When RD and
I first started planning a life together we had dreams, big dreams. At the time
we were in our twenties, worked at the same lumber supply and home
manufacturing company, and I had a two-year-old son. We had no money. I was
making $1.90 per hour and RD $650 per month. We both were getting
divorces and paying off the bills we had incurred in our first marriages, but
we didn't let that dampen our dreams.
In the
spring of 1971 RD's thoughts were still very much caught up in the Vietnam War
and his recent stint with the U.S. Navy's Underwater Demolition Team 11. Although not a corpsman, his experiences treating trauma victims, teammates needing penicillin, and even
a pregnant Vietnamese woman inspired him to seek a career in medicine. He
talked with our family doctor, Maynard "Mike" DeYoung about the path
to Physician's Assistant, with his goal to work on an Indian Reservation in the
West. That PA path was long, expensive, and ultimately abandoned as not practical,
not do-able. But the dream was important, fueling his and my imaginations for
many months as we planned our futures together.
That same
year, 1971, RD's father, Doyle Russell, helped us find a place out in the
country, a small acreage with an old house, dairy barn, granary, silo, and
chicken house. We fell in love with the place and pursued our dream of building
our own home and living a rural life where we could raise our son and a few
chickens too.
That dream came true! With much hard work, bartering with tradesmen and
finding bargains on building materials, we moved into our dome home in 1978.
There was
another dream we shared, inspired by a magazine article we read about an
artists' retreat. As I recall it featured a rural property with a main house
surrounded by small cottages, each easily accessible by walkways but cleverly
landscaped to give each cottage a feel of isolation and privacy. Artists of
many persuasion, musicians, writers, painters, and poets, were welcome to stay
in the cabins and create their works without interruption. Their meals were
delivered in baskets and left on doorsteps like room service at a hotel.
RD and I liked to imagine building those cabins on our place, and all the meals
he would cook and deliver, for cooking was one of his own expressions of
creativity and love. And I liked to dream of landscaping and growing
flowers with strong scents that would drift in through the open windows.
Although we didn't build those cottages nor host those artists I believe our
dreams and intentions were at play when we opened our home to our musician
friends Charlie and Moose, Starla, Steve, Dave, and more, fed them big meals, and made
lots of music!
And there
was a retirement dream, early in our relationship, and it, too, was inspired by
something we read. In 1976 James Michener published his book
"Centennial" which we both dearly loved. And we read the companion
book "In Search of Centennial" A Journey With James A. Michener by
John Kings which told of Michener's time in
Weld County, Colorado, the area where RD was born and
lived the first eleven years of his life.
We also read a terrific article in
Colorado Heritage, The Journal of the Colorado Historical Society, 1982 Issue
1, where we learned that James Michener as a young man had come to Greeley,
Colorado in 1936 to teach history at Colorado State College of Education, now
University of Northern Colorado. While there he spent three years, dusty days
of the Depression, traveling the plains, meeting the people, learning the
problems of this semi-arid land.
When James
Michener finished his book "Centennial" he dedicated it to three men:
Floyd
Merrill of Greeley, who showed me the rivers; Otto Unfug
of Sterling, who taught me about cattle;Clyde
Stanley of Keota, who introduced me to the prairies.
A favorite
story is the first time he met Clyde Stanley in December of 1972, "On a
trip to the ghost town of Keota, abandoned but for the still-functioning post
office, Michener opened the door and a wispy old man stepped forward to greet
us, unusually bright of eye and witty of speech. He told us that the rest of
the town had pretty well blown away, but there he was, ready to sell us stamps
if we needed any."
I could go
on and on about Clyde Stanley, his sister Faye, their developing friendship
with James Michener, even appearing in the story of Centennial as the character
Walter Bellamy, but this is about our dream of retiring to
Weld County, specifically to the town of Grover. You see, we made that drive
to Keota, read all we could find about the town in its heyday, the abandoned
railroad there, and the cause of its demise. But Keota is and was a ghost town.
Nearby Grover, only fourteen miles away as the crow flies across the Pawnee
National Grassland, had, in the 1970s, a grocery store, a gas station, and even
a cafe. What more could retirees want? Ha!
As
retirees, now in our late 70s and early 80s, I can tell you that we want nearby
doctors, grocery stores, and Krispie Kremes! Grover no longer appeals to us,
but that dream of retiring there kept us going during years of working 9 to 5 at jobs we didn't like. And another
thing about that retiring-to-Grover dream I have realized is that although I
was drawn to Colorado for her majestic Rocky Mountains, thanks to RD's love of
the high, dry plains of Eastern Colorado and James Michener's book Centennial,
I too, am a fan of Eastern Colorado, its flat plains, the antelope, the sand lilies, and the wind,
yes, even the wind.
As for
dreams, we still have them. While our friends are downsizing, moving to places
where lawn mowing doesn't dominate their summers, giving away their collections,
being practical about their lifestyles, RD and I are still surrounded by all
the things we love, like cats and books, and leaves and trees. But that's who
we are, dreamers. And I thank God for that and for our shared interests and
experiences, and for this year's dreams we dare to share only with one another.
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