Nice Ride.

When we were making our decision about moving out of Dallas, I remember one of the categories on the mental spreadsheet was the high level of consumerism so prevalent in that glitzy city. Perhaps it was growing up in the 60s and 70s and then going to college in hippy dippy Austin that stunted my consumer gene but all that shopping for the latest and greatest thing just never appealed to me. And my husband, having been raised on a farm, never mainstreamed into big city buying either. So moving out of the city where it wasn’t just about what you drove, but how long it was (think mondo Suburbans) was something of a no brainer as far as the car column of the spreadsheet was concerned. We’re the types that would drive a car into the ground. Rural Colorado is just the place for people like us.

In our town, there appear to be two kinds of car owners. The first are in the category that we will most likely fall into – their cars are at least 10 years old and have bumper stickers professing their beliefs plastered all over the back. Things like “Keep your laws off my body” and “So many prairie dogs, so few recipes”. This kind of car makes sense up here because, for some reason, people that live in the country do not believe in garages. We do not have one and, being from the aforementioned car-as-extension-of-self city, we were fairly horrified and immediately started planning the construction. Another great thing about this brand of car is that there is only one carwash in town and it is the do it yourself kind. Which can get downright uncomfortable very quickly at this high, cool elevation. When you’re driving a car held together by duck tape and baling wire, what’s a little dirt?

Now the second kind of car owner is the type we aspire to be. You can hear them coming before you see them because of their gravelly, rumbling diesels. These are the landed gentry so to speak. They drive the big king cab trucks and Suburbans which they need to pull their horse trailers. The nicer your horse trailer, the higher your status. Those trucks also come in handy for driving around your acreage, checking fences and whatnot. Yessir, someday when I have acreage, I’m going to buy the noisiest diesel truck on the market. And the rattliest horse trailer (just in case you don’t hear my diesel when I pull into town).

My husband, being in his 40s, had to have his midlife-crisis car purchase. City folk go for racy things with Italian or German names. But here it's not how many gears, but plain-old four-wheel drive that matters. Before our purchase, we overheard someone complaining about having to drive behind a Texan with two-wheel drive. As we were the only ones in town as far as I could tell with Texas plates, I sunk a bit into my collar. So my husband jumped at the chance to buy a 75 Bronco. Never mind that it can't really go over 30 miles and hour and it eats more gas than aforementioned mondo Suburbans. It came with bumper stickers! "Broncoholic" and "Jerry Jeff Walker" right on the back fender. So now, we have joined the ranks of country folk that must have at least one more car in their yard than they have drivers. I guess you'd call it country consumerism. For us, it's our economical car, our high-occupancy car and our drive-over-anything car. I dare the Big Three to come up with just one that can do all that!

One more funny thing I noticed right away is that up here you NEVER hear the “breep breep” of someone activating their car alarm. Except for in the summer when all the tourists come to town. Of course, that’s not hard to figure as half the cars driven up here were built before alarms were on the drawing boards. But also because people trust each other. Or know eachother, so it's tougher to get away with crime. It is always with great reluctance that I push that little button on the key fob. Now, I don’t do it at home and I don’t do it if my car is empty (with the exception of all the junk that accumulates behind the front seat which anyone is more than welcome to cart away). But sometimes I run into the grocery store and leave my laptop – my life! – in the car. Its even more embarrassing when you do it in the dead of winter when every other unoccupied car in the parking lot is running. Still, you never know when some shifty non-local might park next to you. Better embarrassed than sorry. photo copyright Jan Lee 2009

Window TV

Now the same week we discover the mail will not just magically appear at our door like it did in the city, we also begin to wonder what day trash gets picked up. It is of particular concern to us as we have about 40 big moving boxes in our backyard. Guess what? That does not happen just because you unload your furniture at an address either. Turns out you have to hire someone to haul your trash, unless you want to take a weekly drive out to the dump yourself. But at $16 a month, I figure it’s worth not getting banana peels and coffee grounds inside my decidedly non-country friendly coupe.

One thing we do have now I like to call “window TV”. In our living room the large windows face west so we have sweeping views of the Wet Mountain Valley and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains beyond. Today Zoë and I sit and watch a storm blow down the mountains. You can actually see where it begins and ends. It reminds me of spending time as a child at Long Beach Island in New Jersey. We used to rent a house each year, right on the bay, with the same kind of large windows looking east. When storms came in from the west you could look out over the water and just watch the storm rise and come toward you – like a giant, curling hand. This is just the same. Today when the clouds lift, the mountain tops shine bright white with newly fallen snow.

Wow. This is worth all the strange little quirks of adjusting to life in the country, I think. Sitting here with Zoë watching this instead of TV. And then, Griffin shouts from downstairs “Zoë, Spongebob is on” and my bubble bursts. In a flash she is gone. The power of the yellow sponge.

Small-Town Double Take Number One

After arriving in town, our first stop is at the office where the keys were left for us in an envelope taped to the door. Small-town double take number one. Unfortunately they don’t work so we go to the house and unload the office stuff out of the little U-Haul we rented, unload our house stuff (mattresses and towels and toys – the essentials while waiting for your moving van) and then reload the office stuff back into the truck. Where is Frenchy when you need him? Exhausted – yet again – but happy to be in our new home, we order the first of many take-out meals and settle in for the night. Nothing but the sound of the wind in the aspens and the occasional crunch of tires on our newly graveled street. Bliss.

Now I have always lived in a city or a suburb where we take certain services, I discover, for granted. Specifically speaking, trash and mail. Having been in our little house in the valley about four days my husband announces that we have no mailbox. Odd, I thought. Well, we'll just have to get one. But having never lived in a house or apartment that didn’t come with a mailbox, I first think – miraculously –to check with the post office.

“Let me take your number and I’ll have the carrier call you about where she can deliver your mail,” said the woman behind the counter at the post office. Huh? Talk to the postal carrier? Is that legal? First of all, in the city I never knew who was going to show up with my mail – half the time it was someone wearing street clothes and a pith helmet. I had no idea who carried my mail. I’m pretty sure the post office had no idea who carried my mail. In a couple of days, a friendly voice on the phone informs me that she can deliver my mail to Emery and South street, about a block away, because there is already a mailbox she delivers to there. Faced with the choice of either going to a mailbox on a random corner or going to the post office where our mail is kept safely behind lock and key, we opt for the post office.

About the same time, my husband discovers that – surprise! – we have no mailbox at the office either, even though it is on Main Street downtown. Or in town. I’m not sure Westcliffe is big enough to have more than that – up, down, eastside, westside. Just in town. Anyway, now we have mail that is just floating around in post office purgatory because both addresses I so efficiently entered on my change-of-address cards in Dallas appear not to exist. We decide to get one PO box for everything which entails filling out more change-of-address cards so when the mail returns to the Westcliffe post office from the non-existent addresses we expected it to arrive at, it now has to be re-routed to the box in the building. However, that change-of-address has to go through Colorado Springs – 75 miles away – to get the official o.k. So much for less red tape in small towns. The government is still the government. Enough said. So we wait patiently for our mail. It has just now started to trickle in. Amazing how fast bills find their way to you whereas checks must not have that same acute sense of direction.

Failing Moving 101

On the day of our move from Dallas, the foreman proclaims we are not ready. I beg to differ. I am more than ready to leave the 90-degree steam bath. But he means that we have about a day of packing left before he can load us on the truck. In essence, we have failed Moving 101.

I wonder if this has some kind of underlying meaning. I mean, who isn’t ready when the movers show up? Is this some kind of cosmic hint that the move isn’t right? Another thing to keep me up at night. That and all the packing I still have left to do.

The next day the movers – a new crew including our driver, Stanley, another guy and a character named Frenchy who mumbles when he talks so it’s hard to understand him – show up and this time we were ready. Six hours and 83 boxes later the truck is full – unfortunately too full to make the stop downtown to pick up our office load. Another call, another truck, another kink in the plan. As I leave our house for good, the new owner is walking in with items as I’m walking out with mine.

We collapse at my mother’s house in Plano. I need my mommy after the two-week grind of paring down 2,500 square feet of possessions to squeeze into 1,400. Not to mention dogs and children who just don’t understand why you can’t take them on their usual long walks and jaunts to the dollar store while cramming six years of collected Happy Meal toys into boxes (and trash bags). I fall asleep sitting up. Dana eats dinner at 11 p.m. But it’s over. On one end, at least.

The next day we set out for Amarillo not nearly as bright and early as my father would have done it. I remember those car trips of my childhood when he would be walking around in the dark house, tapping his Timex and barking, “we’re nine minutes behind schedule!” But we are going to a hotel room where we will be sleeping with both kids and dogs. What’s the big hurry? We make good time, eat Wendy’s poolside at the La Quinta and pass out early watching “Home on the Range”.

Our last day of driving goes quickly and uneventfully with the exception of the portion of I-25 that passes through Trinidad, Colorado just north of the New Mexico border. With a history of panic issues related to driving (before the miracle of modern medicine) it is a tad unnerving when my Mitsubishi Gallant starts bucking on a near vertical climb. But once we clear that hurdle it’s smooth sailing. I crank the White Stripes and my sole passenger, Henry, our two-year old lab who is wearing sunglasses, and I lean forward, trying to gain speed.