Greeley is the place Steve thinks of as his home. While his family traveled all over the mountain states, Greeley was where Grandma was. Where his childhood best friend was, one he still keeps in touch with though both have moved away. Where part of his heart will always be. He's joined a Facebook site where oldtimers reminisce about what was and explain it's place in their hearts, and younger folks probably wonder where the magic went and if it actually takes magic to paint those memories in such rainbow colors. Of course, I'm just guessing here about the younger generations, since we seem to be so different with the technology revolution cutting a sharp line between us and points of view.
Steve is one of the regular posters on the Greeley site, relishing his new emotional connections with others who post of long ago times or even not so long ago ones. He plans to try to physically meet a few while we're in the area on our trek north. Much as I love my guy and appreciate his enthusiasms and nostalgia, I'm of a divided opinion as to whether I wish to accompany him or perhaps drop him off and take my camera someplace else for a bit. Would I have anything to contribute? Or just be an intruder, an eavesdropper on private and ultimately unsharable conversations?
Sure, Minnesota born and raised though I am, I knew Greeley. It wasn’t nearly as early as Steve did. But a childhood trip with my parents and brother made me fall in love with mountains, any mountains, Real Mountains! While the North Star State claims to have mountains, whatever claim they had was long since ground away by glaciers. Minnesota has a few large hills, and only ski resort PR really claims otherwise. I don't begrudge them a living, but nope, not real mountains.
I drove through Greeley before I even met Steve, but not by much. Back then (sounding like a geezer again, aren’t I?) my eyes were peeled as soon as I hit 76 heading into the state, searching the horizon endlessly for that first glimpse of the Rockies. It used to happen when I hit Brush, up on the bridge. Pollution now makes that first glimpse much closer and less sharp. I still wouldn’t have seen Greeley yet, nor cared.
When I was the one driving through Greeley, it was just that: something to drive through, hopefully before the feedlot fumes made you pass out. Or before you grew deaf from the kids’ complaints about the smell from the back seat. It was on the way to Rocky Mountain National Park, the car loaded with three kids, a tent, and whatever other camping gear I could cram in to a Chevy Monza station wagon. Fortunately, back then it was a short drive between sections of open land on either side.
Even after I met Steve, after I started taking my then best friend on those vacation trips, Greeley was a pass-through, the Park still the goal. A few years ago, he gave me his real introduction to the city. We were between Minnesota and Arizona, and he’d gotten a wonderful idea, taking months to work it all out. His former band leader, Earl Faulkner, now deceased, had been a very important influence in his young life, and he wanted to find a way to let Earl’s family and the citizens of Greeley know. I think another rewatching of “Mr. Holland’s Opus” was his inspiration. With coordination from several people still in and around Greeley, a ceremony in the old high school auditorium was held, well attended, a plaque presented, and even the current band who likely never heard of Earl, played on stage at its end. For me, this was not just an introduction to the school but a new window into my guy.
He’d concentrated on putting things together and seeing the project through up to this point, but now he really was on a nostalgia kick, wanting nothing more than to show me the Greeley he knew and loved. There were moments of confusion getting from place to place due to all the changes down the years. Buildings were replaced, roads extended miles further out, new names and numbers and intersections abounded. We never did find a favorite grocery store, for example. But the factory making the special honey which made that store important to him was still operating.
We did stop on a side street to look through a few back yards to the house where he played as a kid with his best friend Gene. The back porch was their playhouse, their fort, their stage for every drama they enacted together. This usually was some version of a post Civil War reunion, best friends from opposite sides, united again and off on adventures to solve the latest crime or rescue the damsel or cure the ills of the world. (When I finally met Gene in Florida, the two realized another life dream, going to one of those costume photo studios, donning their respective soldier’s uniforms, and getting their combined portrait taken.)
Steve took me past two homes he’d grown up in. One is now a business, the front altered nearly beyond recognition, though the other is unchanged. We stopped outside Rice’s Clover Honey - the reason we’d been searching out that one grocery store earlier, as it had stocked that honey - and I heard how it was the absolute best honey in the world, bar none. Still waiting for a taste, though. He pointed out stores downtown that used to be - or perhaps still were - businesses he remembered, while he tried valiantly to include everything important that happened at each location.
So many details, so many feelings, so impossible to take in all at once. It was a combination of joy and regret, feelings so strong crowding in that he finally needed a break. He guided me to Glenmere Park. By then Fred Basset needed a walk as much as Steve did, though for different reasons. I took advantage of the break to pick up my camera and capture the many pelicans and cormorants both in and around the pond there, before we headed out for supper to Kersey with some of his family, passing all those feedlots that… wait! Where did those feedlots go?
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