News from the mountains

Okay, I'll make a real post.

Things are looking up and down for me.

The down part is a paycheck that was not deposited and it looks like I'll have to wait for them to work it out. I hope my landlords don't kick me out of my happy cabin in the mountains in the meantime. They probably won't (just yet) because I have been a good tenant who paid on time and in full for a whole year.

As a matter of fact, today is my anniversary or birthday or celebration or something. Today I have been in my secluded cabin in the Rockies for exactly one year. Talk about a great way to celebrate. Thank the god/desses I have plenty of water in the well and enough masa to make tortillas for probably another year. LOL It's not that bad, but nearly that bad. That's what happens, kiddies, when you give all your money to help someone start a television program and they never pay you back. That money is looking real good right now, but it ain't coming over to this side of the Divide for sure.

Oh, yeah, the good news. I got two more clients today. It's not much money, but if they like my work it could turn into a permanent slave position for below slave wages. I need lots of those. It's not like I have a social life. I've heard of them, but I don't have one. Someone is going to have to remind me what that is beyond the words. I understand the concept but I sure don't remember how it goes. Sort of like doing the two-step. I can see the steps, but my feet and legs can't seem to get the rhythm down. Too many years between Urban Cowboy and me.

Yes, kiddies, I actually used to go to Country & Western bars and dance my boots off.

I remember this one bar in Salt Lake City. It was called The Westerner Club. I used to go there on the weekends with a friend, and sometimes during the week. During the week the bandstand was pushed up until this huge hangar-like bar dance hall was about one-third the size. They had four or five bars and a huge dance floor when it was opened all the way up. There were the regulars and girls like me and my roommate, Nona.

I haven't thought about this in centuries.

Anyway, Nona was the kind of girl who had a revolving door on her bedroom and a parking meter by the bed. She loved men -- constantly. She worked as manager of a hot dog stand in Trolley Square. Her stand was like a trolley car and it looked out over the whole trolley garage. But I digress.

We'd go down in my company car, a Volkswagen Rabbit with the stick shift and the diesel engine. In fact, I learned to drive stick on that car in the midst of traffic on the hills and freeways around Salt Lake City. It was an interesting excursion, but I learned fast. Good thing. I can still remember thinking I'd end up like Bill Cosby in his first stick shift on the hills of San Francisco -- starting my own parking lot at the light.

Wednesday nights at The Westerner Club were the most active during the week. There was one guy, a runty little guy with muscles in his eyelids that bulged like he'd been doing clean and jerks with his lashes. He was so muscle bound his arm stuck out to the side and he couldn't pull them close to his body. He made his circuits of the dance floor winking and nodding to the women hoping someone would take him up on his offer to dance. Only the newbies did. It only took once to figure out he couldn't dance and that all those muscles kept you from getting too close, which was a very good thing. His cologne was enough to gag a mountain goat.

There was another guy, the kind we called a goat roper, a sort of cowboy who had the clothes and the walk down, but you were quite sure if he could ride a horse, break a Brahma bull, or even knew where the open range actually was. He was kind of cute with his starting ZZ Top beard and his crumpled ten-gallon hat. There was some talk that he was wearing it on the wrong head, but I'm sure he was ambi-headed. He used to wear the neatest slides on his spiffy string tie. He made them himself, or rather carved them himself. One was my favorite. It was a beautifully carved and painted pair of breasts with nipples that didn't point up. I asked him about it and we ended up becoming dance partners for a long time. He knew how to dance and could two-step better than anyone on the floor. We had a lot of fun in those days after I split from my first husband and lived in Salt Lake for a while. Truckers, dancing, good music and The Charley Daniels band and the Devil Went Down to Georgia.