Author Archive for M. Toole

Summer in Pitkin

Pitkin firehouse

COLONA COUNTY LINE

     I guess this column could be called The View From Colona, as the editor suggested, or Storm King Reflections or some such nonsense, but it’s not. It’s called Colona County Line since this lovely little turn in the road is right smack on the border of Montrose and Ouray Counties. It might have been called From the Front Porch or better yet, From the Throne, so consider yourself fortunate.
That established, let’s go on.
Bordered by Log Hill Mesa, the Uncompahgre River and Buckhorn, Colona was established as a ranching and logging center as well as a stop along the railroad. Since it’s not really a town (according to the Division of Transportation) no specific founding dates or ribbon cuttings are applicable. It came to be sometime between 1888 and 1922, OK?
Colona County Line sounds kind of Johnny Cashesque, don’t you think? Maybe The New Yorker will want to publish this piece (esque and all).
Saturday Morning Cowboy Movies
Sometimes I think Colona is the most peaceful spot on earth. From my porch I see pastures, pinon covered adobe hills and the white San Juans to the distant south. At night there are a million stars and a resident herd elk graze across the road. The back streets and alleys are a treasure filled with discarded pieces of life. A few nights back a good size black bear wandered down by the old packing house…right there on the main street. The traffic noise from nearby Highway 550 is no problem. Just turn up the music and it goes away.
The Ranching Museum is here as well, a fine collection of relics and antiques from the golden age of cattle raising. Will it someday be surrounded by suburbs to nowhere inhabited by people who don’t give a hoot about ranching? Ah, the novelty of it all. A cowboy clothing boutique? Maybe a cowboy theme park? Hey pard, want to ride the nice horsy? Where will all the ranching families go after they sell off their land? I hear Wyoming is nice.
Big plans here for more houses and people to live inside them. Right now developers are busy sprucing up the place to make it just right for the newcomers. They are painting and landscaping. Even the gravel is getting a facelift. Savior faire, mo fos. Maybe we will all be smack in the middle of a 1950s cowboy movie with good guys and bad guys shooting at each other from across the highway. Maybe we’ll have real Indians and stage coaches and false fronts on the historic buildings, but I do not want to belabor the point.
Meet Me in Colona, Mona
It is easy enough to see why anyone would be exited at the prospect of writing a column about Colona, but after looking around I realized that very little is actually going on. The news is scant, but not scandalous. The pace is chronically minimal so I will have to be innovative (make things up) as I go. If there was a newspaper here the front page stories would probably read Dog Crosses Road or Commuter Parking Lot Set For Expansion. One pretty much has to drive to Montrose or Ridgway to buy toothpaste. If it weren’t for the gas pumps at Colona Store a person could be stranded here for all eternity, but that might not be so bad.
Next Time: Should Colona de designated a Nuclear Free Zone?

Cabin on Cinnamon Pass between Lake City and Silverton

Cabin on Cinnamon Pass between Silverton and Lake City

Montrose High to go Vegetarian

Montrose High School students this week voted overwhelmingly to adopt a strict vegetarian platform with regards to dining on campus. The emerging blueprint calls for adherence to a vegetarian diet to be followed by all personnel prone to eat lunch on the premises.
“No more will we see the hoards of carnivores massed in the cafeteria gobbling down burgers and tacos…unless they are produced with soy bean or tofu fillers,” said one alleged vegan administrator. The school is the first in its category to adopt what proponents of the action call a progressive approach to institutional and academic nutrition.
“Sure, we are seeing stragglers and feet draggers that still cross the street in search of meat for the mid-day meal,” said the suspected vegan, “but considering the fact that motorists do not yield to pedestrians in crosswalks here, we expect that behavior to subside.”
Community reaction was muffled in that there was a sale at the local Wal-Mart. One man, calling himself a vanguard of freedom called the action communist and socialist. He likened the victual development to attempts to create marijuana dispensaries in the town where legal pharmaceutical addicts and throwback reefer madness stalwarts voted down the proposed measure last year.
It was not clear at press time how this development will effect food vendors and in particular a longterm contract with local beef producers such as Tom Collins Farms and the prestigious Calf Liver Institute which has bestowed scholarships worth hundreds of dollars since 1984.
– Carly Provender

Homeless Trout

and gangs of the fish toughs had been congregating on the Gunnison at Rockey River poised for a handout but looking for trouble as well. Incidents on the shore have doubled since Tuesday.
The proposed closure of the Roaring Judy Trout Hatchery, for decades a catchall in the ongoing struggle to rehabilitate these fish, could put as many as 40,000 unemployed trout on the street by fall creating a nightmare for law enforcement personnel and social workers, not to mention hotels and inns already booked for the season. Scuffles and downright violence is a common response when fish are cornered.
Insiders at the state level contend that any decision to shut down the facility could be due to a number of things.
“Most of the time bored pencil-men just spin the globe and land on an area they want to fool with,” said Orson M. Gill of Kebler Trout and Iron. “It could be as simple as some official having had a bad time casting on the Slate River or maybe even a failed romance with a woman named Judy. It’s astounding how silly it can get at the higher levels of gov’ment.” – Small Mouth Bess

“Cromwell – The Musical” Opens in Dublin

(Dublin Fair City) A controversial new musical dubbed Cromwell opened here last night to deserted playhouses in Templebar and Dun Laoghaire. The presentation, which chronicles the ravages and abuses of the Puritans on the native Irish population in 1649 played well enough in Britain but fell squarely on its roundheaded face when it crossed the Irish Sea.
Theater critics in London have expressed surprise that the “lighthearted musical” was received in such a shoddy manner by the Irish. They were quick to blame years of cultural deprivation and and colonialism for the failure of the play on the east coast of Ireland.
Cromwell was written and directed by the same people that brought us The Producers with Zero Mostell (with hit song “Springtime for Hitler”) in the early 1970s. The drama offers sweeping landscapes, stunning castle assaults, and lots of blood and guts (mostly Irish children) all set to a charming harmony of symphonic blends and bone-chilling virtuosos performances.
A star-studded cast includes Jack Nicholson as Pope Adrian IV (the English Pope that opened the door for Oliver to kick off the genocide in 1156), Dick Cheney as Oliver Cromwell, Leon Uris as St Patrick, Lindsay Lohan as Bernadette Devlin and Bridget Fonda as St. Bridget. Casting: trout: on Midges, salmon: Annelids and Baetis.
Irish playwright Maureen Looney has already completed a play “We’re Still Here” which covers the attempts of the Brits to take the Emerald Isle and the struggle by the Irish to keep their culture and language intact for eight centuries.
As the lead says in the first act: “One million dead, starved by the cruel hearted monster across the sea. Two million migrated in the death ships to the New World. Take our farms, our food, our children. We are still here and we will never forget.” – Finn McCool