As the 1960s sunk into the next decade, I decided to leave San Francisco, to “get my head together.” A friend knew I had carpentry skills and suggested I contact a woman who owned property in the Colorado Rockies above Boulder. She needed a handyman. A cabin was available. That seemed attractive. To get away from the protests and the war, live the simple life, and work with my hands.

I wrote to my friend’s contact and received a shaky-handed but ladylike postcard from Hazel Schmoll, the property owner in Colorado.

So, we headed for Ward, Colorado, a town that had been built around the mines that dotted the Colorado canyon landscape. Rusting headframes and pyramid-shaped mine dumps flowed down the hills from the old mines.

When we arrived, we found a semi-habitable cabin in a lovely location with a wood stove in the kitchen, an ancient coal stove in a second room, no running water, and no electricity. Welcome to country livin’.

I met with Hazel, a delicate but lively lady who had been the Colorado State Botanist for several decades. She was a crafty woman who looked at me knowingly through rheumy eyes. After a sweet conversation over iced tea, she had ascertained that I would suffice as a carpenter for the many tasks that awaited me at her “summer places.”

She owned a large hostel, a former resort, up in the national forest. In town, she owned several cabins refurbished with 1920s plumbing, and what she called her “commercial property” on Main Street. She wanted me to spruce up the aging storefront to make it attractive to potential businesses that might want to land in the abandoned mining town.

I walked through the place. It was a wreck. Decades of heavy snows and wind had gradually pushed the old structure into a downhill-canted parallelogram. The foundation consisted of assorted mine timbers, pine logs, and rusty steel stanchions cadged from abandoned mine tunnels.

I returned to break the news to Hazel, that her “commercial property” was both unusable and a wreck. She took my report pleasantly, folded her hands in her lap and said simply, “so we shall begin anew.” And that was how my first venture into house building began.

With the aid of new friend, Douglas, a personable peer who had escaped to the sleepy mountain town with his young wife and baby, I began anew by tearing the old building down. Much of the wood was useable, so we stored it across Main Street in an old union meeting hall that creaked in the breeze like an ancient sailing vessel.

First, we poured a concrete slab for the new building’s floor. We hoped to keep the basement open at one end to allow townsfolk, largely pickup-driving refugees from modern life’s rat races, shady pasts, and the war in Vietnam.

Next, we laid cinder block basement walls, including the installation of a behemoth cast iron stove elegantly labeled as a “Chicago Hot Blast.” We framed upwards, using the old material whenever possible until we had recreated Hazel’s commercial property with two large display windows facing Main Street, a spacious front porch to encourage loitering, and a western-style false front.

By early autumn, the aspens had turned yellow, the building was completed, and we celebrated with the townsfolk, gathering around huge pots of venison chili, spaghetti and meatballs, chips, salads, and plenty of beer. We danced into the night, sharing visions of how we could do Hazel right by converting Hazel’s commercial property into Ward’s own community center.

*

“Charlie!” The night air was cold and still. My girlfriend stood at the window in her nightgown. “Get up!”

Tongues of red and orange light flickered on the bedroom wall. Zoom barked at the kitchen door. The sound was explosive. I jumped out of bed, cold air shrinking my skin.

“Something’s burning,” she said. “Look.” She made room for me at the window.

The sky was lit with cinders; they glowed as they slid up a tower of angry smoke. A pickup truck whined past.

“That’s the center of town,” I said, stumbling into my trousers. “My socks,” I cursed, my hands shaking. “Where are my socks!” I scuffled into the street, boots unlaced, our dog Zoom racing up the road ahead of me.

A neighbor pulled up in his truck and I jumped on the running board, my hands freezing in the wind. We roared up Left Hand Canyon Road and rounded the bend.

Flame belched out of every window in Hazel’s brand-new, recycled storefront. Flowers of fire blossomed around the chimney and flew into the sky, reflected from every cabin window on the hillside.

Uphill, headlights gathered at the old barn where the Ward Volunteer Fire department housed the town firefighting equipment, an overloaded Ford pickup equipped with a 400-gallon tank of water.

The neighbor stopped in front of the burning building.

I jumped off.

“Stay here,” he hollered.

I stared at the flames.

“Don’t move,” he shouted.  “You hear me? Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll be right back with the truck.” He powered up the road against the roar of the flames.

Shock ran through my body like electricity but there was nothing I could do. Mute, out of breath, I stood frozen to the ground, protecting my face with a forearm. The heat and angry motion of combustion pushed me back. I watched the rafters ignite while my face tightened with the heat and my ass froze in the cold night air.

The town truck pulled onto the scene, loaded with our motley crew of firefighters. Doug jumped from behind the wheel, grim in his long-johns and cowboy hat.

I glared at him. What kind of a fool wears a cowboy hat to a fire? My building was burning down.

I must be doing it wrong.

I turned superstitious.

I had transgressed against my real life, back in the city — the theater collective, my vow to stop the war. This conflagration was the payback. I caught myself and began to haul the canvas hose out of the truck.

Johnny Adair, our local deputy and fire chief showed up, furious, a parka covering his undershirt. “You see what we got here?” he shouted toothlessly in my face. “We got people running around with their dicks in their hands. Jesus Christ.”

There was no adapter for the hydrant. Amidst shouts and countermands, the volunteers scrambled to find the missing link while the front of Hazel’s community center ate itself for breakfast.

Another neighbor pulled the adapter out from under the passenger’s seat of the truck. With the hoses hooked up, we had water on the fire in minutes. The flames retreated, but not before Hazel’s structure had been badly torched into a cross-hatch tangle of wet, stinking, carbonized sticks.

I trudged downhill to my place. Wooly and Zoom sniffed at my trousers and looked up at me, curious.

“Yeah. That’s fire you smell.” I said and filled their pans with breakfast kibble. “Dad’s night out. The eve of destruction.”

*

Turns out one of our thicker townspeople had been working on his truck in the basement. He had stoked up the Chicago Hot Blast, did his truck repairs and drove off, leaving the Hot Blast roaring. The chimney caught the floor on fire, the floor caught the wall on fire, and away she went.

Well, we rebuilt that sonofabitch building and threw another opening night party. Hazel was back again, dancing delicately to the sounds of “Gimme Shelter,” by the Rolling Stones. And do you know? That building still stands, much the way we built it, back in the crazy days of 1970.

#  #  #

Now wild fires are added to the list of climate change based disasters, which may have been avoidable if only Gore had become president … and if only we had listened.
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Fireman Phil came to Marble Elementary School.  We first-graders were gathered in the school gym, seated cross-legged on the floor.  What makes a fire?  How do you stop it?  Do you throw water on oil (no!)?  This is a fire extinguisher. If you are on fire, don’t run–drop and roll.  It’s been over 60 years and I still remember.

When I was 13, Hannah came up with the brilliant idea of lighting perfume (okay, probably eau de cologne) because it made such a cool blue flame.  We shared the dorm room where she was conducting her experiment that evening with a couple of other girls.  Ever helpful, and ignoring the prevention part of my first grade fire lesson, I suggested it would be cheaper to light nail polish remover.  Someone came up with a bottle and doled out a few drops, which lit beautifully.  She then decided to add a bit more, carefully dripping liquid over the flame, which promptly jumped back into the hovering bottle.  Aaah!  She flung the bottle out of her hand and across the room.

In an instant, the room was alight with bits of burning polish remover that had scattered onto the floor, the bed, the desk.  Worse, some of the places where it landed were starting to burn underneath.  Dorothy ran to the bathroom sink to get a cup of water. Hannah was useless and agitated. That wasn’t going to help. I grabbed the small area rug and started madly beating out the flames, smothering them.  Every time one spot was extinguished, another behind me flared up, but after a frenzy of rug beating, everything was finally out.

We sat in the aftermath looking at each other, hearts racing, the smell of charred paper and burned acetone in the air, bits of carbon on the surfaces of the room. That was really close.  It was really bad.  Our frightened eyes spoke the truth that we would never do anything like that again, ever.

After a few minutes, we heard footsteps on the stairs leading up to our attic room.  Mademoiselle Schrader, the dorm resident supervisor, with her thick yellow-tinted glasses.  She spent most of her time entertaining M. Borle in the suite two levels below–we had probably interrupted them. She jerked open the door and we all looked at her with surely guilty looks.  She knew something was afoot, but somehow missed the clues.  Hannah bravely spoke up and assured Mlle. that everything was just fine, nothing to see here.  Well then, (after a few stern piercing eye sweeps over the miscreants) everyone go back to your rooms and go to bed, right now!

Who could sleep?  As I lay there, relieved that I had remembered enough to beat out the fire, I whispered to myself, “Thank you, Fireman Phil.”

 

Postscript:  I see in my yearbook picture that M. Borle is listed as the “General Safety Officer of the Fire Squad”.  Good thing he didn’t follow Mlle. Shrader up the stairs!

The fire was blowing along the ridgeline in our direction.  Trees were candling—igniting and throwing off firebrands--burning hunks of wood. Now the fire had jumped the vast concrete firebreak of Hwy 24 into the Oakland Hills. 
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Allons! the road is before us! It is safe–I have tried it–my own feet have tried it well–be not detain'd! Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen'd! Walt Whitman.
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When I think of rainy days, and the melancholy effect they can have on us, I think of an episode of the classic TV sitcom, Barney Miller, a wry, understated  comedy series that ran from 1975-82.  The episode was called simply, “Rain,” and you can watch it at that link.

For the uninitiated, who missed one of the era’s best comedy series as well as the most ethnically and racially diverse, Barney Miller is set in New York City’s 12th Precinct police station on East 6th Street in Greenwich Village.  Each episode takes place almost entirely within the tight confines of the detectives’ squad room and Capt. Miller’s adjoining office, which subs as a patient treatment room. And the patients are Miller’s detectives.

Miller the multitasker

Miller is not only the police captain, but also the camp counselor and psychologist for his laid-back crew of detectives. It’s as if all the lovable misfits of the NYPD have been assigned to this 12th Precinct and Miller’s care. And that’s great news for the viewers of this show.

A typical episode features the detectives of the 12th bringing in several zany  complainants and/or suspects to the squad room. Usually, there are two or three separate subplots in a given episode, with different officers dealing with different crimes.

Under a leaky roof

In the “Rain” episode, the action around the squad room is particularly slow, apparently because the crooks on the street are staying home out of the rain.

Barney and his dim light bulb Detective Wojciehowicz (mercifully nicknamed “Wojo”) are leaning on their respective windowsills as they stare blandly at the raindrops splashing against the windows.

They begin contemplating the meaning of life, wondering if this is all there is to it, and wondering when it will stop raining.

“Can you give me some idea of when this will stop?” Miller asks a meteorologist on the phone. “Forty days, maybe?”

The Rockefeller Effect

Meanwhile Sgt. Nick Yemana, the designated coffee maker, has opened his window to catch some rainwater to make the day’s brew. The idea is it may produce something more ingestible than his normally questionable java.

“Some guy claims that the rain is controlled by the Rockefeller family,” he says, reading from the newspaper. “To bring about a one-world government. Ever seen Rocky with an umbrella? He don’t need one. It don’t rain on him.”

Meanwhile, Sgt. Amenguale is slowly going nuts at his desk, which is filled with tin pans catching raindrops leaking through the old, cracked ceiling above him. The rain is not only dampening his desk, but also his spirits.

Why bother?

Lamenting the unrelenting crime in the city, he tells Barney, “It seems like no matter how hard we work, everything stays the same as it was.”

“That’s called progress,” Miller replies.

The only thing approaching a crime of the day occurs when a nightclub comedian starts insulting an unresponsive audience, causing a brawl. Amenguale is sent out to arrest him. Miller tells his Detective Harris to go with him, but the would-be novelist who considers police work only his day job, balks at going back out in the rain before relenting.

Catch and release

The two bring the club comedian to the station, only to have the suspect’s lawyer threaten Miller with a lawsuit because of the inhumane, wet conditions in the room’s holding cell.

Later, the owner of the night club drops the charges, electing to keep the comic on until he can pay for the damages he caused to the club.

“Great,” Miller responds. “The only catch of the day, and we have to throw him back.”

The downpour and outburst

Finally, a piece of the ceiling caves in, causing Miller to explode and call the police commissioner’s office to complain about the deplorable working conditions for his men. But he can’t get through because the rain has washed out the phone lines.

The episode closes with the normally calm Miller apologizing to his men for his angry outburst.

“That’s okay,”  Detective Fish responds. “We all get depressed. You were just the first one to put it into scream.”

To which Amenguale adds, “Yes, depression is like a bad cold. One guy gets it, and it just starts spreading around.”

Yeah, rainy days can be like that. But if you have to have one, it’s great to have a funny show like Barney Miller to watch.

The Parents Group

When our son was born in New York Hospital I was asked if we’d like to attend The First Year of Life,  a series of quarterly lectures by Lee Salk,  the renown child psychologist.  Of course we signed up and over the following year we attended four wonderful lectures held in a hospital meeting room.

Most of the others in the room were first-time parents like us,  all eager to learn how to navigate in our new roles.   Dr Salk was kind and informative, took time to answer our questions, and imbued us with some needed confidence.  At the end of the final session – now all parents of one-year-olds  –  we thanked  our lecturer and were filing out of the room when someone held up a sheet of paper.    “If you’d like to stay in touch”,  he called out,  “give me your name and we can continue to meet.”

Six or seven couples did,  including us, and in fact Danny and I offered  to host those parents and their one-year-olds in our apartment for the first meeting of what we came to call our “parents group”.

After that we continued to meet with our kids in each others’ homes,  in parks and playgrounds,  at restaurants and theaters,  and during one memorable summer at a rented beach house.  Over the years some families moved or dropped out,  but four couples remained and we became a close-knit group  – Janet & Les (the guy who held up that piece of paper almost 50 years ago),  Janet & Harold,  Lorraine & Eric,  and me & Danny.

Then all too quickly the years passed and our kids got older and went their separate ways,  but we adults continued to meet for dinners.  And then more time passed,  and a heart attack took one of us way too soon,  and memory loss has sidelined another,  and our parents group was sadly diminished,

But we’ll always have our memories of the joyous times we shared and the golden friendships we made in that wonderful community of eager young parents and their kids.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

They say man plans and God laughs. On the big day, it rained steadily from sun up to midnight.
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