New Year in Alternative, Colorado

New Year in Alternative, Colorado

Where the People Think of Other Things to Do

It’s New Year in Alternative. Actually, New Year’s Eve in Alternative. I asked my kids how they wanted to ring in the New Year and their response was, “What can we do?”

With that question, I decided to do some investigating and had the kids walk with me through the town this evening. We would have just Goggled to see what was going on, but Alternative is pretty much off the grid. There is no town website, at least nothing that’s kept current. Rick Marcus was the local IT guy who decided to give it a go by putting a website up for the town. He did his best, he really did, but when he would get something up about the town, the town would change what it wanted to do, and the webpage would immediately be out of date. Rick tried to talk to the Mayor about it, but the Mayor would just scratch his head and smile awkwardly and shrug his shoulders, which would frustrate Rick to no end, and he would throw up his hands and walk away.

The mayor, of course, would smile slightly after Rick would walk away and turn to his assistant, Beth, and tell her how he really didn’t want the town on the internet and how much he was certain that others in town felt the same way.

Beth, of course, would head off to the Women’s Winter Gardening Club where she would ask the group if they wanted a website up and receive a mix of yes and no from her group, in between all of them trying to figure out the best ways to grow herbs indoors and which ones were the very best for healthy living. Then the group would talk about what plants to bring to the New Year’s Eve celebration at the local high school, where there would be a dance, refreshments courtesy of the city and a live local band. Brad Corbet and the Ski Masks were going to be playing. When they first started they actually wore ski masks but then realized quickly how difficult it was to sing and be understood in ski masks. So I mentioned to my kids that there was going to be a gathering at the school to which they nodded and smiled and asked what else was going on.

We happened to run into Mary Jo Sylvan, whose husband, Grover, named after Grover Cleveland and not the Sesame Street character, belonged to the local Elks Club. Most of the time, Mary Jo didn’t talk about what was going on at the club, but tonight she had to talk about the gathering that they were putting on for ringing in the New Year. She said that it was going to be a family event with a big screen TV tuned to whatever station had the very best coverage of ringing in the New Year and probably the ball drop from New York. Jake, down at the local cable company was actually planning on having a special on channel 17 that would run all day and show how countries around the world celebrate the New Year arriving, and the Elks wanted to show that. After hearing that, my kids actually decided that they wanted to celebrate ringing in the New Year in the last place that I thought, at our house. So, we pulled up the local cable special, had sparkling cider, made tons of finger foods and laughed, smiled and realized how lucky we were as a family. Alternative was the best thing we’ve done, and I can’t wait to see what adventures are coming this new year.