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| Angel Fire at dawn |
Sitting with an old friend at 5:15 in the morning, sipping a steaming
cup of black coffee on Davis Ford’s front porch in New Mexico, we watched as a
faint rose-colored glow started to show in the east, just over the mountain and
just under the cloud cover. Soon an intense red fire filled the triangle
formed by the mountains and the dark clouds above.
After several minutes, crimson rays
began to grow out of the formation and tentatively creep across the bottom of
the cirrus clouds, lighting them up.
Within seconds the fleecy white clouds that had been invisible in the
dark glowed fiery red, filling the sky with intense color. The entire sky ignited with “Angel Fire.” Another day began.
I had decided not to include this post on my blog,
considering it too personal, but it is, after all, about a bunch of boys from Lubbock—old
boys, but Lubbock boys, none the less. I
won’t ask that you do the math, we’re all around seventy-eight years old, and showing
that age in various ways. All of us hurt
somewhere and some of us hurt everywhere, but, characteristically, no one from Lubbock mentions his pains
or infirmities. Some were too old to fish,
sightseeing was fun so long as we stayed in the car, and we almost lost Brad in
a hot tub, but everyone’s sense of humor stayed intact. We laughed our wrinkled old asses off.
Eight of us, classmates from Lubbock High School, enjoyed Davis Ford’s
hospitality at Angel Fire for two days, and then drove north to Creede,
Colorado, to join three other classmates, making eleven people with at least
one thing in common. We all graduated
from high school on Friday, May 27, 1955, at the Fair Park Coliseum in Lubbock,
Texas. Technically, Brad didn’t walk
across the stage that night due to complications having to do with the mindset
of Lubbock in the fifties, but he got his diploma the next week and it is just
as official as any of ours.
We laughed. We fished.
We joked. We ate. We explored.
We laughed. We enjoyed each
other.
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| Headquarters at Freemon Ranch near Creede. |
Our hosts for the Creede and Gunnison parts of the trip, James Collins
and Neil McMullen, had several reasons to put together this package. They want to stay connected . They enjoy fly fishing and leading others to
their favorite hot spots. They want to
share the magnificent mountains they love.
They enjoy laughing with old friends.
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| McMullen's justifiably famous scratch biscuits and gravy, with a side of bacon. For dessert, smear one of these babies with soft butter and top it with grape or apricot jelly--it'll stick to your ribs. |
Many times, when visiting with a friend from my youth, I have a quiet
yearning to end the visit. I want to
move on, finish this conversation and speak with someone else. I’ve wondered about this, and decided that I
have placed that person in a certain box in my memory and he or she has
changed. I want to get away, so I can
put them back into their proper boxes and not be confused by the people they
have become. Unless they are very
interesting, I don’t want to make a new box.
I was not bothered by that sensation on this trip with these guys.
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| Did I mention that we laughed? This in Neil's backyard at Gunnison. I didn't step it off, but I'd say the Gunnison River, there on the right, is about forty feet from his back door. |
These men are the same people they were in high school, evolved and
polished by time and experience. It is
not possible for these guys to be boring—they have special talents which have
carried them past the norms in life. All
have that deep-seated ambition that is a trademark of the High Plains. Their careers span those initials we read
about—MDs, MBAs, PhDs, LLBs, CEOs, and Captains of Industry. I felt honored to be included. Did I mention how much we laughed?
We learned important lessons, just growing up in
Lubbock. Ten years old and almost crying after I struck out
once, a baseball coach at the Boys Club put his hand on my shoulder and told me,
“As long as you’re swinging son, you’re dangerous.” I took the message to heart and have used it often
throughout my life. It fits a lot of situations.
The
Creede Crew in alphabetical order: James
Collins, Davis Ford, Truitt Garrison, Jim McLaughlin, Neil McMullen, Larry
Merriman, James Pope, Wayne Ratisseau, Brad Reeves, Paul Sikes, and Roy Turner. This is a funny bunch of old men—boy, did we
laugh.
The whole week was wonderful, if perhaps a bit bittersweet because of
our age. Time polished some of us a bit
more than others, and leaned heavily on all of us, but we’re still here and
we’re still swinging. I cannot help but
remember a line from a favorite poem of mine—“Why, to be in such fine company
would make a deacon proud.”
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| This little creek feeds into the Rio Grande. During the 1880's, the stage coach from Creede to Lake City stopped overnight here, to give the passengers a needed rest. The Rio Grande originates in those mountains beyond. All this was part of Texas until 1848. |
