The 10th Annual 1940s Ball

The first thing that hits you when you walk onto the Boulder airfield is how well everyone is dressed.  Women in vintage dresses and classy shoes, men with nice shirts, bow-ties, suspenders, etc.  There isn’t a fanny pack, beer t-shirt, or string bikini top in sight.  This is a rarity for a summer outdoor event in Colorado.  The 1940s Ball isn’t just any concert or even costume event.  The people here are serious about their history and their class.  I walked into this event not quite knowing what to expect.  As I began to acclimate myself to the venue, I realized it’s like Renaissance Festival for people who are really into the mid-20th Century.

The next thing that strikes you is the overwhelming, almost cloying scent of old canvas.  This is a smell that took me back to my younger years, going to military surplus stores with my dad and anything and everything that was OD Green canvas was on my Christmas wishlist.  Among the vintage cars and airplanes lined up everywhere were tanks, jeeps, command cars, and tent after tent displaying anything from mess tent equipment to rifles and mortars.

Men and women were in full military uniforms, WAC and WAV gear, and all shades of civilian circa 1938-45 in between.  Rosie the Rivetter, the Peaches from a League of their Own, dog faces, Marines, swabs, and flyboys rubbed shoulders with Zootsuits, 4F Playboys, crooners, and average Joes.  The ladies were decked out in their dresses, pantsuits, with as many hairstyles as there were heads of hair.  The whole event was evocative of an era where people could be sexy, strong, modest, and strong all at once.  There was a flavor of modesty and austerity, combined with the electricity of a high school dance where the boys and girls were checking each other out throughout the night.

Money got you drink tickets and tickets got you water, beer, or booze.  I had a rum and Coke, but the bartender was impressed with my ordering an Old Fashioned, so he mixed me a little stronger than most.  I was flying most of the rest of the evening.  Cigarette girls sold candy cigarettes on trays (for a $2 donation per box), and I am proud to say I corrupted one of them by letting her bum a “smoke” off me as she had never tried one before.  I warned her that they are addictive.  (Which they really, really are.)

Candy cigarettes to support the war effort!

At the VIP tables, they honored several of the WW2 vets who were in attendance; not a single one a day younger than 92 years old in the whole bunch.  The actress who played Zu-zu in It’s a Wonderful Life was there, as well as the car George Bailey crashed on the way towards his nervous breakdown in the movie.  Somebody in Johnstown owns it and sent it up on loan for the event.  In the crowd, a young Frank Sinatra and pith-helmeted Bob Hope walked among us mere mortals as well as Generals Patton and MacArthur.  A squad of 6 vintage fighter planes flew over as air raid sirens wailed their ghostly wail, circling and circling overhead.

 

When you get past the displays and the costumes, you get to the meat of the event, which is the live music and the dancing.  I danced for over 4 hours.  From about 8pm until shortly after midnight when I turned into a pumpkin and had to drive home.  My dogs were barking and the event was winding down anyway.  It did take a while for the crowd to get dancing, unfortunately, since a lot of people seemed to be reluctant to compete against the seasoned swing dancers and competitive groups that were showing off during the daylight hours.  But once the sun started to go down and the blood alcohol levels started going up, inhibitions were crushed, the dance floors were packed and people started to really cut a rug.

I mostly danced with two ladies from Boulder (both, oddly enough, originally from New York) who I stuck with as their on-demand dance partner most of the night.  They were very forgiving of my novice dancing, near-collisions with other dancers, but like me they were just interested in getting out and having a good time.  There were quite a few men and women out there on the prowl, but mostly they were sequestered to the Tango Tango bar which reeked of surplus canvas and desperation. In total, my dance card was more than filled after four hours (after dancing with several classy women) and once I got back to my car, my heels and legs were so sore, I wondered if I could stand the hour long drive back home.  It made me wonder what happened to those times, when the music was fun, people could have a good time, and…man, just a long gone era, maybe as different from now as the Renaissance was to then.

In a lot of ways, things were different, and I can see why the Greatest Generation romanticizes that era.  It might have been the last time in our country’s history were there was good and evil, right and wrong.  People took pride in their morality, their appearance, they were not ashamed to be patriotic, they went to church on Sundays, they volunteered for causes greater than themselves. They took pride in the things they made and lived in anything but a disposable society.  (Sure, there were blemishes on the era: rampant racism, crude medical technology, a world war going on, etc.)  Things were simpler back then, and yes, I know it is a cliche to say that, but even in talking to someone from that generation, I think sometimes they were baffled at just how difficult we have made our lives today.  After so many things they sacrificed, challenges they overcame, and all the worrying we have packed full into our lives.

Tanks for the memories

I don’t know.  There are a lot of things to think about when you look at a bygone era that isn’t that far back on the horizon.  Anyway, like any kind of art, good art elicits an emotional response.  Maybe the 1940s is a wonderful time to visit, but maybe it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be to live there?  What do I know?  What I do know is it was great to slip back in time for an evening, dance to some hoppin’ music, and see some old warplanes buzz the airfield at dusk.  To see people walk tall and proud, classy, refined, almost naive when compared to the world we live in. Echoes of a world where men and women were strong and classy all at once.  Where rolling up your shirtsleeves meant facing down some hard work, and people were closer to being Atticus Finch than they were Mark Zuckerberg.

Just for one night, maybe it’s not such a bad thing to remember who we were back then, and bring a piece of it back with us to our strange world where a lot of these things should still matter.  Nostalgia means “Pain from an old wound.”  Maybe it’s old wounds like these that remind us how far we have come, while showing us how much that has cost us in a relatively short time.

Me with my Not An Old Fashioned

The 1940s Ball takes place in a forgotten corner of Boulder, CO, every June…in a time where patriotism, machine guns, women in pretty dresses and men in suits were still a thing.  Buy your tickets early, dress up and bring your friends!!

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How I Destroyed Cracked.com

A few years ago, I published an article in Cracked.com.  It its inception, it began as a straight forward article about the ups and downs of working as a paranormal investigator.  Mostly the kinds of people you encounter, the filthy environments (sitting around in roach-infested basements, etc.), and the sheer boredom of something that is edited to look a lot more exciting on Halloween TV programs.

I used to be a Cracked addict.  I loved that website.  I read all the articles, going back as far as they had an online presence.  I never really read the magazine much when it was in print because it just seemed like the kid at the party trying really hard to be MAD Magazine.  But the website was a daily dose of hilarity that was a little bit more ridiculous than the Onion.  When I found out they would pay $100 for articles, I was stoked, so I submitted a query and heard back from them almost immediately.

The editing process was long and frustrating.  It went from a funny article that people could read to a Huffpost-esque List of Five Things That are Mind-boggling! Or somesuch.  The process, as I call it, was akin to the digestive process of chewing something up, boiling it down to a bunch of crap and then passing it out the other end.  They kept telling me “No jokes!” Which reminded me of playing GI-Joes with my cousin Cory, who always used to get mad at me about throwing comedy into fighting Cobra. (He was a very serious kid.)  Come on! He had the Raven stealth bomber, which just sets itself up for jokes about “We’re bombing them, but they don’t know it.”  To my 12 year old mind this was hilarious to think of a giant plane dropping bombs on people that were exploding all around them and everyone going about their business because of stealth.

But I digress. (My apologies to my dear cousin too).

After the jokes were removed and the article was turned into a list, three edits later and the addition of captions with some really weak-sauce jokes, the article was Cracked-out.  I got a ton of hits, but before it could hit the bonus million hits within a week that would have paid out another hundred bucks, they pulled the article and then put it back up again.  The interesting thing was how the comments section generated such hate for the paranormal community.  As well as anything that was outside of the cult of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, or anyone else the intellectual elite could throw at superstition, religion, belief in the paranormal, and all with such rancor and animosity I realized what the majority of the audience of this website was like.

They missed the point entirely.  It wasn’t supposed to be about finding proof of ghosts or the the existence of an afterlife. It was supposed to be a funny article about people who had a sex castle set up in their Nebraska house, complete with webcams and filthy mattresses, but their primary concern was ghosts.  Along with other stories of equal absurdity.

Recently, the online magazine lost its main writing staff.  Everyone just quit at once. Or were dismissed.  I don’t know.  The site is now choked with cookies, pop-ups, and is about as plagued with bandwidth sucking viruses as a bit-torrent site of the newest Star Wars movie.  Which is why I didn’t link the article.

That and I also feel like I’ve grown as a writer since then.  Also also, because what the article became is mostly the editor’s voice and not my own.  So, meh.  Anyway, since they published my article (read fact-filled list with jokes in captions and a hate-fueled comments section), the magazine really started to fall apart.  I think I might have had something to do with that.  Well, me and the pure Social Justice Fueled Evangelism it became infused with.

So, in the spirit of list articles, I think this is an appropriate list.

6 Reasons Cracked.com Sucks

1. The general consensus of the content of the magazine makes the assumption that everyone who reads the site is in lock-step with the opinions and agenda of the “writers” of that content.  Which is so left of center most of the time now that the Communist Party of California asked them to water it down a little bit.
2. Only a handful of movies ever existed: Among those are Back to the Future, Star Wars, the Goonies, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, Ghostbusters, the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, the Breakfast Club, and Home Alone.  Any actual relevance of these movies is to point out how rape culture has plagued the Cis-gendered heteronormal patriarchy, or why the 1980s were ironically genius, or why you are an idiot for liking these movies.  Which considering the number of times the people writing these lists must have watched these movies, reminds me of the reclusive kid in school who hates the cheerleaders, but made a shrine for them in his bedroom out of their old socks.
3. Clickbait that will blow your @#$%^& mind!!! Hyperbole is just dishonest when it is done to entice readers of some really lame factoids.  Hence my title for this post.
4. Viruses, cookies, ads that will crash your browser.  Seriously, you are better off using your mom’s AOL browser to surf porn sites.
5. Smug narrative voice on content that was stolen from other websites.  Usually tinged with comments about why you are a terrible person for liking the things you do, why you are secretly a racist, bigot, misogynist, xenophobe, all the while opening up the possibilities of how much better your life and the world would be if you were more like them.  The agenda is not only indoctrinating, but also didactic.  So funny!
6. The constant, pervasive, continuous use of the word “Dong.”  SMH.

So, I’ve stopped ranting about the site.  And stopped reading it.  I don’t need to be told I’m a moron for believing in God, how my enjoyment of The Running Man makes me a homophobe, or how a website that used to make people life is now educational and informative “fact-based” tidbits first and foremost.  I don’t really care about making counter-cultures mainstream.  I don’t care about the hipster mentality of making something mainstream and then tisk-tisking people for If I wanted a lecture, I would sign up for master’s classes, not read a website that used to be based on satire and fart jokes.

So, I’m just gonna say No to Cracked.

Ouray: The Switzerland of Colorado

I have lived in Colorado nearly my entire life (except for a misguided year I lived in Laramie, Wyoming–there is a significant difference between Colorado and Wyoming in spite of what you may think.  Highway Patrolmen from Wyoming will remind you of this from the looks on their faces every time they glance at your green license plate).  As I kid, I didn’t know how spoiled I was.  For family trips, we would cross the Mojave Desert on a long two day drive to San Diego, where my grandmother lived, and on the maps, every mountain range that was promised in the same light green of my Medicine Bow, Never Summer, Zirkels, and Mummy Range, I was met with disappointment ever time.  Dull, sandy hills without forests, much less snow, all the way until Southern California.  Northern California has mountains more like Colorado, which just made me homesick.

East of the Mississippi River, the mountains are ancient, rolling hills covered in forests.  All of which are beautiful, but lack the stark majesty of mountains pushing up to the 14er limits that you will find in Colorado.  Proper tree lines, snow-capped peaks, tundra.  Aspen forests.  Pines.  Pining for the pines.

Town of Ouray as seen from Box Canon Bridge.  Lower Cascade Falls is Visible Dead Center

The first time I saw Ouray Colorado, (pronounced Your-ray or You-ray) I was 18 years old.  It was for my high school Senior Trip.  In mid-May, Lower Cascade Falls was partially frozen, and from town, at an angle, you could put a quarter into the telescope and watch people climb the ice.  I have been back a few times since then, but never for very long.  Just passing through.

This year, Ouray was the destination.  This time I got to see the sights the town is known for.  Box Canon Falls, Lower Cascade Falls.  Hot springs.  Hiking.  Exploring the town itself.  The town is build right up against one of the most impressive mountain ranges in Colorado: the San Juan Mountains.  As you head south from Montrose on Highway 550, they don’t even look real.  A jagged set of teeth, snowy, forested, emerging from a desert plain of mesas and scrubland.  Mt. Sneffels and the accompanying sub-range is what you would expect a kindergartner to draw if you asked them for a picture of the Rocky Mountains.  It is simply unreal, and easy to understand as you pass through Ridgway and these mountains are looming over you in the distance, exactly why they called Ouray the Switzerland of Colorado.

Box Canon Falls (lower walk)

Upon entering the valley, following the Uncompahgre River down from Ridgway, everything is green.  Horses crop at grasses fed by the spring runoff; dappled appaloosas, black, even the rare all white variety too!  Before long, you reach the town of Ouray.  You are greeted on the north end by the town pool, which is one of the largest hotsprings fed swimming pools in the country.  Town itself is build on a hill, with turn of the last century storefronts all slanting at an angle from the streets.  Dirt roads rise up to touch the foot of the mountains surrounding the town.  Probably most impressive is Lower Cascade Falls, which errupts from a cliff less than a few hundred yards from town.  Box Canyon Falls is at the other side of town, with a suspension bridge you can see, and a nice walk of less than a mile to see the entire area (for a very low fee).  In between is the grid work of a town that hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years.

Lower Cascade Falls

It really has to be seen to be believed–yes, I know that sounds cliched.  My pictures just don’t do it justice.  Perfect for an adventure trip, romantic getaway, or even reaching enlightenment.  Among things to do in Ouray are hiking, Jeep rentals/tours, visiting the falls, shopping and sightseeing, climbing (rock and ice), and soaking your bones in a hot springs at the end of the day, or after a nice meal at any of several delicious restaurants.  Talk to a local for recommendations.  Even if their recommendations are somewhat wussy (come on, we’re in the mountains, dude!  Don’t suggest a place with a really mean salad!)  Sometimes it is good just to follow your nose and stop somewhere the ambiance just feels right and lets you enjoy the scenery while you eat.

A trail winds all the way around town, from Cascade Falls to Box Canon and beyond.  It would probably take about a day to hike the entirety of it if you are an advanced hiker and had more time to dedicate to exploring the area than I had allowed for on this trip.

So, considering my bias for all things good in this world, with Colorado being near the top of the list, Ouray still takes my breath away.  Maybe Switzerland should be called the Colorado of Europe?  hahahaha!

Behind Lower Cascade Falls