. That made things even easier.

The concert was at Ivywild School, an old elementary school that’s been turned into an event center of sorts. Concerts are held in the old gym which seats perhaps 200 people. We arrived early enough to enjoy a couple of decent cheeseburgers in the Principal’s Office in the school. The doors opened an hour before the concert. We weren’t part of the first push to get in, but were still in time to get seats in the third row.

It was a lively concert. Brad Meinerding was with them, as he has been for the prior two times we’ve seen them. There was also a second guy playing keyboard and drums. Many of the people in the crowd were huge fans who had been to prior concerts and knew the songs. Karin and Linford did their usual joking around between songs. It would be hard for the experience to be better than the first time we saw them, but this one was close.

I was taping this next song on my phone when my phone battery died. I grabbed my wife’s phone and taped the end, but there’s a decided gap in the middle.

After the concert, Karin and Linford came back into the room to greet people, sign albums, and get their pictures taken. I bought their latest album, Love & Revelation, and we stood in line to get it signed. We talked with them for a couple minutes and got our picture taken, but it was a bit awkward and not a notable part of the evening. Over the Rhine hadn’t been to Colorado Springs in 20 years (they’ve been touring for 30). Karin said they would like to make it an annual stop. That would be very cool.

Posted in Music, Performances | Comments Off

Cussler Museum

Posted on June 25, 2019 by Roger

Clive Cussler used to write adventure novels about a guy named Dirk Pitt who searched for sunken ships, drove antique cars, attracted women, and solved mysteries. I used to read them, and even enjoy them. But after a while, the novels became so formulaic that I couldn’t tell them apart. When Cussler began letting other people write his books for him, I gave up.

Many of the antique cars Cussler featured in his novels are ones he actually owned. Several of them are on display in a small museum in a warehouse in Arvada. I hadn’t expected to get back from Wyoming until Tuesday night. So here I was with a day off and nothing to do. I drove up late in the morning and spent about an hour wandering about the two rooms of cars. If a car had been featured in a novel, a copy of that novel was on a stand in front of it. The guy who restores and takes care of the cars was there, acting smug.

It probably wasn’t worth a trip through Denver just to see it, but the cars were beautiful and I had nothing better to do.

1958 Buick Series 700 Limited. The sign says it was the longest car in the 50’s, at just under 19 feet.

I’ve always liked boattails. This is a 1929 Duesenberg Torpedo Convertible Coupe.

These three boat tails were my favorites (except for the icky yellow color on the ’36 Auburn). They are (l. to r.) a 1930 Packard Speedster 8 Runabout, a 1932 Auburn V-12 Boattail (my favorite car in the museum), and a 1936 Auburn Speedster.

A back view of the same three cars.

Front view of the 1932 Auburn. The light on the front of the bumper turns with the steering wheel.

1932 Stutz Boattail DV-3 Speedster.

A 1936 Pierce-Arrow V12 Berline with a matching Travelodge Trailer. When Pierce-Arrow sales dropped, the company made a last-ditch effort to survive by building trailers. This one slept four (tightly) and had a tiny bathroom with a toilet. All the inside furnishings were birch. It was a thing of beauty.