A Lazy July Day in Alternative, Colorado. Week one living here.

It was just another lazy and hot day in Alternative, Colorado in the middle of July. Even the birds decided to get as far into the trees as possible in order to escape the heat. That sometimes happens in the summer in the mountains. Temperatures reaching into the lower 100s are not uncommon.

Those who had air conditioners ran them and those who didn’t ran fans and swamp coolers. Our new house came with A/C so we were among the fortunate, although we quickly became popular among the folks who had no air conditioning. Martha, our next door neighbor, was one of the unfortunate ones who had no cooling system, and so it came as no surprise when she showed up at our door with a home baked cherry pie, baked a few days earlier when the weather was cooler. Once inside, it was important for her to begin telling us a few stories and suggest that the pie be eaten right away, perhaps with a scoop of ice cream, even though it was two in the afternoon.

Most of the cars in Alternative had air conditioners, and so people weren’t at all averse to taking a drive to some nearby larger city like Greeley or even down to Denver to go to the malls and shop and possibly see a movie in the air conditioned buildings there. Had it been three years ago, they might have stopped at Jimmy’s Market on Main Street and do some grocery shopping, as it was the only business on Main Street that had air conditioning. Jimmy had run the store for twenty years. After getting it up and running and being successful during the first two years, Jimmy’s wife blessed him with a baby boy. They named him Jimmy Junior and just called him JJ.

Jimmy couldn’t remember a day during that last eighteen years that he had the store, when JJ wasn’t around. Jimmy figured that eventually, JJ would take over running the store and Jimmy could retire and take his wife, Clarise, on a cruise to Alaska or even down to that Disneyland Island around Florida. But when he turned eighteen, JJ announced that he was heading off to Montana to get a job on a ranch. Jimmy was crushed but wouldn’t forbid JJ from leaving and figured that he would eventually come back, but after two years of waiting, Jimmy decided to just close the doors on the grocery store and sell the building. Some out-of-state investor came in and bought the building and used it as a write-off, pretty much leaving it to fall into disrepair, until the city council had to contact him about it and he had it torn down.

But the heat, lack of air conditioned buildings and especially, the lack of a grocery store in Alternative, gave Lester Timberwick an idea. Lester arrived in Alternative about three years ago from California. Martha thought that she heard him mention once that he was a lawyer in California and that he just didn’t want to deal with the injustices of the world anymore, so he found his way to Alternative. At least, she was pretty sure that she heard him say that sometime when she was out. None-the-less, Lester had an idea. He bought a van and offered, two or three times per week, to shuttle people back and forth to either Greeley or Fort Collins so that people could do their shopping without having to drive themselves or put wear and tear on their cars. His van was air conditioned, and so whether they had to go or not, numerous people would pay the few dollars to have Lester take them into town and drop them off at the local air conditioned establishments. Lester was good at his job and managed to talk non-stop during the half hour drive into town. He’d talk about law, and Colorado, and the local politics, such as they were. Most people liked the current mayor, Mayor Tom as he liked to be called.

Mayor Tom was great at fishing, and encouraged people to buy their fishing licenses from city hall and go down to the well stocked pond near Alternative Park. People would take their families and sit on the shore of the lake, catching trout and throwing them back, They’d talk about where they wanted to go and the things that they’d like to do. But most importantly, they spent time together as families and loved every minute of it, waiting for the sun to go down and the cool breezes to fill their homes for the night of rest and recuperation to prepare them for the next hot summer day. They’d hug each other, and walk home, maybe stopping at Lyle’s Pizza by the Slice shop on the way, and dream about Alternative becoming a bigger town.

And that’s the news this week from Alternative, CO., where people think about different things.

Alternative, Colorado: Where the People Think of Other Things to Do

My family and I recently moved to a smaller town here in Colorado. Alternative. It might sound like a strange name for a city, but it’s nice here. The cost of living is lower than where we were before in Fort Collins, and housing is more reasonable.

Before we moved, I did some research on the history of the city, just to find out a little more about it.

This fine city of 687, (a little more since my family of five moved here), was incorporated in 1968. Originally, they wanted to name it either Summitsville or Rocky Mountain Town. The mayor at the time, Ike Atckinson, was in charge of finding out which name the townspeople wanted the most. He asked around and they had a vote. Turned out it was a tie, so Ike went to his brother-in-law, Marvin, to break the tie. Now Marvin was not the shiniest apple in the barrel, and Ike knew this. He had assigned Marvin a city job to keep his wife, Becky, happy. He never really thought that he’d have to come to Marvin for anything, but he thought that this job would be simple. So, he went to Marvin and asked, “Which name do you like better?”

            “What are the choices again?” Marvin asked.

            Ike sighed and said, “Summitsville or the alternative.” He was just flustered enough that he could remember the other name.

            So Marvin announced that he had made a decision and went off to register that decision and incorporate the new city.

            Originally, then, the city was named, “The Alternative” and people just nodded and accepted it. Mayor Ike, however, thought it was a little cumbersome and got the people to agree to shorten it to just, “Alternative”. So it was then that Alternative, Colorado was born.

            Our family was the main attraction for the single day that it took us to unload the moving truck and get everything into the house. Most neighbors walked slowly by, giving weak waves or looking away and walking their small dogs quickly to their destinations.

Our new next-door neighbor, Martha, tried twice to bring us cookies. The first time, she had been watching out of her window and thought that we were done moving in when in reality, we had only stopped unloading to set-up a few things inside the house and grab some lunch. When we headed back out to the truck, we saw Martha with her cookie tray ambling up the toward our driveway, but with her eyes growing ever wider, she decided to make a u-turn and head back toward her house.

            Once she knew we were done and had closed the door to the truck, she came timidly back and knocked at our door. She introduced herself and cheerily peered around my daughter, who had answered the door, in an attempt to see where we were placing our furniture. We all decided to come to the door and expressed our appreciation for the cookies. Martha made sure to tell us that she had been baking all day and that when was certain that we would love them. They were oatmeal and raisin cookies and she put in extra raisins because they were so much better for people than chocolate chips, although she admitted that she occasionally snuck a few chocolate chips when she was feeling scandalous. She proceeded to tell us that she would come by tomorrow and let us know all about the town and who we should and should not know about. I had a feeling that we would find out about all of them, one way or another.

            Martha smiled and with one more peek around us, announced her departure, waved and waked back down the path toward her house, stopping once to wave and smile one last time.

            This would prove to be an interesting new adventure for us.

That’s the news from Alternative, Colorado for this week, a small town where people think of other things to do.

A New Path

Last night I took the dog for a walk. I always give me time to think, plot and plan.

As I walked along the path that I’ve walked with my dog for the past six months, and thinking about how I’ll be moving from this neighborhood soon, it made me sad thinking that soon I wouldn’t be walking along this path that I’ve come to love and know so well. I’ve really come to enjoy the evening walks in the park; feeling the coolness of the evening and seeing all of the wonderful houses and green expanse of lawn and old established trees. It’s a path that I’ve become very comfortable with. But then I started thinking about how life is a lot like this path.

We walk a path everyday of our lives. We have our routines that we go through that make us comfortable and content. It’s when life throws in a difference that we become uncomfortable. Personally, I’ve always enjoyed change and look forward to the challenges that they bring.

So thinking about a change in paths should have been something like that, exciting and challenging. Then why was I feeling so sad about this?

It was at that moment that I changed my way of thinking about this. Where I move, which won’t be far from where I’m living now, I’ll still be taking the dog for a walk each night. It will be the same, cool air. The sky above me will be the same, with the same clouds and the same moon. Only the immediate surrounding will be different. Different, but not bad. It was then that I decided that this would, in fact be an adventure.

In our lives, we sometimes view change as bad. But when change comes, we should look hard to see if that change is something that we can use to improve our lives. How can we use that change to propel ourselves toward our dreams and goals? How can we change our discomfort into a new level of comfort? It’s important to embrace change and move upward using that change as the momentum that will drive us to new heights and new levels in our lives. So tonight, when I took the dog for his walk, I enjoyed the path and looked forward with anticipation, to the new path that is coming my way in a few weeks!