A couple of years ago, I
returned with my family to live in Fort Collins, Colo., a college
town I knew well as an undergraduate 21 years ago. In the heyday of
my college years, the Grange in the nearby tiny town of Bellvue was
the place to dance, and I remembered renting the place to raise
money for Art City Times, one of those papers
you put out when you’re young and willing to work for nothing. Not
long ago, I was invited to a different kind of fund-raiser at the
Grange; this time it was to help preserve the Grange itself, as
well as what’s left of Bellvue.
Instead of a lot of
20-somethings dancing to Ska, on this night toddlers joined their
families on the dance floor. An old couple smiled as my friend,
myself and our three kids took up seats at a shared table. My plate
was filled with delicious elk-meat fajitas, while our middle-aged
friends in the Poudre River Band were having fun improvising to
“Long Distance Information Give me Memphis, Tennessee.”
The scene had changed, but the old walls and worn wood floor were
the same as they had been over 20 years ago, and 100 years before
that. A table of old photographs was set out for anyone interested
in the family of Jacob Flowers, the man who founded the town. Some
of the pictures showed grim faces from a hard life. There was a
story that people called Flowers “Uncle Jacob” because he raised
pigs to give to the poor families of quarry workers, who lived at
what is now at the bottom of Horsetooth Reservoir.
While
the Bellvue Grange is a gem in my blurry college memories, as I
watched children jump puddles in the dirt alley outside, I became
keenly aware that the days of my ego-saturated youth were just a
blip in the history of the area. I recalled a news item about a
longtime Bellvue ranching family who’d received an angry call from
a neighbor, the owner of a new trophy home on the hill. The man
complained that a dead horse was rotting in the rancher’s back
pasture and sullying his view.
The rancher knew about the
horse, and explained that his pasture was so muddy he couldn’t move
in the heavy equipment needed to take out the carcass. The rancher
then told the newcomer that his trophy home on the hill was kind of
an eyesore to him. End of conversation. This was yet another tale
of the modern West where people and interests collide, each seeing
through different colored glasses.
Am I on the inside or
the outside? I wondered, as my friend and I watched her husband
having fun playing bass guitar. Before parenthood, he was in the
thick of the ’80s music scene in Los Angeles. I was grateful to the
old couple at our table who welcomed us. Would I be so kind if I
were them?
While I wasn’t raised here, I spent a pivotal
part of my youth here, and I want to be a part of its modern life.
My sister helps me connect. She owns a ranch in nearby Livermore
and sometimes works as a farrier. Thanks to her, I’ve been to a
post-branding party that was hosted in a huge old barn. Somehow,
cowhands found the energy to two-step after perhaps the hardest
day’s work of the year. It’s a continuing way of life that I always
feel privileged to glimpse.
It also makes me wish more
people had a chance to revel in the history that changed northern
Colorado. In town, we have neighbors from Russia, India and
Argentina, and all have come here for jobs developing software or
in engineering. They seem to spend their days between work and
big-box stores, and I doubt they know there’s still a rural
existence going on round them. You probably could say the same for
many Westerners. Sitting in the grange with me that night in
Bellvue, my friend mentions that she’d never tasted elk meat
before.
I step outside to check on the kids. Under the
stars, I point to some of the old buildings and their faded fronts,
trying to pass on a little history to the children. A boy who just
moved here from Los Angeles scoffs, “This is a town?”
“You bet,” I said, “and all the people dancing inside right now
love it.”
Sonia Koetting is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country
News (hcn.org). She is a freelancer writer who lives in
northern Colorado.
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