City On The Edge Of Self-Deprecation

There's plenty in life that needs being taken seriously.  But even the most serious amongst us have to have those moments  where they can laugh at themselves for something they've said and/or done in a moment of being 'human'.  Indeed, it never hurts to find things to laugh at yourself about.

So when a community can do so, well...

I've worked in Central City, Colorado, for many years.  Small town.  Former mining town.  It's seen its share of booms and busts.

It's a town that's had kind of a 'love-hate' relationship with the latest "gold rush" for the local economy:  gaming.  From the time that the state of Colorado voters approved a ballot initiative in 1990 -- and limited stakes gaming opened up in Central City, neighboring Black Hawk, and Cripple Creek, west of Colorado Springs -- residents have loved the civic improvements that gaming revenue has brought to the town.  But not EVERYTHING that gaming has brought to the town.

Which has been, and will be again, another subject for another time and place.

My focus here is on one particular sign that is posted in Central City.  One that visitors, tourists, passers-through, usually like to stop and take note of when driving through historical areas.  Signs that mark historical places, historical events and local factoids of interest.

This sign is kinda like that.  And yet, not like one I've seen much of, here or anywhere else.

I haven't done a lot of research on the sign as yet; I only noticed it earlier this week.  It doesn't jump out at you.  It's easy to miss, driving down Gregory Street, on the way to Black Hawk, and either back toward Denver, or on up Colorado 119 to the Roosevelt National Forest, and on north towards Boulder.

I don't know who is behind putting it up; I was told that it went up in the summer of 2011.

This sign is meant to be a factoid snapshot of Central City.  One with an eye toward some good-natured municipal education and self-deprecation.  Here's what the sign reads like:

Central City
County Seat of Gilpin County

- Founded                                 1859
- Elevation                                8496
- Mile High                                 1.6
- Area (Rich Square Miles)       2.5
- Pop.                                          663
- Average IQ                              101
- Houses of Worship                    3
- Gambling Houses                      7
- Bears                                          4 (in 2012, 3 more may have joined the club)
- Bars                                           19
- Faces On Barroom Floor           1
- Opera Houses                            1
- Museums & Galleries               5
- Newspapers                                1
- Breweries                                   1
- Troublemakers                           3
- Big Shots                                    0
Total                                       11,168.1

Yep...that's what the sign reads.  And yeah, that's what it totals up to.

Gotta like a town that can laugh at itself.  When I go back to work, I'll get a photo of the sign.  It's simple.  And priceless.

It Blew By One Night

Meteorology in Colorado is, to say the least, interesting. Mr. Spock would call it "fascinating". Especially as he watches one of his ears go whizzing off to Limon.

Large snowstorms are possible from September to May. 70 degrees in January. Pleasant, spring-like Mays. Violent, wild Mays. The dog days of summer in August. Trying to dig out the dogs amidst the drifts of record-breaking snowstorms in March.

You just never know around h'yar.

One phenomenon we see locally in the late fall, winter and early spring is, when conditions are right, winds off the foothills. Not kite-flying winds; not a rustle of the branches winds. Not a caress your cheek wind.

Something that is locally called a "chinook" wind.

A plus of the chinook is that, when it comes in the winter, frequently it is a warming wind, raising chilling temperatures and melting snow. And for the Denver Metro, a chinook can be welcome when winter temperature inversions are right to cloud the city horizon with a smogish haze. A chinook will send the smog east/northeast.

Kansas can't thank us enough.

But the chinook does have another side to it. They frequently come in at low-end hurricane force. Wind gusts during chinooks, in varying areas along the Colorado Front Range, have been known to exceed 100 mph. Some place called Wondervu once recorded a gust over 130 mph.

I can't find the place on a Colorado map, so it must be in Kansas, too.

At any rate, when the 'chinook' is predicted locally, meteorologist post high wind warnings for the Front Range, from the Wyoming border to New Mexico. For when the chinook is in not-so-rare form, it doesn't waste the appearance.

Just a lot of stuff in its path. The wind gusts in certain areas take things not nailed down. And sometimes, some things that were.

As I went to bed around Saturday noontime, November 12, 2011, high wind warnings were in effect for Denver and the Front Range until the morning hours of Sunday, November 13. At times as I tried to sleep, I could hear the sound of wind gusts on the roof.

The Fiddler never had a prayer. Hope he had a parachute.

As I prepared to leave for work late that Saturday night, the winds locally in Green Mountain didn't seem very bad. It seemed, at least from my view, that the chinook had been overplayed, at least in Lakewood.

Driving west toward Golden and Clear Creek Canyon however, I found where the chinook was lurking.

And from here on into work, it was more than just a chinook: it was a sch-muck.

I'm used to high winds in parts of Clear Creek Canyon and the US 6/Colorado 119 corridor to Black Hawk and Central City. Areas therein like "the Narrows", are frequently tickled by strong wind gusts. Deer and mountain lions in the area -- long used to the weather anomalies -- are equipped with sand bags.

This particular night was a bit unusual. Once I cleared Tunnel 1 -- just beyond the entrance to Clear Creek Canyon -- I noticed the tell-tale sideways 'nudge' of an unseen hand, pushing my car's front end. I didn't need to look beyond the debris in the headlights to see brush and tall grasses on the roadside, laying prone, to know that I'd found the sch-muck.

Or the gusts of wind that momentarily cut visibility with clouds of sand, gravel, tumble weeds, etc flying about. Or rocks knocked into the roadway from the canyon walls on either side. And/or occasional small animals, flying monkeys, houses with big-eyed farm girls, whirling by in the more prodigious gusts.

I won't mention the witch-looking broad on a bicycle. I hadn't had enough caffeine at that point to be sure that I saw that.

But as I approached the southern end of Black Hawk on 119, I was certain of the continuing presence of the sch-muck: a road side tree came down on the road behind me.

Allllll-righty then.

But better was ahead: a lot of road construction is taking place on the south end of Black Hawk. And a crapload of those 55 gallon drum-style orange traffic markers that block or define lane changes, were ahead at the second traffic light into Black Hawk.

Not all of them were where they had originally been placed. As I approached and slowed for a light going from yellow to red, I saw one barrel -- in the south bound lanes -- decide that it wanted to experience the thrill of flight. The sch-muck chose that moment to encourage it thus.

While I admired the dream and the effort, I was dubious of the aerodynamics and wisdom of the attempt. Worse, I was rather unimpressed with the sch-muck wind trajectory the barrel chose for re-entry and landing to terra firma.

Attempting to judge an unpiloted construction barrier barrel's irregular flight pattern, I reckoned it for a touchdown to the right of my vehicle. So I chose to steer left to evade.

I didn't realize, until too late, that the damned barrel was apparently socialist: and with a loud *WHUMPF*, we greeted each other just short of the 2nd light.

Thankfully, the impact was insufficient to trigger my steering wheel airbag. Perhaps it was the colorful metaphors I was at that moment unleashing, that kept the airbag from wanting to meet the foul-mouthed windbag behind the wheel.

At any rate, that particular 55 gallon sized, weighted orange plastic construction barrier barrel -- however long it had served its aforementioned function -- would never again seek the skies for high flight. Sch-muck winds or not.

At least, not in one piece.

The balance of the night was as could have been expected in this minature mountain Vegas venue: high winds, flying stuff, power 'bumps' and the joys of occasional folks having their wind breakers act like the Flying Nun's habit, in momentary stout gusts that continued until the daylight and meteorology combined to tame the sch-muck winds.

Perhaps the night was best summed up with the coming of dawn: hung up in a road side tree -- what was left of it -- was a flying monkey, tangled up with one half of a deer antler, a pair of panties and a bra, an empty margarita, and muttering something in flying monkeyese that I didn't quite catch as I drove by.

I'm not sure I could ever have had enough caffeine to be absolutely sure of what I thought I saw. But the 'gesture' I got in passing, was a universal one.

Obviously that flying monkey had negotiated traffic in Denver rush hour, too.

The Haunt for Dead October

*A seasonal repost from the website archives*

Depending on whom you talk to, thanks to a vote of the people in 1990, a "great awakening" took place, economically, in the Colorado mountain towns of Central City, Blackhawk, and Cripple Creek. Once-booming gold mining towns in the 1860s, had become close to economic blackholes by the 1980s. Local and other interests put forth a bold plan to bring them back to, if not beyond, their "heyday" status through voter-approved limited stakes gaming.

In November of 1990, the voters of Colorado made it so, paving the way for the "great awakening". But apparently that isn't all it "awakened".

A good deal of what's to follow herein is based on a few historical records, a number of eye-witness accounts, lots of local gossip and some convincingly (and not) related folklore. Stories about things not easily explained. Stories that have, down the years, made for the classic ingredients of chilling campfire tales, or the seeds of bed time nightmares. Stories about things generally made entertaining or frightful by masters of the macabre like Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Stephen King, Rod Serling and the Pelosi-led US House.

I have worked in the casinos of Central City since 1992. Each of those I have worked in have their own "ghost stories", as related by others I've worked with or interviewed. In all that time, I have yet to personally experience anything I could swear fit the category of "paranormal". Granted, I've encountered a portion of examples of "abnormal", like one character who claimed he could receive space communications via his briefcase. But I've personally seen nothing that a few beers couldn't help me explain to someone else who'd had a few more than me.

At the same time, I'll add that I don't casually dismiss some of the anecdotes I've collected. More than a few of my sources are folks I know to be quite credible, and not at the time of our chats under the care of their casino pharmacist (aka, bartender). Most of their anecdotes involve spirits that seem gentle, peaceful, inquisitive and even fun-loving. However, there are a few cases wherein the anecdotes speak to something more tragic, perhaps even malevolent. With the exceptions of officially documented encounters, I will withhold names of the establishments and the persons interviewed, since much of what will follow herein has no independent verification; all the ghosts I tried to follow up with wouldn't spook to me to get their side of the story on record.

The first anecdote takes place in the parking lot above the now-closed Teller House, back in 1995: the witness had just pulled into the parking after dark, and was about to back into a parking spot, when "out of nowhere, a bent old man walks across in front of my car. The old man was dressed in worn clothing that appeared consistent with that of a 19th Century prospector. He walked across in front of my car, taking no notice of it, and just disappeared in the night". What affected the witness most was the fact that "my car's headlights shone through the man as he walked by".

Staying with the Teller House, there are believed to be several ghosts who call the Teller House home (my thanks to Dorothy Spellman and Mary Taitt for providing me with a brief precis of these ghosts). Three are of particular interest, as they have some historical background to the area: Red Rosie, Bill Hamilton, and The Blonde Lady from the 3rd Floor.

According to historical documentation, "Red Rosie" had survived a small pox epidemic that killed 70 people in the valley in 1901, and she then volunteered as a nurse to help tend the stricken there in the Teller House (used as an improv hospital at the time). Referred to after her passing as "an angel or a saint", Red Rosie's spirit remains within the Teller House: her image is reportedly sometimes seen as a reflection in a mirror, located within the structure.

Bill Hamilton was described as "a genial Irishman" who was something of a backstage manager of the Central City Opera House in the 1930s, providing security for such entertainers as Lillian Gish and Mae West. He was also the caretaker of the silver ingots which were laid in front of the Teller House in those days (no longer). Hamilton was also known as a great teller of stories, with a ready sense of humor, and which apparently remains in evidence today: several bartenders have reported being "grabbed" when retrieving bar supplies from storage. And one female employee had the wits scared out of her when Bill "appeared to her, seated on a case of beer". When she screamed, "he immediately vanished", but the unmistakeable smell of pipe tobacco lingered in the vicinity thereafter (Bill loved, among other things, "a good pipe"), clearly discerned by her and others who responded to her shriek. And a number of employees reported having smelled pipe tobacco when no one with a pipe was, or had been in, the Teller House.

Finally, the Blonde Lady of the 3rd Floor: according to the information, it is believed that "her husband committed suicide after punching her", out of guilt for having done so. Apparently, many guests have heard her on the 3rd Floor, moaning and sobbing, most likely in the wake of his passing, and ever since. A few who've heard her say it sends unpleasant chills through them.

One casino -- closed for a period of time and now open under a different name -- claims to have surveillance video that actually caught an "image", standing in an aisle of slot machines after closing, as if the "image" were examining the machines. When Security responded to check on the sighting, no one was found, and the "image" had disappeared. Then there was the the 3x5' bulletin board, hung on an interior stairwell landing wall, that was seen to suddenly rise straight out and drop to the floor, also viewed on video. I wasn't allowed to see the video of either; but I was shown a still photo from the first episode. And there was, indeed, a very discernible humanesque "image" in the photo.

Another casino -- again, closed and now open under new management -- was, and perhaps still is, home to at least two ghosts: one is referred to as "John", and is reportedly a seasonal visitor. Prior to the closing of the facility in the early-mid 1990s, the then-employees reportedly knew when "John" was in, and particularly when "John" was upset about something: one morning, staff coming in found every knife in the restaurant kitchen, point-first in the floor.

The other ghost -- referred to by one witness as "The Lady In Black" -- visited a construction worker during the pre-opening renovation phase of the facility back in 1992. As he related it to me, he was working on the second floor of the building, when he noticed a woman "in a long, black, old-style-looking dress", watching him work. When he asked what she was doing there, she turned and walked into the wall, vanishing. The worker told me he promptly took the rest of the job off.

Another casino along Main Street, is reputed to have at least one "ghost" in residence. One is reportedly a tall "cowboy", attired in the traditional hat and linen duster. He was seen in a mirror by one of the building owners, prior to the facility being opened for gaming in 1991. This witness related "feeling a presence over his left shoulder", and saw an apparition in the mirror on the wall in front of him; when he turned, no one was there, and the image in the mirror had vanished. After opening, one cocktail waitress reported that "someone tried to push me out of a second story window", when no one was standing or sitting within twenty feet of her at the time. And a graveyard shift janitor there also claims to have had a "running battle" with one or more "ghosts" there, over the games in the arcade (since relocated to a different facility). He would turn them off after closing, and the games would shortly thereafter "come back on".

No one else was in the facility at the time but him. And his arcade game-loving "ghost".

While most of the hauntings reported are in facilities that have been in the town for a century and more, some of the newer construction hasn't proven immune to spirited activity: a valet employee of one newly-erected casino in 1994, claimed to have seen a little boy in the valet parking area; when the employee approached the boy, the boy "ran into a wall and disappeared". A security officer had a similar encounter in the hotel of this same casino, with a man and woman whom she could see the wall through. When the male apparition turned and waved the security officer off, the officer was all too eager to follow the suggestion. When she came back by a few minutes later, the couple was gone.

In one casino that combined new construction adjoining an original structure -- and one that I worked in for a time -- count team members reported having empty coin cans "thrown around the room", and one janitor reported encountering "someone" sitting at the second floor bar, an hour after closing. The responding security officer to the janitor's report at the time -- me -- found no one, and no image was seen from the surveillance cameras, but the janitor was adamant about what he had seen.

One interesting anecdote -- with back up photo evidence -- comes from an old theatre along Central City's Main Street, known as the Belvidere Theatre. A cocktail waitress showed me a photo that she'd taken of a piano on the stage of the under-renovation theatre. The picture, she related, was taken in the presence of others. No one was sitting at the piano when the photo was shot; but someone was, when the Polaroid photo finished imaging: a woman wearing 19th Century attire. A woman you could see through in the photo. Later in a follow-up conversation with this waitress, she related having had several "conversations" with this spirit, through the use of hand-held divining-like wands, and that the spirit was very "friendly and caring".

This waitress (no longer employed where I work) is both a blonde and a "looker"; despite those seeming credibility disqualifiers, I tend to believe her story. Especially when I saw the photo.

Finally, a tale from one casino in Blackhawk in the early 90s: again, a tale alleged to have been captured on surveillance video tape (one I didn't get to see, but was told about by an employee who had seen the video). When this particular casino closed at night, no one remained on property. An alarm system supplemented the surveillance equipment. When the first employees arrived the next morning, they found a slot machine in full jackpot mode, as if it'd just been won. Astonished that the night shift would leave a machine in this mode, the employees were more astonished when they reviewed the surveillance video: roughly an hour after the casino closed and the last person had left, the slot machine play handle came down, as if pulled, the reels spun, and the jackpot symbols came up on the machine, activating the overhead flashing candles. No slot tech I've ever spoken to about this can come up with a way for this to happen on the older-style slot machines without physical manipulation.

And there are many, many more stories between the two towns; I have little doubt that Cripple Creek has its share, as well.

So...believe what you will this Halloween. Believe in or deny the hereafter. Acknowledge that sudden, chilling feeling that you're not alone, or dismiss it as an explainable non-event. Whatever your persuasion, if you visit a casino in Central City, Blackhawk or Cripple Creek, and think that you feel the presence of something, you might be right. It just might be Lady Luck.

Or, The Lady In Black.

Happy Halloween.

The (dubious) Return of Aesop's Fables

*originally published 7-20-96; first blog published in 2006*


..uh, not really.

Prompted by the July 19 blog of Miss Cellania, I have dug deep into the archives, and retrieved a rather peculiar column. A column that did run in the newspaper I wrote for back in the late 90s, but never bothered to post on either my website or blog.

Until now.

There might well have been a good reason heretofore; you be the judge as to the wisdom of changing that long-held decision:

The (dubious) Return of Aesop's Fables (mid 1990s-ish)

I doubt he'd be amused.

There once was a land where three rural mountain towns were born. Born at a time when a great gold rush was on. These towns prospered, as only towns having gold could.

But all good things must end. And 120 years later, it more than had. Fact is, life there had long settled firmly into the category of 'sucks'. Infrastructure crumbling. Little future. Less hope. At least the ghosts had it good.

Then came a promise of resurrection. Thanks to the people. The people and the ballot initiative. The people voted in a new gold rush: limited stakes gaming. And on a magic day in 1991, a new "gold rush fever" returned to those once crumbling, now rejuvenating towns.

In previous times, the original gold rush brought prospectors. Speculators. Dreamers. Schemers. Crooks. Saloons and whores. In 1991, it added tourists and gamblers to the mix. And not long afterward, came something else.

The truly weird.

This is a tale, albeit a true tale. A tale of one day. One atypical day in an average work week. I went to work expecting nothing out of the ordinary. But I failed to reckon that on that particular evening, a full moon would cast upon the land it's mystical version of blondethink, in the form of wrap, a half moon, a Polaroid, and an abused purple reptile.

Gawd knows what Aesop would have made of it.

It began as I started work, and learned of a most unusual happening: a driver of a bakery truck, making his early morning delivery of bread to a nearby casino, was in counting his buns and loaves as the new day dawned. 30 minutes later, he emerged to find a surreal sight: his bread truck had been completely saran wrapped. No note. No witnesses. No X Files music. Just a seal of disapproval. Was he the first, or Homer Simpson, to utter in dismay, "Doh!"?

But this was only the beginning.

As I pondered this oddity in the early afternoon of my shift, I was sought out by several employees. A crisis loomed: a threat to Mankind. Something akin to the Apocalypse. A crack in the universe. One big enough to swallow us all, if it'd been a black hole.

There, sitting at a slant top slot machine, was a patron of ponderous girth, blissfully doing what a patron does at said machine. But his jeans weren't doing what jeans generally do.

They'd sunk.

A patron noticed it first. She pointed it out with disgust to a couple employees. They pointed it out to other employees. They collectively stood around, first twittering amongst themselves. Then they surmised that this was not a good thing. They mused what should be done. It came to resemble a bad cereal commercial from the 1960s:

"You tell him".
"I'm not gonna tell him, YOU tell him".
"I'm not gonna tell him...."
"Let's get Mikey..."
"Yeah, he'll do it!"

I didn't like the commercial or the cereal. But with the memory of the bread truck story wearing on the delicate balance between my threadbare professionalism and my ornery sense of humor, I was moved to make the most of a rare opportunity, even as I pondered the potential End of Days, so to speak.

I called the shift manager over the radio, and notified her that we had an "unlicensed slot machine in play on the floor". I knew this would bring her otherwise indifferent self from wherever it was she liked to lurk out of sight and mind, in a big hurry. A gaming violation is a gaming violation, and on that shift, her responsibility.

It did. She responded promptly. As she arrived, I pointed. She looked. She gasped. Her face went beet red. The other employees made themselves scarce. After a moment of sputtering, she demanded to know what I was doing about "it". I lamely suggested that 'she' was the horsepower on the floor, not me. With a glare that would split atoms, she muttered a sharp "deal with it" and stalked off.

They got Mikey.

So I walked over, and rather politely suggested to this off-duty plumber* that if he'd shift his jeans up a tad, he might avoid having a far-sighted customer mistake his 'crack' for a slot machine. With a gruff "oh", a grunt and a ponderous shift, he made the universe safe for democracy and small flying birds again. Meantime, the shift manager spent the rest of the day sputtering to anyone who'd listen, "do you know what that SOB (aka, me) did to me?", not realizing they'd been laughing at her and about it all afternoon.

As evening wore on, I thought the full moon's half-approximation was the end of it, pun intended. I learned how wrong I was, as a shuttle bus driver presented to me a polaroid photo that'd been left on his bus. A photo of a woman. A rather attractive one. One we both recognized. One sans attire. Not even a thong.

I lost the tug of war for the picture.

Finally, the long evening was over. I boarded the bus for the ride home, thinking I'd seen and heard it all for the night.

Wrong again.

The story went 'round the bus of the casino down the hill, with a new parking lot. A parking lot blasted out of the mountainside. It was supposed to be a multi-level lot. The money ran out at a ground level. There'll be projects like that. So they decided to make do with their one-level parking lot.

Some marketing whiz for the casino cast about for something unique for the 'grand opening' of this mountain-gouged parking lot behind the casino. Something that would highlight the lot for customers. The story goes that she settled for a purple alligator. Don't ask me; but I'll bet she was cleaning toilets in the bus station downtown the next week.

At any rate, or so the story went, that day was Grand Opening. The Purple Alligator -- a young woman dressed in a purple alligator outfit -- was out flagging down cars, and with gleeful animation, meeting and greeting customers. A good time was had by all who weren't yet under the care of their casino pharmacist**. Save for two.

With the gouging out of the mountainside, loose rock was in abundance up and down the face of the now sheer cliff that marked the back wall of the parking lot. A few specimens heeded Newton's Law of Gravity, and fell. One landed right on top of the hood of one vehicle. When the owner of the vehicle went to retrieve his car, he found what the softball-sized rock had used in place of a cushion. He was not amused. As he returned toward the casino entrance, his amusement level apparently deteriorated rapidly. To the point that he couldn't wait to discuss the matter with the casino management. He wanted instant gratification.

He apparently got it by beating up the Purple Alligator.

I suppose his defense could always be that he'd been emotionally scarred by Barney as a child. Even I'd have to consider voting to acquit on that one, but I digress.

As the story-telling and laughter on the bus subsided, I sat back and pondered what ol' Aesop might have conjured up as a moral to this strange day. Perhaps it'd be something along the lines of "Comes the full moon, don't discount the half-assed". Or not. However more or less philosophical Aesop would have proven to be here, at least he wouldn't have to rant about what "that SOB (aka, moi)" did to him...unless he saw I'd used his name in conjunction with this column.

* dunno if he was a plumber or not...

** bartender