The Fire of the Angels

                                                            

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.

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.

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.

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.”  

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.

 

   P.S.  I read that Angel Fire was named for the fiery reflection of the late afternoon sun on the snow-covered mountains and not for the fantastic sunrise.  I suppose a Madison Avenue ad man named it to attract skiers.  He should have been there in the summer, just after 5:00 AM.