Yesterday morning, taken up in a blaze of compulsion, Carolyn and I decided to have a family adventure. We resolved to take son and daughter to the annual Palisade Peach Festival. To my friend (you know who you are), it had absolutely, positively nothing to do with your constant barrage of hyper links that were pointing me to the PeachFest—okay, okay, maybe just a little.
Now, because this was an impulse decision, we made no plans and did no research regarding locations or times. We simply packed the kids up in the back of the car and pointed the battered Ford towards Palisade. When we arrived at the Palisade Community Center, the area was oddly empty of pretty much everything except for a handful of young kids skating on what looked like newly installed ramps and pipes. Of course, I’ve not been to Palisade in some time.
Despite the quiet and desolate nature of the park, a door to the building had been left open as a suggestion that someone might be lingering within, and so I decided to explore in search of the correct location for the festival. As I entered the building it became very obvious that it was mostly empty. Only one room had a light switched on, and inside were an array of tables and displays. Clearly, something was going to take place there and I had a hunch that it was probably peach related.
As I entered the room I realized that there was only one person there, a woman who was busy setting things out for display and checking the overall aesthetics of the room. I announced my presence with a friendly Hello! She stopped, turned, and returned the greeting. I queried her as to the time and location for the festival and she informed me that it was scheduled to open just down the road at the Riverbend Park, roughly one hour from what was then the present.
As she spoke, I realized that I was speaking with something of a local celebrity. At least, I think it was. I didn’t ask her if her name was Dixie Burmeister, but she looked like Dixie, and her voice sounded like Dixie’s. Dixie is known in Western Colorado, and perhaps in other areas of this region, for her appearances in City Market commercials. City Market is a regional grocery chain that I believe is owned by Kroger. Anyway, she does other things as well, and can be seen on any given week on a television set somewhere in the valley. I’ve even seen her do some cooking shows, though I don’t know whether it was syndicated or something that was produced for a special occasion, or what.
Anyway, after departing the building I pointed my Ford back towards Clifton, but only for as long as it would take to reach the Riverbend Park access road. On this leg of the trip I was bragging about my brush with fame, but my wife seemed none too impressed. I guess she has no appreciation for local celebrity. I suppose she’s probably not alone; it is for this reason that I pity our local sportscasters and weathermen.
When we arrived at the park it became obvious that the PeachFest had quite a following. I’ve been only once before, many years ago. This year it was much larger than I remember. We parked some distance from the entrance, which was only an issue because it meant that we had to push two strollers down a gravel road. If you’ve never attempted this, try it the next time that you feel you deserve some punishment. Despite our stroller pushing dilemma, Hunter was enthusiastic. He adeptly adjusted his cap to allow for maximum effect.
One thing that Carolyn and I both locked onto right away was the fact that there was a booth set up for pony rides. Already at age 2 our daughter Payton is a serious book hound, with a chest full of Dr. Seuss, Berenstain Bears, Muppet Babies, and other children’s books. One of her favorite series are her My Little Pony books. When she wants to read one of them, she announces with glee, “Pony!” So we knew for sure we had a way to entertain her.
Hunter maintained his cool pretty well considering that he was too small to enjoy any of the activity booths that littered the outskirts of the festival. We saw everything from bungee jumping on a trampoline—called Euro-Jump or something similar—to rock climbing.
All in all we had a pretty good time. The festivities were cut short though when Payton, who had seemed so excited to go inside an inflatable maze and slide, became very frightened upon realizing that she had entered alone. Apparently the anxiety of being separated form Mom and Dad was just too much for her at that time. It was pretty warm out though, so to be fair she probably was getting a bit sleepy.
To recap, yesterday I met a celebrity, had the fortune of being there for my daughter’s first pony ride, and otherwise enjoyed the day with my beautiful family. Sometimes, it seems, things just go right. Yesterday’s family adventure was one of those events that just seemed to lift up everyone involved.
This will be brief and unbiased, I promise! Coming out of our local super store this last weekend I saw something that at first brought a smile to my face, and then left a stink in my nostrils that could rival the ambient olfactory characteristics of a hundred year old landfill. Located immediately outside of the exits was a table with two or three volunteers who were seeking signatures for their petition “on education.”
Now, being that both of my parents are educators—my Stepfather was an elementary school principle for Mesa County Valley School District #51 here in Western Colorado and now teaches the occasional class at Mesa State College; my Mother was an elementary school teacher for the same district—I immediately took an interest in their cause. Sure I had things to do, but I always have time for a little politicking.
However, also as a result of having been raised by two professional educators, I know the tricky nature of education related legislature all too well. Often during election years you will see education referendums appear in pairs on the ballot. They are generally diametrically opposed to each other and often pit parents against teachers when it comes to their respective patrons. It can be an ostracizing sort of thing when your parents are among the minority who support a state-run administration whilst the majority of the local population are vehemently opposed to it.
Anyhow, these days my political opinions are much different than those of my parents. I don’t know if it should naturally be expected by parents for their children to wind up on the far end of the political scale from themselves by default or what, but if that is the case then I do not look forward to anything beyond middle school with my two children! Already their strong wills could pierce an iron-clad shield like a needle through latex, let the World be warned once they actually have profound thoughts to prop up with such will power. I hope that they never become my political enemies!
Moving on though. I decided rather quickly that if I were going to sign their petition I had better know as much about it as I could. I wouldn’t want to put my name on a document that might assist the wrong party in their pursuit of politically biased legislature, that’s for sure. What ensued was a conversation that even Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t have dreamed up. I asked the volunteer some questions and almost immediately she became verbally hostile towards me.
“I’m a Colorado voter. I have a question—who sponsors this petition?”
“It’s through legislature.”
“Wait. What?”
“It’s through legislature, for law.”
Well it’s not as if I thought you were going to pass a law through the public library, now is it? (This I thought to myself, though in retrospect I wish I had said it to her.)
“Okay, but which party?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just sign it, it’s for education.”
“Well, both of my parents are educators, but I’d like to know more about it first. I might come back after I look into it. How long will you be here?”
“Just today. Look, you might as well just sign it then if your parents are teachers.”
“No, I need to do some research first.”
“Fine, whatever.”
And then she slammed herself back down into her folding lawn chair with a scowl on her face that could turn Medusa herself to stone. Had she really gotten mad at me because I wanted more information than that damn buzzword she kept throwing at me—education? Education of what, ducks? Come on people, you’re asking me to put pen to paper in hopes of creating binding law without my first having knowledge of what that law might mean? This is pure insanity! And if you’re peddling a petition on people while claiming not to know what party you represent in the process, you might as well just call it what it is: political trickery. Either that or a really bad attempt at performing a Jedi mind trick.
You will sign this petition. It doesn’t matter who sponsors the bill.
My point here is that if you are going to be out looking for signatures for a petition that you hope to create a law with you had better be able to tell people what they are signing. Getting angry and rude with people who actually care enough to ask those sorts of questions will only harm your cause. Trust me, I no longer care which party her petition came from because the dishonest nature with which she went about seeking my signature made me not want to be a part of it at all. Dishonest politicking is bad, but openly dishonest politicking is just plain unintelligent.
People! Please stop making a mockery of our Democratic system! It’s great to see people participating in the process, but not when they are trying to make fools out of the lesser informed voters of their communities. Please do not be part of anything that would welcome the disinformation or misinformation of the voting community, nor the refusal to inform them.
For those who sign petitions without knowing what they sign, be warned that the associated pitfalls are equally as disgusting as with the previously mentioned condition and would (should) bring a similitude of shame upon you as well.
So there I was, listening to my biological father’s complaints regarding my younger brother. The kid has just recently turned 17 and is experiencing fits of anger like nothing I’ve ever seen. Well, that’s not true, I’ve seen it before just not in someone so young.
On the phone in another room, my brother was able to hear his father’s remarks about his attitude and behavior. In a flash some heating element, located deep down in his teenage soul, was cranked up to red hot and the hormonal fuel that has been flowing through his blood in hoards for the last five years instantaneously ignited like a fleet of NASA’s extra orbital engines all launching at once.
My brother transformed into a raging lunatic before my eyes. He began to threaten our one common parent with lethal violence. Now, I’ve never been that close to our biological father. It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that my Stepfather has earned the titled of “Dad” and there’s not much chance of there being a shift in those sands. But the things that my brother was threatening him with were things that no man should have to worry about in his own home and from his own children.
I sat idly by for a good ten minutes while they shouted at each other and made arguably idle threats back and forth. Then, without warning, my brother slipped into his bedroom and returned with a baseball bat. Our shared parent proclaimed that this wasn’t the first time my brother had resorted to such measures, then he took up a combat stance, quickly convincing me that real trouble was brewing.
Why my brother took a swing at his own father with the bat, I decided to intervene. I gave my brother two or three verbal warnings, which he never takes seriously because in his delusional state of mind he somehow tends to see himself as superior to me in terms of physical strength and ability. Of course, he lives in a small town in Colorado and thinks he’s a gang banger, Blood to be more specific. He’s a 17 year old white kid living in rural America for God’s sake! Never mind the fact that I’ve actually been trained, he sees me as fodder for the cannon. He could not have been more wrong.
After giving him my warnings and moving into a position that would allow me to strike should the need arise, I made eye contact with him and made sure that he understood what was about to happen. He began to raise the bat like he wanted to hit me, even set out to shout some kind of battle cry, but I ended the whole ordeal with haste. Better, I figured, to nip it in the bud and get a net over that inflated ego of his before his head floated away with his sanity.
Executing an aggressive block, meant to remove the space needed for him to wind up a swing and to deny his weapon wielding hand access to the “battle space,” I chose not to strike him. I switched from holding his weapon wielding limb back with my left forearm to a firm grip on his wrist, while simultaneously taking his shoulder firmly in my right hand and pivoting to my left. This pulled him forward and off balance, making it a snap for me to push out on his shoulder with my right hand, spinning him in mid air so that he would land flat on his back with me seated squarely on top.
By the time we hit the ground, his bat was in my possession and his father was rushing in to assist me in holding him down. For such a little runt, he has a lot of fight in him. But that mid air spin wasn’t the only thing that when like a snap as we both lost altitude. I’m not entirely sure how, perhaps he stepped on my foot as we fell, but my right ankle snapped as well. Now the ball looking joint on the outside of my ankle is swollen like a baseball, ironically enough. There is no bruising, but the swelling is pretty bad, and it hurts like hell to put my weight on it.
So, thanks to my quiet little evening with part of my family, I am now injured. I don’t know if you can see it in your mind, but just try to picture yourself chasing a crawl-crazed baby around and keeping order with his two year old sister with an injury like this. I don’t even think I could bend down to pick my son up if he tried to steal away into the kitchen and take food from our dog’s bowl, as he so loves to do!
Beware of your teenage family members! Thanks for your time.
Finale of the 2008 City of Grand Junction fireworks display.
After having canceled all of our plans for this 4th of July, the night was looking pretty grim. It was quickly adding up to me being home alone with my son Hunter, while Carolyn was across town providing in home care to an elderly client with our daughter Payton in tow. But after only a couple of hours they were home again, and in time to head out for the city of Grand Junction’s fireworks show, probably the biggest in Mesa County.
Because of our late departure we didn’t figure that getting in to the stadium would even be a possibility. As we marched down the street, each of us with a stroller leading our advance, I was pondering the insanely high price of fireworks. A small barrel fountain was $9 and a cheesy American remake of the Roman candle, called the American Candle or some such ridiculous thing, cost $6!
It was highway robbery, flat out. I’d never seen the cost of something that I was planning to obliterate by way of violent incineration rise so quickly into the double digits! After scooping up a handful of fireworks from the side of the table with no prices displayed I rounded the corner and, sadly, began replacing nearly everything I had picked up as I saw how much each of them cost. $15 for a “PT Boat” remake of the old fashioned tank firework! This one had more guns, was slightly bigger, and had a fancier paint job. But who’s gonna pay fifteen bucks for something their going to detonate unless it does something pretty damned cool?
And that brings us to the next part of my story. We marched down 12th street with strollers in hand and settled on a little spot just east of Mesa State College and north of McDonald’s. Every patch of grass from Albertson’s to our spot was just smothered in people. It was as if they were growing out of the very ground. Our spot provided a clear view of the approximate area where we knew that the fireworks would be detonating. As we waited for the show, which has yet to start “on time” in my presence, our kids were growing unruly.
As a counter to this we had purchased what fireworks we could before leaving Albertson’s, which amounted to a $6 American Candle and a 1$ bag of poppers, half of which were nearly duds—their pop was more like a puff. Anyhow, there were others around who weren’t as patient with the state of the available fireworks. Illegal mortars were being cannoned off into the air at random intervals from at least three different directions. It was mild mayhem, a bit like the warm up for a big battle, I suppose. At one point, just as I was entertaining the kids with our American Candle, two police officers rode by on bicycle. They didn’t say anything about the firework, though my wife seemed to think I was going to get in trouble because she kept saying, “cop, cop, cop!”
As I mentioned, the show was long in coming. Just to the north of us, maybe three blocks or so away, mortars were going off frequently enough for me to break out the camera and get it set to how I wanted it for shooting fireworks. The sky was pitch black and my flash kept illuminating the foreground, so I turned off the flash and it seemed to work fine. Of course, what you see on that little inch by an inch screen isn’t always what you get on the computer when you open the pictures up.
After several mortar rounds (fireworks, by the way, the kind the “big boys” use) had illuminated the sky behind us, something kind of eerie happened. From behind us and perfectly in line with the trajectory of those mortars came a helicopter. I don’t know for sure, but it looked very much like the Flight for Life chopper from St. Mary’s. Anyhow, it flew over us in the path of those fireworks, less than a minute after the most recent mortar launch. The helicopter came so fast from behind us that if the people launching those mortars had lit a fuse, there would have been no stopping the chain of events that would have followed.
A mortar round exploding in such close proximity to a helicopter, which is inherently dangerous due to the number of moving parts as compared to a fixed wing airframe, could quite possibly have spelled disaster for the crew—and for my family. As low as the helicopter was flying I think that it could very easily have come down on top of us because we were roughly three blocks ahead of where the damage would have been done. If it continued on a forward trajectory, we could have been toast. Images from the movie La Bamba kept flashing through my mind.
Finally the show started and we were treated to 20 minutes of fireworks. Of course, they scared the hell out my son Hunter so he cried through a good bit of the show. Our girl Payton was mesmerized by the bright lights and deep booms. She was pointing at each one and grinning from ear to ear. I managed to get some decent footage of the show, and I thought I’d share the finale with you. You’ve probably watched it already, but at least now you’ve got the whole story. The finale of the fireworks display here in Grand Junction gives you an idea of the size of our town if you’ve seen the kinds of shows put on by big cities, but overall it was pretty impressive when compared with years past. Of course, I don’t go every year but now that we have kids that may change.
My daughter Payton has turned two years old today! It really is amazing how fast they grow. I know, you hear that all the time from disgustingly nostalgic parents, but it’s true dammit. My daughter is a little miniature person now, not just a lump of cells with a need to consume liquified powdered-chemicals and an excretion problem. She talks to us! She expresses emotions — real emotions, not just anger and frustration like babies do. And there’s the clincher, I have to face the fact that she’s not even a baby anymore!
At her present age I still feel comfortable calling her my Baby Girl because that’s exactly what she is — my baby girl. Sometime around the start of Kindergarten I’ll probably back off a bit from that one, just to avoid embarrassing her in front of her friends. Friends. There’s another thing I’ll wind up acquiescing to one day or another, her need to socialize. With that will come some very scary things for me to worry myself sick over. And of course, she’ll want to spend less and less time with her Mother and I.
I don’t know why I’m focusing on these negative aspects of the evolution at hand, after all it is a day of celebration. Payton certainly isn’t aware of my hopes and dreams, nor of my worries and fears. She’s as happy as ever. Grandma on her Mother’s side has come to town for her birthday and Payton is tickled pink. Between the attention she’ll get from that set of grandparents and the attention she gets from her other set of grand parents, she’s pretty much guaranteed to have a great weekend. I’m sure Carolyn and I will too, but there will be some minor pangs of longing for something which cannot cannot be had — a beautiful moment in our entwined time lines, on pause.
