The Denver Spectator/First Impressions
Shiflett, Dave
THE DENVER SPECTATOR FIRST IMPRESSIONS D enver is a great place if you're a dog. They haven't got many fleas here, and heartworm's unheard of. But it goes beyond that. Denver makes a dog feel at...
...Within the last couple of months there have been over 200 bear sightings, and up north a bit a kid was pulled off his bike by a mountain lion...
...I tell the fisherman that in Washington, not only are there rails on the bridges, there are suicide fences as well...
...Well I don't know," said the woman to my right, whose fork lay reverently beside her plate...
...Denver makes a dog feel at home...
...On other days you can sun yourself on the patio while watching thunderheads fire broadsides into the earth thirty miles away...
...First you need to bring in tractors to bust up the clay...
...He gives chase but they run away from him as if he were standing still...
...Also untrue...
...On a hunch, I asked the Holiday Inn receptionist if they took dogs...
...Not an eye rolled as this information was imparted...
...Then comes the bill: for us, around $5,000, not including a fence, which will cost $1,500 more...
...This is the Capitol Hill version of the request to share the Grey Poupon...
...After talking with several of the female officials (some of whom bore facial moles their vainglorious sisters in Washington would not have tolerated), I sat down and chatted amiably with my table mates...
...If you rise early enough, you might see a coyote in the field out back, or a mule deer...
...women, weather, and women...
...At sunset, clouds over the mountains turn bright gold, while across on the other horizon the sky turns bright red...
...Hell, I know all about your Eastern mountains," he says...
...On my first day of work, for instance, I attended a press luncheon hosted by the University of Colorado...
...T he Welcome Wagon lady came a 1. couple of weeks after the furniture arrived, leaving behind several helpful publications and some knickknacks, including a key ring from Drinkwine's Mortuary...
...C apitol Hill in Denver is what they call a transitional neighborhood...
...As we turn to leave, he calls "Wait a minute," then leans out the window and gives Shot a milkbone...
...Then come the Mexican sod rollers...
...As Shot and I strolled around the hill many residents stopped to pet the old boy, often engaging him in conversation, but not of the type that passes twixt a matron and her poodle...
...Here is a brilliant soul trapped in a coffin, and he seems to want out bad...
...Poor old Shot had shed most of his fur back East and stood shaking in the cold West wind while I called for lodging from a payphone...
...Taking in these modern processions is the occasional Indian, the occasional one of which is so drunk he redefines the word...
...On a Sunday afternoon, when a six-pack of Foster's would go well with the Broncos game, Shot and I walk to the drive-through window at Scooter's Liquors, where the cashier completes the transaction with a friendly request to come back...
...And unlike those smaller mountains, many of the roads winding up the Rockies are short on guardrails...
...There was also some uniformity in the peroration, which seemed to follow this model: "Pooch, you think your master might be able to spare old Rick a buck...
...After salad was served all around, I dug in...
...Next comes the by Dave Shiflett sprinkler system, for this is a semi-arid region...
...Denver's a nice place for people too, although it isn't all that's advertised in the East...
...But there is something different: he staggers, he falls, he lurches in front of cars, but when he turns, you see a sky-deep gaze, a flash in the eyes of a corpse...
...Out here," he says, "if you want to drive off the mountain, we consider that your business...
...We all had a laugh, then it was explained that public lunches often begin with a prayer...
...This isn't to say that everyone in Denver is so civilized...
...The bones are free at the local supermarket and the butcher leaves on plenty of meat...
...The third place, a Days Inn, also took dogs and was fifteen dollars cheaper per night...
...Having just talked to the yardman, I might be heading over there soon...
...Then you dump in a lot of sheep and cow manure, plus peat...
...I asked forgiveness for rushing into things, explaining that I had just arrived from Washington, where the only time we say grace is April 15, in anticipation of the incoming tax receipts...
...I guess we aren't going to say grace," said a woman sitting across from me...
...Delighted, we got back in the rental car, which by now bore an eight-dollar parking ticket...
...Which isn't to say that it's all take and no give...
...Just beyond the foothills, a mind used to focusing on continuing resolutions and other bits of life's small print is confronted by 14,000-foot peaks and a blazing blue sky...
...Most of the time, however, Shot prefers lying in the dirt chewing on a bone while the rest of us gawk at the great immensity, like the Kettles in Manhattan...
...Back home, we watch the sun set behind the foothills...
...Our motor inn sat near a block-long strip of sex shops, numerous liquor stores (one with a drive-through window), and a nightclub featuring music by an ensemble called the Butthole Surfers, a popular local group...
...During another lunch, this one on the 16th Street Mall,the wife and I were surprised to see six or eight young adults disembark from a pickup and begin an odd procession among the pedestrians...
...When we left Washington—I in economy, Shot in cargo—it was 80 degrees...
...You also see people, like the man trout fishing at 8,000 feet...
...Of course," she said...
...when we landed three and a half hours later, it was snowing...
...Up on Capitol Hill (one of the steps leading into the capitol building rests 5,280 feet above sea level) the chief subjects are Dave Shiflett is deputy editorial page editor at the Rocky Mountain News and The American Spectator's first Rocky Mountain editor...
...I tell you, the only way we'll ever get this dog to leave this place is to shoot him...
...We found a black widow in the family room, and it's nothing for Shot to kick up a big jackrabbit in the field behind the house...
...He did not survive...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 55...
...The mind stretches and the head spins...
...Law and order is not an abstraction here in the West...
...There's a knifing now and then and one young man was arrested in my hotel for doing a striptease before an appreciative audience of vice-squad officers, who repaid the favor by booking him on a male prostitution charge...
...A comparison shopper, I called another hotel, which didn't...
...But it's beautiful down near the foothills...
...The problem is that the soil has a heavy clay content and you have to work at getting grass to grow...
...We've got dump piles bigger than them...
...The usual method, at least in the area where we live, is to lay sod...
...Knowledgeable Washington sources insisted my allergy problems would end once I hit the Mile High City, which has not been the case...
...I moved here near the middle of September, flying out with Shot Sharkrifle—a lowborn English setter—while the rest of the family put our Virginia affairs in order...
...Others said it was pretty much like an Eastern city in habits and manners...
...The youngest boy took it all in one evening and announced that in Colorado there are two suns...
...Dressed in loincloths and smeared top to toe with mud, they banged on drums, blew whistles, and chanted while one of the company swung a piece of hose around his head...
...As you can see, this isn't the boondocks...
Vol. 22 • December 1989 • No. 12
