mo

Having spent many newspaper years among politicians -- mostly listening -- I developed a personal liking for several, dislike for a few and tolerance for most.
I didn't grade them on political affiliations or positions on issues. It was purely personal.
For instance I once wrote a column saying I'd rather sit down and have a beer and shoot the breeze with George W. Bush than with Al Gore.
I still feel that way, though I could never, ever vote for George Bush.
As a working newspaperman, I always did my best -- I truly did -- to put aside any such personal feelings and partisan opinions and just write everything straight down the middle.
I think I did pretty well at that. But that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy -- enormously enjoy -- the Mo Udalls and Pat Schroeders of this world.
For me, you see, Morris King Udall, the late congressman from Arizona and candidate for president, and Patricia Scott Schroeder, long-time congresswoman from Denver, remain my favorite politicians among all the pols I ever met or knew much about.
Why?
Well, for starters, both were smart, honest, dedicated, accountable, liberal, open-minded and compassionate. In addition -- and this is important -- while they could be deadly serious, both could be almost outrageously funny.
Politics can be fun, you know.
I first met Pat in 1972 when she ran for her first term out of a store-front office in east Denver. In the next two decades, I saw a lot of the witty and effective congresswoman.
I can't claim to have had nearly as much direct contact with Mo Udall, but I chatted briefly with him a few times on the campaign trail, followed his career at a distance and I still grin when I think of some of his campaign chatter, like a couple of quotes I happened to run across the other day.
Samples:
As a candidate for president: "I'm a one-eyed Mormon Democrat from conservative Arizona, and you can't have a higher handicap than that."
After finishing second in his fifth primary in a row: "The people have spoken, the bastards."
That's my kind of guy.

cinema

This week the Denver Post reported on a plan to turn Civic Center into an open-air movie theater for 30 nights this summer. It's said to be the first such venture for any U.S. city.
Well, for the record, I have to say this isn't exactly a new idea. My old home town had open-air summer movies 70 years ago.
My home town? That's McLouth, Kansas, founded mostly by Brits and Germans in the early 1880's near the northeast corner of the state.
McLouth's population? Not much, even today. And in the days of the outdoor movies it was maybe 500.
Okay. So it's not a city. Never was. But I bet the patrons of Denver's 21st century cinema won't enjoy it any more than we enjoyed ours in the thirties.
In both instances, as is often the case, money was the motivator.
In the 1930's, when I was a boy, the U.S. midwest was being ravaged simultaneously by depression and drought. Merchants in crossroad hamlets were suffering right along with city financiers.
Like today, people were reluctant to spend money even when they had it. Like today, folks often just stayed out of stores.
Well, as these hard times continued to crawl by, someone in McLouth got an idea how prospective customers might be lured "downtown" (Union Street) at least one day a week.
Give them something for nothing. Oldest trick in the book.
And so it was that McLouth merchants made a deal with a fellow who had a projector and temporary screen and access to cheap movies.
Presto! Saturday night movies. For free.
Seating? No problem. Set a bunch of planks in rows on concrete blocks on a vacant lot across the street from the postoffice and the city bandstand.
Sure, there was lots of squirming on those planks, but hey, it was free, wasn't it?
It beat driving six miles to Oskaloosa or ten miles to Tonganoxie and paying a quarter for a ticket to a real theater.
And since it didn't get dark enough to start the show until 9 o'clock there was plenty of time for waiting townspeople and farm families to drop by Dutch Chapman's grocery store and Red Luse's appliance shop and get a hamburger at Ott Harding's restaurant (which also was the only place in towm you could buy a beer).
I never really knew how McLouth's plan worked out financially. We kids didn't care.
Of course the 2009 Denver project isn't going to be free at all. It requires a temporary grandstand and tickets will be $15 or $20.
Obviously with this sort of outdoor event you have to be concerned about rain.
In dust-bowl Kansas in the 1930s that wasn't much of a worry. It hardly rained there for years.

good book

Over the years I have collected three translations of the Holy Bible, but seldom open any of them. Recently, however I was compelled to take a look inside the King James version.
Why? Because of news reports of the commercial, on-line sale of bumper stickers and T-shirts bearing this simple biblical message: "Psalm 109:8."
How does that verse read?
"Let his days be few, and let another take his office."
And at whom is that aimed today? Obviously at Barack Obams, already the target of a despicable, race-related hate campaign with a violent fringe.
Oh, no, you're wrong, weasel-worded apologists will say. You're taking words out of context, they will say. We aren't advocating assassination, only a one-term limit.
Really? Anyone who believes that should continue reading Psalm 109.
The very next words, in verse 9, are: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg . . ."
And, finally, in verse 13: "Let his posterity be cut off, and in the generation following let their name be blotted out."
Sounds pretty terminal. It's startling to see what twisted minds can do with a Psalm of David.
With that in mind, I was showing Psalm 109:8 to a fellow I know the other day. He recommended I look for guidance elsewhere in the King James.
He suggested Matthew 25, verses 35 and 36: ". . .for I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me."
Which, when you think about it, are inspiring words for all seasons.

The Bird

For more than 80 years, the dearest ladies of my life -- from a grandmother in the 1920s to a granddaughter in 2009 -- have lovingly served Thanksgiving turkeys to my family and me. Nothing is more traditional with us except Christmas.
So it isn't lightly I say what I'm about to say, which is this: In my considered opinion, when you get past the skin, no other food has less taste than the breast of a turkey, except maybe the breast of a chicken.
I most humbly apologize for saying that, but it's time someone did.
Personally I can't even imagine what could be done to make turkey white meat tasty. Still, this week, in the daily paper, a local foodie offered some suggestions along that line.
They're too voluminous to detail here, but they include juniper berries, fennel seed, limes, lemons, oranges, paprika, green and red chile strips, brown sugar, onions, garlic, molasses, apple cider, melted butter, a bottle of white wine and "a couple of soaked cedar planks under the turkey in the roasting pan for an extra punch of woody flavor."
Want to give that a try?
History says John F. Kennedy inaugurated the presidential tradition of granting a "pardon" to the ceremonial White House turkey to save its neck from the ax. I'd like to think he just preferred a prime rib roast or a Virginia ham.

dead end

No matter how many troops we put on the ground or how long they stay, the United States cannot "win" the war in Afghanistan. The United States can no longer even afford the war in Afghanistan, either in blood or money.
Any sort of open-ended commitment to continue that war and occupation will ensure that Barack Obama is a one-term president.
I hope to God I'm wrong. CRR 11:24:09

DIAMOND

It isn't news to family and friends that I've been a New York Yankee fan since Lou Gehrig. So yes, there I was this week, pulling for the Yanks to win their 27th World Series.
But not with any great enthusiasm. Times change.
For one thing, this season I also took a liking to the Philadelphia Phillies, a very good and scrappy young team that gave the bombers a pretty good run for the World Series rings.
For another thing, as a long-time Yankee loyalist, I admit I'm starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about being one of those people. Why am I applauding a team of multi-millionaire mercenaries for beating up on a team of ordinary millionaires?
Hasn't George Steinbrenner bought enough championships?
Well, if so, something of interest may be happening. Time may be catching up with the Yankees. The newly crowned champions, the new "dynasty," simply are getting old.
Look at the roster in terms of future baseball years: Derek Jeter is 35. Andy Petitte is 37. Mariano Rivera is 40. Johnny Damon is 36. Jorge Posada and Alex Rodriguez are 34. Hideki Matsui is 35. A.J. Burnett is 32.
Sure, they're still good at what they do, but for how long?
By contrast, look at the Phillies: Cliff Lee is 31. Cole Hamels is 26. Chase Utley and Jayson Werth are 30. Later this month Ryan Howard will turn 30, Jimmy Rollins will turn 31 and Shane Victorino will turn 29.
Which of these teams do you think is more likely to win a pennant next year?
I'd say the Phillies. They've got a spark. The Yankees don't.
Of course nobody can predict what the profligate Yankee owner will be doing in the meantime. George can throw enough money around to turn baseball upside down.
For example, this would be in character for him: He could raid the Phillies to get Chase Utley, merely to complete an all-star Yankee infield, and grab Cliff Lee. just to get another ace pitcher.
And suppose, in the next few years, the great Derek Jeter should decide to hang up his spikes. To fill that slot, Steinbrenner could grab the most valuable propery of our beloved Rockies, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki, who turned 25 last month.
See? The Rockies could always bring up another rookie infielder from the minors and spend a few years getting him up to speed.
You think that isn't quite fair? It doesn't have to be fair. It's baseball these days.

neptune

For this old coot, the daily mail is mostly trash that is dumped without ceremony in the recycle bin, But today - Oct. 14 - a couple of items brightened my day.
Along with the usual advertising leaflets and catalogs came envelopes from my family and from the Neptune Society.
Item No. 1: A new school picture of my lovely great-granddaughter Sami (for Samantha), who lives in Leadville.
Item No. 2: An invitation from a Neptune office in South Dakota to consider making a "pre-need" plan for a cremation to be conducted, by them, at some unspecified time in the future.
That doesn't sound to you like a brightener? Wait.
Enclosed was a card to be filled out and returned to Neptune. What it would do is enter me in a lottery, or a series of lotteries, for a free cremation.
I am not making this up. It says so right here. Neptune apparently is going to have monthly drawings, with free disposal the prize. Maybe anyone can enter.
My reaction to item No.1: A proud great-grandfatherly smile.
My reaction to item No.2: A hearty guffaw. Best laugh I've had in a week.

On winning

Lyndon Johnson lost a war in Vietnam. George W. Bush lost a war in Iraq. There were consequences.
Barack Obama is losing a war in Afghanistan.
How many presidents does it take? How many does it take to recognize that we can't, by force, convert a third-world nation into an orderly, responsible, peace-loving democracy?

Double Talk
Some time back. I complained here about how well-meaning nutritionists were meddling in my life (and still are), but now I want to mention a couple of other do-good campaigns that are about as obnoxious. To wit:
1, The medical know-it-all folks will tell you that to protect yourself from bacteria -- germs known and germs imagined -- you must wash your hands a very considerable number of times each day. Not just before and after handling food, but countless other times of ordinary activity.
2. They also will tell you that to maintain a proper level of hydration in your body, you must drink eight glasses of water a day, whether you’re thirsty or not. Iced tea, beer and watermelon don’t count..
These folks, doctors, nurses and public health experts, should know, shouldn’t they? Of course they should. But there are dissenting views. I ran across some in recent publications of Consumer Reports magazine.
One had to do with germs.
According to CR, preliminary studies suggest that past generations may have developed stronger immune systems and fewer allergies than we have today simply because they were exposed to greater numbers and varieties of microbes.
It says “overly strict hygienic standards” like today’s may in fact not be helpful in avoiding immune disorders and allergies.
Says further: “. . .It’s clearly not harmful for kids to play in the dirt, and not necessary for them to wash their hands 17 times a day,” quoting Joel Weinstock, M.D., an immunologist and professor of medicine at Tufts University.
Think about it. Suppose you scrub your hands surgically clean. What’s the first thing you touch? The faucet handle. Is it sterile? I doubt it.
And as often as you may choose to wash, how do you sterilize – and keep sterile – your door knobs, books, wallets, cookie jars, handbags, car keys, mouses, pillows, shoes, telephones, steering wheels, pillows, salt shakers, keyboards, TV remotes, sofas, broom handles and on and on. You can’t.
As for the traditional directive to drink eight glasses of water, that’s a well-intended myth dating back to the 1940s, according to Consumer Reports.
Some government body of that time recommended that people ingest 64 ounces of fluid daily, but that was meant to include all fluids obtained from foods and other beverages. It’s been misinterpreted for many years.
So you don’t have to choke down eight eight-ounce glasses of water. You can count a cup of coffee as well as a Scotch-and-soda, which is a pleasant thought.
As for your personal level of hydration, CR says. “let thirst be your guide,” and, as a double check, simply check the color of a readily observable bodily fluid.
Clear or pale yellow is okay.
.

terms

Many tributes have been paid to Teddy Kennedy in the past few days, by people of diverse political views, intellectual levels and social strata, and they were well deserved. One writer, for example, describes him as "the greatest senator of our age" and as "the liberal conscience of the nation."
Indeed, what other single person can you think of, of any political party or occupation, who has done more in the past 50 years to make things better for women, working people, the poor, the sick, the aged, the disabled, people of color, children, the abandoned, American society in general?
How did he do it? Well, he did it by stifling personal weaknesses, by accepting that he couldn't be president and by buckling down in the Senate for many, many years of gritty, inspired, quietly heroic, highly productive work.
It is important -- it is essential -- to understand one critical thing about Teddy's remarkable career in the Senate: it was very long -- term after term after term. He could not have begun to make the mark he made in six years, 12 years, even 18 years.
So we thank the voters of Massachusetts for Ted Kennedy. And we should. For would you believe that right here among us, right here in Colorado, there are hundreds of thousands of dedicated voters -- a multitude -- who would, if they could, clamp the same obnoxious, arbitrary limit on the number of terms of members of Congress that they have clamped on officials of state and county governments.
Term limits. It's a curse. Ridiculous? Sure. They'd do it. You'd better believe it.

Bicker

My name is Charley Roos. and I live in south Denver. I have been a registered Democrat for more than 60 years. I have been voting to send Democrats to Washington for more than 60 years, and, for me, the 2008 election was the most satisfying election of my lifetime.
And yet, while I can hardly believe this, less than a year later I find myself sorely frustrated and increasingly furious with the party and most of its leaders in Washington. I mean the lot of them -- leaders of both houses of Congress, committee chairmen and the man himself, the president of the United States.
As of this date, August 23, 2009, these people simply do not seem to possess the collective will, the guts or the focus to enact a genuine reform of health care. And meanwhile, the outnumbered but disciplined Republicans are making them look like bickering sixth-graders.
Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson would not only have known what had to be done, they would already be moving forward, in concert with loyal congressional leaders, to get it done. The Republicans could take it or leave it.
It’s time for some more of that brand of Democracy.
If I haven’t made myself clear, I’m madder than hell about this.

good deed

I've been waiting to hear the result of an investigation of the snake-head case in upstate New York, but I fear it may have fallen into the unsolved file.
Weeks have passed since a diner in a T.G.I. Friday restaurant said he found the severed head in a bowl of broccoli. According to press reports, lab tests showed the head hadn't been cooked, so it must have been dropped into the bowl there. The company asked the New York State Police To investigate.
Presumably the company wants the culprit punished. Not I, nor would many others, I suspect.
I would award him a gold star. As a result of what he (or she} did, nobody had to eat that bowl of broccoli. I think I may lay in a supply of snake heads myself.

fedup

Is there something wrong with me? There must be, for I am completely fed up with the maudlin maundering over the death of Michael Jackson.
He was an extraordinarily gifted kid who made a vast fortune with a unique style of music/dance that uncounted millions of fans came to treasure, came to treasure and celebrate while ignoring a side of Michael that wasn't so pretty.
He was a hop-head, of course, to use a blunt old term. And while I don't suggest he be harshly condemned for becoming an addict -- it's a tragically common weakness -- it doesn't make him a model for adoring fans, particularly the young, to emulate.
And his relationships with other people's children -- young boys, taken to his bed -- are something else entirely. Though he was acquitted a few years ago of serious criminal charges, he publicly admitted and vigorously defended sharing his bed with many children other than his own. Why?
On the occasion of his death, like the best and worst of us, he was entitled to a certain period of respect. Not day after day of blaring media sentimentality.

summertime

SUMMERTIME
The other day a Bronco running back voiced a timely observation on Denver’s attitude toward major sports. What he said was that since the Nuggets had been knocked out of the NBA playoffs, local fans were already “looking forward to football.”
He didn’t exactly say they were facing an empty summer, but I fear many do, indeed, feel they are. They have little or no affection for the third major sport, which is sad. For at least a few of us, the No. 1 game is baseball.
For us, those other sports are seasonal diversions. Baseball is serious business.
That is not to say the baseball fan always enjoys it. Baseball can make him suffer.
Remember 2007? The Colorado Rockies, after years of mediocrity, somehow put together a magic season-ending string of victories that landed them -- whoopee! -- in the World Series.
And then? Well, they blew it, ignominiously, four-zip.
Remember 2008? The Rockies returned to mediocrity. In 2009 they started out as one of the two worst teams in the major leagues. They couldn’t pitch, hit or defend. They were just awful.
But then, inexplicably, something strange happened. Overnight, they began to do it all -- pitch, hit and defend, all at the same time. They won eleven games in a row, sweeping series from the Cardinals in St. Louis, the Brewers in Milwaukee and the Seattle Mariners in Denver.
They did it with style. They even, eventually, got the full attention of the Denver Post. As this was written, in fact, there was a hopeful murmur that hey, guys, maybe we could see another run to a playoff berth.
That seemed unlikely. Nevertheless,for this fan, whatever happens the rest of the way, baseball remains No. 1.
Now I admit it’s a slow game with many breaks in the action, which turn off many people, but it’s partly because its a game that forces participants to stop, think and make adjustments.
When a hitter steps up against a top pitcher, he knows he may get a 95-mile-an-hour whistler two inches from his knuckles, or a nasty slider that looks quite hittable before it dives toward his shoe, or else a tantalizing curve that may or may not ever enter the strike zone.
At the same time, his manager or a coach may be flashing a signal he must recognize – hit, take, bunt, swing away. And meanwhile the opposing pitcher and catcher are guessing whether they’re more likely to whiff him with the slider or a knee-buckling curve or plain old high heat.
It takes lots of pondering.
Are other sports similar? Well, I know basketball teams have their game plans and plotted maneuvers, but the basic idea is simply to get the ball down the court and stuff it in the basket in fewer than 30 seconds and then race back to stop the other team from doing the same.
Football has extremely complex playbooks, and a forward pass can be a lovely thing, but who’s kidding? Most of the game is out-muscling and out-running the other team.
By comparison, baseball has a pace that is orderly and satisfying. It has a pleasing complexity. It has a down-home feel. And it has heart.
Think about this. To my knowledge, nobody has ever written a novel about football or basketball as good, as gritty, as down-to-earth as the Henry Wiggen books of Mark Harris. No other sport has inspired films as fine as “Bull Durham” or “Bang the Drum Slowly.”
Or has produced such a cast of characters:
Satchel Paige: “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you. . . .Throw strikes. Home plate don’t move.”
Yogi Berra: “If the fans don’t come out to the ball park, you can’t stop them . . . Baseball is 90% mental – the other half is physical”
Casey Stengel: “Being with a woman all night never hurt no professional baseball player. It’s staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in. . . .Can’t anybody play this here game? (the Mets, 1962)

Holiday
Promoting tourism is part of every Colorado governor’s job, and Bill Ritter has been working at this lately, urging constituents to vacation at home instead of zipping off to some seashore or amusement park or even Paris.
Unfortunately for this constituent, his old knees could no longer ramble around such faraway places anyway. In fact they could no longer hike the trail from Wild Basin, explore the Great Sand Dunes or prowl around Mesa Verde.
Yet over the years, with my family, I’ve had some great vacations in our state, corner to corner. We even enjoyed bone-wearying tourist trips around the great highway circle – Denver-Grand Junction-Durango-Alamosa-Denver.
And beyond these family travels, as a newspaperman I often had the pleasure of skipping around the state with touring politicians, usually at close range.
They didn’t take me along because they liked me. They took me along to be sure to get into the newspaper.
Except for politics, I probably would never have met good folks in places like Wray, Holyoke, Holly, Simla, Crook, Westcliffe, Walden, Creede, Lake City, and other scattered points . I would not likely have traversed Slumgullion Pass or dropped by Gus’s Place in Pueblo.
Now of course it is true that all this time I was a working reporter -- filing stories, putting in long hours and collecting regular pay checks, but the plain truth is, I was having the time of my life.
And except for politics, I never would have received some extra bits of instruction on Colorado geography from four governors while accompanying them on campaign flights.
On one occasion, Steve McNichols, en route to Grand Junction, had the pilot alter his route slightly to show me where a new resort called “Vail” was being developed down below.
Dick Lamm, headed to Alamosa, pointed out the pattern of a once-planned but unbuilt and long-abandoned town site – a bare outline of ghostly “streets” and “blocks” scratched by a bulldozer into the sandy floor of the San Luis Valley.
John Vanderhoof, flying himself to Montrose, tipped his plane over on one wing so I could look almost straight down into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
Roy Romer, headed toward Pueblo, directed my attention to the unspoiled expanse of Greenland Ranch stretching below. He said that beautiful property simply had to be preserved from Front Range urbanization. And it has been.
As for vacationing in Colorado, We’ve been to the Broadmoor and some other nice places, but I have to say my family’s very favorite spots were more down to earth.
There were just two: Glenwood Springs and a rough, one-room cabin in North Park on Jack Creek, teeming with little brook trout.
Those were the best of times.
ññññññññ

black

What's all this about black suits?
Have the movers and shakers of this country turned into sartorial lemmings?
I guess it must have been going on for some time, but only the other day did I recognize the scope of what had happened: Big Shots now wear black suits. Period. Basically nothing else.
I never in my life had a black suit {except a brief, unhappy acquaintance with a tuxedo} and I don't want one now. Black suits are fundamentally ugly, funereal, monotonous, dorky.
And if you think I'm exaggerating how uniform they have become - that's a pun, son - let me cite some examples. While watching the three big cable news channels the other day for ninety minutes or so, I took names.
Uniformly black-suited were Barack Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres and a whole roomful of their aides, Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Karl Rove, John Edwards, Congressman Jack Murtha, Pat Buchanan and a host of TV's political blabbermouths including Chris Matthews, Lou Dobbs, Roland Martin, Mike Barnicle, Keith Olbermann and Carl Cameron.
Dobbs, Martin and Olbermann wore the pin-stripe model.
Ted Kennedy and Shepard Smith wore gray and Bill O'Reilly wore all-but-black navy blue. The only downright rebels I saw were GOP Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana, who looked classy in a tan outfit at MSNBC, and cable newsman Nic Robertson who made a report in a tan suit jacket from some dismal spot in Afghanistan.
It's depressing. It's an awful trend I don't understand. Did someone pass a law?

waterboard

Waterboarding is big news and a big headache for Barack Obama these days, and it seems the president doesn't quite know what to do about it.
Is it a crime, and if it is, who ordered it done, and shouldn't somebody pay for that? And if it is not a crime, why not?
Decisions, decisions.
Well, as it turns out, the reluctant Obama isn't the first president who's had the problem. Teddy Roosevelt dealt with it in the Philippine Islands more than 100 years ago.
Author Edmund Morris tells about that in the second volume of his biography of Teddy, "Theodore Rex."
Roosevelt had become president in 1901 upon the assassination of William McKinley. He inherited, among other things, a brutal guerrilla war between native Filipinos and the United States Army.
The islanders had suffered for three centuries under Spanish rule, and when that ended with the Spanish-American War, what happened to them? A treaty was signed in Paris handing them over to the United States.
The Filipinos, who all along had the quaint notion they deserved to be free, seemed to hate us as much as the Spaniards, and they kept right on fighting. To some of them, unfortunately, this meant they could commit horrible acts of mayhem and torture on individual U.S. soldiers,
Our soldiers responded in kind, to such an extent that it aroused national protests at home and even led to congressional hearings. According to biographer Morris, witness after witness testified to widespread use of the "water cure," which, the author says, had been "developed by Spanish priests as a means of instilling reverence for the Holy Ghost."
Also reported to Congress were flogging, "toasting," and stringing up by the thumbs.
Waterboarding methods apparently have differed slightly over the centuries, but the basics are the same: the victim is strapped or held firmly down, face up. A cloth is placed over his face, and water is poured on the cloth until the choking victim truly believes he is drowning.
Dismayed by these disclosures, the bustling young president met with his cabinet early in 1902 and demanded a full briefing. Told that one general had been ordered to report for trial. he decided that wasn't enough.
He directed his secretary of state to send a cable to the general in command of the army in the Philippines. In that cable, Morris writes, Teddy pledged to back the army "in the heartiest fashion in every lawful and legitimate method of doing its work . . .(but}. . . nothing can justify or will be held to justify the use of torture or inhuman conduct of any kind on the part of the American Army."
He also ordered the court-martial of a general.
Yes. Waterboarding was a crime in the Inquisition, a crime in the Philippines in 1901 and a crime wherever and whenever committed just recently by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Genealogy, they say, is the history of a person’s descent, and I suspect it means more and more to a fellow as he grows old. I know it meant little to me when I was young, and that’s a shame.
I’ll try to explain.
Once a fellow is old, you see, it’s too late to learn much of what’s really important about his family history -- not just when and where his forebears lived, whom they married, how many children they had, what they did for a living, when they died. Those are statistics.
The real story is how they lived – the games they played, what they laughed at, what they cried about, when they were good, when they weren’t, what they celebrated, what they fought about, how they made peace, how they spent their spare time, how they coped with grief, isolation, betrayal, hard times, sinfulness, violent weather, disease and separation.. No one is left to tell.
What brought this to mind was a recent column in the Denver Post. The writer, while visiting the homeland of her ancestors, happened to discover a cousin she didn’t know she had. Somehow this account of a look into the past brought back some memories to me -- guilty memories, in a way, -- of my own, dear maternal grandmother, Annie Maria Stout Steeper, of McLouth, Jefferson County, Kansas.
Now of course I know many things about Annie Steeper. I know she was born in 1864 in Boston, England, to William T. and Sarah Stout and came with the family to the United States in 1871. But I don’t know just why they came to the U.S. in that year, why they came to Kansas, of all places, or why they settled almost immediately on a farm near where a town called McLouth would soon be organized.
I know Annie’s mother died in 1876 of what was then called “consumption,” leaving Annie, the older sister at 12, with much of the responsibility for the care of brothers and sisters. I know her father married a second time, in 1881, and Annie, the very next year, at age 18, married Charles Henry Steeper, who had also come from England and had bought a nearby farm..
I know Charley Steeper, in 1883, moved with Annie and their four children to the new town of McLouth, built a two-story house, got into insurance and joined his father-in-law and a couple of others to form the town bank. I know Charley and Annie Steeper had four children and eventually seven grandchildren, all of whom , at least briefly, lived within one long block of each other..
I know Charley Steeper died in 1916, of leukemia I think, but my grandma lived to be 80, loved and leaned on by three generations. All of which is why I still have a sort of guilty feeling.
: I was born in her house, you see, and lived there for some years. We were close for many, many years, and I have collected lots of statistics about the early times, but I must confess this: I never once sat down, as I should have, and talked with her about important things in her day-by-day life, her family’s life, in those early days. I just didn’t bother.
For instance, what was it like for her, at age seven, to be torn away from friends, from a comfortable home in a historic English town, where her father had been in business and her mother had conducted a school for young ladies, and to be plunked down on a farm in raw, mostly barren northeast Kansas?
What did she think of her family duty, toiling away, starting at age 12, with helping raise her father’s other children? How far away was a doctor? What about schooling? There probably was a one-room country school, with one poorly equipped teacher, but there was no town yet.
How did she get together with Charley Steeper? Were there others?
And what kind of a husband did he turn out to be? I know he was a pillar of the community and a banker and all that, but was he good to his young bride? Did he tell her he loved her? Did he consult with her on important decisions? Did he remember birthdays? Did he allow let her to spend money, real money?
Did he go off with the boys and stay half the night? According to an old news item, before leaving England he had been a reporter for two years for the Western Daily Mercury in Plymouth, and everyone knows how riotous the life of a single young newspaperman can be.
In later life, after and settling down in town, Charley made at least three long railroad trips -- to Colorado, the Pacific coast and England. By himself? Notes that he left don’t indicate Annie was along.
And what about all those one-day train trips to Leavenworth he recorded in his skimpy little business diary? He rode up there in the morning and rode back in the afternoon. What was he doing?
Well, on one particular day, he noted that he had bought two gallons of whiskey. Did he take the booze home – to the home of a very committed member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union? If he did, what did she have to say?
Also, along that line, in later years, how did my grandma get along with the men who married her two daughters -- men from families who were much more friendly toward alcohol, men who, of my certain knowledge, didn’t abide by the law called “Prohibition.”
(In my mother’s family it was commonly known as “temperance,” but there was nothing temperate about it, It was prohibition. It was living as dry as a sun-bleached buffalo bone.}
When I was maybe six or seven, at Sunday School, I was instructed one day to sign a card bearing this “temperance” pledge: “That I may give my best service to home and country, I promise, God helping me, not to use intoxicating liquor in any form.”
I signed it, and I still have that little card, and once, long afterward, my grandma reminded me of it. But by then even she knew it was too late -- way too late..
Being the great lady she was, she always loved me anyway, but I knew I disappointed her. We could have sat down and talked about that.
.

The pressure is on, from every which way, to make sure I'm eating nutritious meals. It's partly family, it's medical, it's generational, it's even governmental. And, as they all say, I should know it's for my own good.
Really? I'm not as sure about that as they are.
In gentler times, the diet experts used to be more diplomatic. They might have suggested a scoop of Jell-o for dessert instead of a piece of pie. And I might have said okay.
But that was then. Now they make it seem almost like life-or-death. It's too late now to be fooling around. It's urgent business.
What we've done is emerge into what I call tofu time. We're expected to shun salt, skimp on sugar, drink fat-free milk, trim the fat off the beef.
Like it or not.
We must learn to love broccoli, Brussels sprouts, arugula, cauliflower, spinach and such. We should recognize that even seaweed, as a food, has medicinal value.
Well!
Obviously this is revolutionary change for a guy who grew up in the rural Midwest when meals meant bacon-and-eggs, meat-and-potatoes, hefty desserts. When the side vegetable was likely to be green peas, some kind of bean, corn, perhaps a carrot, beet or turnip.
Salt and sugar were our friends.
While it is true that my family, once in great while, would put a bowl of cauliflower or spinach on the table, I never ate them. To this day I wouldn't touch spinach with a ten-foot fork.
Nowadays, in promoting its campaign of what's-good-for-you, the tofu/fat-free establishment will occasionally issue a list of "basic foods." These commonly include chunks of stark, naked, tasteless fish, strips of skinless chicken, clumps of green, leafy stuff my uncle used to call rabbit food.
It's all disappointing.
But now, in closing what I admit is a biased rant, I want to make something clear. I would never presume to consider myself any sort of expert on food. My only credential is that I really enjoy things that taste good, tolerate others and ignore the rest.
And finally, just for the hell of it, I will take the liberty of suggesting a few of my own "basic" foods:
They are: butter, bacon, corn bread, prime rib, mashed potatoes and gravy, cherry pie, fried catfish, shrimp fried rice, chocolate ice cream, green chili, peaches, Irish whiskey, cheesecake and zucchini (if properly cooked with onion and jalapeno].
Yes, I know. It's been drilled into me, over and over, that this sort of diet is so unhealthy it's dangerous. It means I can never hope to reach a ripe old age.
I'll take the chance.
Charley Roos, age 87.