All Entries in the "Fractured Opinion" Category

Celebrity Tour Popular Diversion

(Ridgway, CO  from Miller Mesa Moon and Stars)

          The 2025 Cow Creek Celebrity Tour has been well received and will expand in 2026. Over 20 celebrities, new to the area, have already signed up to view the homes of carpenters, plumbers, masseuses, cowboys and teachers in Ouray County.

     The weekend experience is expected to give celebrities (many of whom are self-crowned) a chance to see how mere mortals live their lives. Organizers hope the visits will give the celebrities a peek at acceptable mountains fashion, interior design and culinary preferences in the Rockies.

     “That was the first time I’ve ever been in a trailer,” said one sweet young arrival from California. “They’re nice.”

     Coming autograph sessions will allow everyone to rub elbows after touring Ridgway Hardware, Billings, Rocky Mountain Jewelry and the local cemetery. These leading businesses will offer wine and cheese and encourage conversation between the two entities.

     Maps to the local’s homes are available at the chamber of comments as well as through The New Chinese Theater, Dogs Are Profitable and the Integrated Shelter for Telluride Refugees, which is under construction above the water treatment plant on Domka Avenue.

     “Things were rough around here before all the celebrities showed up,” said one old timer from his rocker at the Cookie Tree Saddle Shop. “But now we’re all saved.”

– Mario Swervo

The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Bar Fly

     So this guy comes into a bar…actually the two of them had been lounging for most of the afternoon flexing what was left of their pale muscles, pumping parched wisdom like a tired old well gone slowly dry. Both were heavy into self-absorbed. But swashbuckling tomcats like Don Juan were light on scrutiny, preferring the other side of the looking glass to the mirror.

     These were very important men. Don Juan had an opinion on everything which he shared with the less fortunate like Candy, his drinking buddy who had eager ears, wandering eyes and a keen sense of the irrelevant.

     “Yeah, I’ve damn well got her made,” started Don Juan. “Got my bank roll, my trailer house is paid for, and my pickup is runnin’ great.”

     He turned his neck ever so slightly and caught a glimpse of Candy who looked like he was trying to crawl into his cloudy pilsner glass.

     “For crying out loud, man, sit up straight,” he cuffed. “Look at your body language. It says everything about you. It tips your hand.”

     Candy looked at his body. He didn’t see or hear anything but he came to attention anyway following a pattern that had begun early on. Candy was there as a human reaction, to do as he was told. He was all but transparent because it had become easier that way.

     “Look at this,” said Don Juan, scanning the local gazette as he reached for his beer. “They sent a probe to Mars but it blew up when it got close. Idiots! I wonder how much that cost. I pay taxes and I’m damn sick and tired of the government shooting off space ships like they were butterflies.”

     Don Juan thought about what he had just said and smiled at his linguistic flair.

     “I don’t like bugs,” said Candy, “especially flying ones.”

     Don Juan continued to read the paper, his glasses fallen down around his cantaloupe nose. To him the expression on his face while reading was far more important than any information extracted from the experience. He wore a somber frown accentuated by hush puppies and a cap that read Cheyenne Frontier Days.

     “Winter’s comin’,” he soapboxed. “Look here. It snowed three feet in Duluth just yesterday. I’m glad I’m ready…got my wood all in and new mud and snows on the Power Wagon. How ’bout you?”

     Candy looked into the bar mirror. He had a propane heater in his small apartment that was mostly paid for by the Veteran’s Administration because of his collision with the war. He didn’t drive and the last time he tried to can a batch of tomatoes, given to him by his sister over in Delta, he’d almost blown up the place. How could Candy prepare for winter? One season just plowed into another.

     “Oh, I’m fine,” he choked with a uncertain voice, all but drowned out by the television.

     “Fine, huh?” barked Don Juan. “Just like last year when you never got around to taping your windows and your pipes froze. Then you had to sleep on my couch for the whole month of January. Your like the caveman who had a forest of firewood at his fingertips but forgot to discover fint.”

     Don Juan was on a roll.

     “Security doesn’t just wander up into your yard,” he preached. “You gotta go get it. Whether it’s financial, social or romantic there’s a brawl going on and you just as well join in right away. Lead with your left, boy!”

     He slapped Candy hard on the back. The tiny toothless aperture just under his road map nose was not to be stopped now.

     “Take money, for instance,” he continued. “I worked for thirty-five years to get me a nest egg and now I’m gonna enjoy it. I got stocks and bonds, 40 acres up on the Plateau, a great retirement, CDs, credit cards, a fat bank account and even some of them annuities. Everything I got is paid for and I don’t have any kids to leave nothin’ to.”

     Candy stared into his empty glass. Don Juan ordered two more beers and companion shots. He had a captive audience and the four dollars was a well spent investment to keep it that way.

     “You might as well spend it all,” quipped Candy breaking into a smile.

     “Hell, we might just do that this afternoon,” smiled Don Juan who continued to peruse the paper. He was a man smart enough to do two things at once.

     “Yeah, you got to be ready for winter around these parts,” he said glancing in the direction of his doleful disciple who smelled like an empty case of Pabst. “You still got time and maybe I’ll even lend a hand but first let me tell you a story. I know you don’t like bugs but it’s called The Ants and the Grasshopper. It’s by some fella named Aesop. He was a Greek a long time ago.”

     Candy perked up. “That’s a funny sounding name,” he mumbled.

     Maybe you’ll get the connection here. You’ve got to have your affairs in order. You never know when your card will come up. What would you do in an emergency? What do you have to fall back on?”

     Don Juan went on to tell Candy the story of the industrious ants and the lazy grasshopper. Despite the fact that Candy did not like bugs he listened intently. Don Juan told him about the ants drying grain on a fine winter’s day. The grain had been collected over long, hard days throughout the summer months.

     “Then along comes this grasshopper, half starved, begging for a handout,” he explained. “One of the ants asked him why he had not stored up any food during the summer. He says he had not leisure time enough and that he had passed the days singing. The ants scorned him saying that if he had been foolish enough to sing away the summer then he must dance supperless to bed in the winter.”

     Don Juan waited for a response.

     “Mean little bastards,” said Candy.

     “You miss the point,” said Don Juan. “The ants worked at getting their ducks in a row while the grasshopper wasted his time. It’s just like you and me,” he added. “I’m the ant and you’re the grasshopper. My house in order while your roof is caving in.”

     Suddenly Don Juan clutched his chest, executing a poignant plunge from his prosaic perch at the bar. A swan dive in a dive. He hit the floor hard, his satellite brew crashing beside him. He was a goner.

     At the funeral a lot of people that Candy had never seen talked about what a great man Don Juan had been. They said he had grit. They said he had enjoyed a full life. They said he’d be missed. What they were really doing was a little preheat jockeying for position with regards to his assets, which ended up going to an uncle and aunt Don Juan had never liked.

     Meanwhile Candy wandered home and spent the rest of the day putting up visquine over the peewee windows of his ratty chamber. Were there no end to the chores? Don Juan’s old pickup sat propped in the driveway, a gift from the counterfeit relatives who didn’t want to haul the thing back to Salida. Now he would have to put gas in it. How would he ever get around to that.

– Kashmir Horseshoe

     

Ouray’s Smoky Joe Wood

Once the best pitcher on the planet    

     29,000 fans crammed Fenway Park on September 6, 1912 to witness the matchup between the Washington Senators’ Walter “Big Train” Johnson and Boston Red Sox’s Smoky Joe Wood. The two fireballers, who admired each other greatly. Johnson and Wood carried with them impressive credentials, each having set records, winning 16 straight games during that season.

     The newspapers loved it. Johnson had remarked, according to The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter: “Can I throw harder than Joe Wood? Listen, my friend, there’s no man alive that throws harder than Smoky Joe Wood.” Years later in a taped interview Wood said of Johnson: “He was always starting from behind with that ball club. Walter Johnson was the best pitcher that ever lived.”

     That was Boston’s year due in part to Wood’s 34 wins and a .383 batting average by the great Tris Speaker. They finished the campaign with 105 wins and 47 losses. By the time of the historic meeting the Red Sox had already run away with the pennant.

     Back to the game: Both hurlers dominated until, in the third, George McBride hit a lead-off double going to third on an infield out. Wood then walked two batters to load the bases but struck out the next two men to end the threat. In the sixth Speaker doubled down the third-base line and later scored on an error to give the Sox a 1-0 lead. The Senators put men on base in all three of the remaining innings but failed to score. By then Wood’s hummer was blinding. He gave up six hits and struck out nine in the victory. Boston went on to clinch on September 18.

     The World Series pitted the Sox against Christy Mathewson and the New York Giants. In the first outing Wood struck out Art Fletcher and Doc Crandall, with the winning run on base, to end the game. In game 4 Wood, facing Jeff Tesreau for the second time, beating him 3-1 while striking out eight. The game ended with a Giant’s victory at the Polo Grounds. The score stood 3 games to 2 favor of the Sox.

     On October 15 Joe faced more than the Giants. Due to weather and disruption on the part of Boston fans he finished his warm- ups only to wait 45 minutes before the start of the game. He got clobbered  11-4. The next day Mathewson started the seventh game for the Giants with Wood in the dugout. By the seventh it was tied. By the eighth Smoky Joe was once again on the mound. This time he held the Giants to a run while Boston scored the go ahead runs in the tenth to win the Series. That was his third World Series win that year.

     He finished the 1912 season a phenomenal 34-5 after posting 23 wins the season before. He started 1913 on the right track posting an 11-5 record. It was then that he suffered a series of injuries that would ultimately end his pitching career. He went on to a 9-3 record in 1914 and was 15-5 in 1915. Excellent stats for most but not for Wood. Due to arm and shoulder injuries he sat out 1916 saying “I never threw a day after that when I wasn’t in pain.”

     In 1918 he got a second wind. A standout in right field for the Cleveland Indians, he batted .298 through 1922. His career batting average was .283 and he was 116-57 with a lifetime ERA of 2.03 holding 51 Red Sox records. Only nine home runs were hit off him during his entire career.

     With accomplishments like these Wood would certainly be inducted into the Hall-of-Fame, but to this day he is not. Insiders point to the brevity of his career although Hall-of-Famer Dizzy Dean played one less season. Others say it’s because he was never fully cleared of charges related to an alleged run-fixing scandal during an gray era when betting was widespread. An oversight on the part of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis left Joe’s name out of the mess when he exonerated Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, who had been “implicated in the impropriety.”

     Wood went on to coach baseball at Yale and was named to the all-time Red Sox pitching staff along with Babe Ruth, Cy Young and Lefty Grove. He passed away in 1985 at age 95.

     The criteria for admission to Baseball’s Hall-of-Fame says: Candidates shall be chosen on the basis of playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, their contribution to the team on which they played and to baseball in general. Wood scores high in all of these considerations and is deserving of honor at Cooperstown.

     Said Tris Speaker in 1958: “Joe, there is no question that you belong in the Hall-of-Fame. Unfortunately you hurt your arm at the height of your career. Your all around ability and the fact that you made yourself into a good big league outfielder should count.”

     Further information on the life of Smoky Joe Wood are available at the Ouray Historical Museum. Thanks to Joe’s son Bob Wood, and grandson Rob Wood for information on Ouray’s greatest athlete.

– Kevin Haley

MALE DOGS LIE SAYS STUDY

(Curville, CA) Old dogs do engage in new tricks if data collected at Cal Amari University is to be believed. According to a just completed study male dogs are consummate, if not refined, liars.

     Ninety percent of the canines observed attempted to lure female dogs into promiscuity by pretending to have food. The liars exuded or secreted a specific aroma that often convinced female dogs that the male knew where to get food or had food stashed. The results of the isolated tests have gone a long way toward convincing animal behaviorists that dogs are far more intelligent that had been supposed and gives further credence to the concept of letting a sleeping dog lie.

     “It’s the same with male humans,” said Dr. Efram Pennywhistle of Cal Amari. “How do you think all those marginal restaurants stay in business?”

     Pennywhistle, recently fired from his position as Head Wienerwurst at nearby Frankfurter Community College, insisted the data collected is relevant. He says secondary findings prove that cats have been lying to their keepers since the days of the Egyptians. 

“That,” he smiled, “should come as a surprise to no one.”

– Sterling Bidet   

     

WAITING FOR COUSTEAU

A rural harbor. A pier

Evening.

Estragon, sitting on the beach, is trying to take off his flippers and catch a fish with a spear. He pulls the flippers with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Enter Vladimir.

Estragon: (Giving up again) Nothing to be caught.

Vladimir: (advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart)

I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying, Vladimir, be reasonable, there are other fish to fry. And I resume the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turns to Estragon.) So there you are again with a line in the water.

Estragon: Am I?

Vladamir: I’m glad to see you back. I thought you had gone fishing on that boat forever.

Estragon: Me too.

Vladimir: Together again at last. We’ll have to celebrate with a fish fry. I have French wine. But how will we catch such? (He reflects) Get up till I embrace you.

Estragon (irritably) Not now. Not now. I think I have a bite.

Vladimir: (hurt, coldly) May I inquire where His Highness spent the night?

Estragon: On the boat.

Vladimir: (admiringly) A boat! Where?

Estragon: (without gesture) Over there.

Vladimir: And they didn’t make you clean fish?

Estragon: Clean fish? Certainly I cleaned fish.

Vladimir: The same lot as usual?

Estragon: The same? I don’t know.

Vladimir: When I think of it…all these years…but for me…where would you be…(Decisively) You’d be nothing more than carp bait, a little heap of bones at the present minute, no doubt about it.

Estragon: And what of it?

Vladimir: (gloomily) It’s too much for one fisherman. (Pause. Cheerfully) On the other hand what’s the good of losing your catch now, that’s what I say. We should have thought of a net a million years ago, in the nineties when the whales still roamed.

Estragon: Ah stop blathering and help me pull this bloody one in. We’re going to be in an underwater film.

Vladimir: Hand in hand from the top of the Eiffel Tower, among the first. We were respectable anglers in those days. Now it’s too late. They wouldn’t even let us throw out a line. (Estragon tears at the flippers) What are you doing?

Estragon: Taking off my oxygen tank. Did that ever happen to you?

Vladimir: Diving equipment must be taken off each day, I’m tired telling you that. Why don’t you listen to me?

Estragon: (feebly) Help me!

Vladimir: It hurts?

Estragon: (angrily) Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts! A spear hurts!

Vladimir: (angrily) No one ever suffers but you. I don’t count. I’d like to hear what you’d say if you were bitten by a barracuda!

Estragon: It hurts?

Vladimir: (angrily) Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!

Estragon: (pointing) You might button it all the same.

Vladimir: (stooping) True. (He buttons his fly.) Never neglect the little things of life.

Estragon: What do you expect, you always wait until the last moment to set the hook.

Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?

Estragon: Yes, let’s go

They do not move.

Continued next month

Green thumbs labeled anarchists

(Olathe) Persons with green thumbs tend to be anarchists warns Senator Oral Noise of the Liberal Fascist Party. He says statistics collected over the past decade indicate that people who grow gardens are less likely to go along with the flow and often strike out their own path.

     “We can’t have that,” says Noise.

     Tendencies within this wide range of the population generally indicate a lack of dependency on institutions and a desire to be self-sufficient. As one green thumb advocate puts it: “A man with an acre in corn and cucumbers is less likely to sign up for food stamps.”

     Noise who supports a proposal limiting the size of family gardens says many green thumb horticulturists are growing marijuana and guilty of tax evasion to boot.

     Some of them will sell a bag of butter beans for up to $2 and not pay a lick of tax,” he growled.

     Noise favors a plan that would set up a chain of corporate collective farms where the gov’ment could keep a closer eye on planting and production.

     In a related development the Montrose City Council failed to agree on request that developers must grow gardens when they destroy former pastureland to build subdivisions. The mandatory proposal, a brainchild of the local Organic Communist Party, calls for roughly one acre of green garden for each block of houses.

     “We already name our streets after local environmentalists and county commissioners,” said one developer. “Isn’t that enough?”