OCR Text |
Show The Park Record A-14 i :• _ Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, December 31, 2004-January 4, 2005 1 MORE DOGS ON M A I N STREET YOU HAVE TO ASK YOURSELF THIS ONE aUESTION. "DO I FEEL LUCKY TODAY?" SILVER ST7\R AT PARK CITY INTRODUCING SILVER STAR, PARK CITY'S NEWEST SKI-IN, SKI-OUT LUXURY COMMUNITY. AVAILABLE SOON FOR 9 7 VERY LUCKY FAMILIES. 97 luxury residences to be released for sale on February 21, 2005, available in a variety of beautiful two, three and four bedroom plans. If you're lucky enough to join us at Silver Star you'll enjoy amazing recreation opportunities and wonderful amenities. Silver Star is conveniently connected to Park City Mountain Resort via the new Silver Star lift, it's a short walk to the Park City Golf Course, and hiking and ipiking trails for your family are all located on the property. Also on^site is a heated swimming pool and hot tub. And, each residence features reserved, heated parking, and a sports locker to store your skis and bikes. IF YOU'RE FEELING LUCKY, OR EVEN IF YOU AREN'T CALL: MICHAEL LAPAY, 1.435.640.5700 MLAPAY@PUREUTAH.COM HEATHER PETERSON, 1-435-640-2573 CARRIE SHOAF, 1-435-5131928 Prudential Utah Real Estate 1 chad l.aPay i - ;in mi-iiiT/rcal i*vl:iic broker uml liory Murphy i*. ;m mviiijr/ru;il L-sliilc iH:ail IILL-I^L-J in ihu SiaU1 nf l.'uih. Thu in formal ion cuniuiiicil herein, alihuunl] deemed itcainiU1 anil obtained i'ruin rclkihk* MJUFL-L-J. is nut uuamnieed. By Tom Clyde • Talkin' Tractors on RFD-TV Montgomery-Ward sold tractors? The Case models from the early 1950s had a fluid drive. "Talkin' Tractors" was followed up by "Big Joe's being little more I can do for myself in that regard). Polka Show." Again, as you might have guessed, this But you just never know what happens. Instead, this is a large guy named Joe who puts on a polka show. is about the latest discovery on satellite television. I This is right out of Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of somehow hit a button that changed the program Champions," with the polka show taped on Friday guide from showing only the stations I had selected night at the Midland City Ramada Inn ballroom, to showing everything available. It was a maddening with disco ball. Big Joe. who is tall but mostly just array of crap, and I started winnowing it back down amazingly fat, is dressed up in a goofy suit. The jackto a reasonable 200 channels or so. All the cubic zir- et has the keyboard of the accordion embroidered conium shopping stuff got zapped, as did the hip-hop on one side, and the chord buttons on the other, all videos, and fire and brimstone preachers with south- done in a shiny rayon that doesn't work very well ern accents who promised salvation if only I would under the lights of the TV cameras. His ample belly send them my Visa card. If they're going to heaven, serves as the bellows on this squeezebox. The overall effect is kind of a combination of Mike Ditka and I'll take my chances elsewhere. But in the depths of this process, I stumbled Liberace. They play polkas. For an hour. Without commeracross gold. I discovered RFD-TV. It's all about farms, farm life, farm animals and polka. But mostly, cial interruption. Several, and 1 mean no more than it's about people who are just plain happy to be several, couples were shown dancing in the audidoing whatever they are doing. It's a pearl with ence. The camera pans the scene every now and swine. The first prothen. It's happy music gram'I tuned into was for happy people. Big "Talkin' Tractors." As fc 6 Big Joe, who is tall but mostly just you might expect from the title, it's a program amazingly fat, is dressed up in a goofy refugee from a 70s about tractors. RFDTV is like that -- no suit. The jacket has the keyboard of the surprises. It's simply a accordion embroidered on one side, and elevator during the show where some very day. He pounds on a old farmers drive their the chord buttons on the other... The over- drum that has been very old tractors in all effect is kind of a combination of Mike repaired with duct front of the camera, tape. The production then have a little chat Ditka and Liberace." quality is so exquisitewith the host about - ^ ^ ^ ^ B ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ - ^ m - m w a r n • • w m m m ^v aw^11' t n a l ' t s J usl the restoration. "Oh, wonderful. A Cohen sure, you betcha, that's a John Deere 'G' series from brothers film, only it's real, and the people there arc 1951. She starts right up on the coldest mornings having a great time of it on a cold Nebraska night. with just a little bit of ether in the intake, you know." Joe had an accordion trio on the other night, all The host and guests are all wearing "gimmie" wearing pale yellow Munsingwcar shirts with the litcaps from the local feed stores. The interview always tle penguins on the pockets. They apparently had to starts out with them facing the camera, more or less take the three that matched rather than the three blocking the view of the tractor. But before long, that fit. The people in the audience were dressed in they have both turned around, their Kansas-sized everything from regular clothes to elaborate polka butts to the camera, to point to the carburetor costumes, with huge skirts on the women, and the adjustment on the Allis-Chalmers, and continue men in shirts from the same fabric. A couple of talking while mooning the audience. "Well, now, this elderly women were dancing together, but in the was a California tractor. Not a spec of rust on it. It context of "Big Joe's Polka Show," we all knew they had the narrow front end for cultivating vegetables. were polka widows, not lesbians. They were all havMost of what you see here in Indiana had the wide ing a nice time there at the Ramada Inn. front end." RFD-TV isn't all just entertainment. There is It's got all the appeal of "Monster Garage" or some serious news content there, too. 'Hie "Georgia "American Chopper" without the surly attitude, the Farm Monitor" seemed like an important report on cursing or the tattoos. If motorcycle customizer Jesse the agricultural economy in Georgia. I couldn't tell James set up shop in Fargo, the result would be the for sure if it was the Georgia that borders Florida or "Talkin' Tractors." Instead of yelling at a co-worker the one that borders Russia, because I couldnt on a big, tractor-restoration project, these polite understand a word anybody said. There were segMidwesterners would lean over and say, "You know, ments on eggs, peaches and some other crop that I a guy might try a little more WD-40 to loosen that didn't recognize. boll," or "I remember once seeing a guy in a shop I finally fell asleep during the Farm Monitor, so I over inJ St. Cloud use a pipe wrench on one of didn't get to see this week's episode of "Training those^.. * Andtheii they all go down to the diner for Mules and Donkeys." So there you have it. If you are a cuppa and a slice of pie. I watched back-to-back on Direct-TV satellite system,, tune in to channel 379 episodes of "Talkin' Tractors" into the early morning for RFD-TV It's the very best of reality TV. hours. There was footage of a tractor auction. No Tom Clyde is a former city attorney and author of narration, no set-up or explanation; just 15 minutes "More Dogs on Main Street. "He has been a columnist of the tractor auction. Did you know that for The Park Record for 18years. raditionally, this week's piece is a rushed effort at predictions for the New Year and resT olutions that will help other people improve (there WRITERS ON THE RANGE By Alan Best Nostalgia for Colorado's past isn't what it used to be But if you suffered from appendicitis, the nearest doctor may very well have been hours away, in the next county. you wish for a time machine. If only the past were Colorado during the 1950s and 1960s was thick as wonderful as we think it was. with sawmills, the sawdust smoldering in teepeeThis nostalgic, backward-looking pose is particu- shaped burners, the smoke lingering on winter larly evident in the advertising by ski resorts in mornings, clamped over mountain valleys like lids. Colorado. Those most easily reached from Denver Colorado as it used to be was air pollution. have flourished -- which is another way of saying Water pollution is also Colorado as it used to be. become crowded. More distant resorts would like The mines were big polluters, of course, but so were to become just a bit more crowded. Of course, people. Vail was already well on its way to becomCrested Butte, Aspen and Steamboat Springs don't ing one of those "congested 1-70 resorts," while, say it like that. They talk about small-town friendli- round the corner at the town of Minturn, privies ness and the lack of congestion. still hung out above the Eagle River. In Colorado as At Winter Park, real estate developer Intrawest it used to be, you hoped the brown thing at the end caters to this desire with its proclamation that most of the fish line was a trout. Colorado in the good old days was often bad of Colorado was once a "light-knit group of athletes, artists and artisans. It's what Winter Park will food, terrible coffee and tiny motel rooms with walls so thin you could hear somebody in the next always be." In Telluride, the visitor's bureau director room snoring. It was poor-paying jobs and, at least describes that resort as in my youth, five being "what Colorado television channels. was 50 years ago," a Contrary to This purported past has more to Intrawest's "tighttime before big-box stores in mountain val- do with mythology than nostalgia. It's knit group of athleys and the building of letes, artists and tunnels that made it King Arthur's Court without those annoy- artisans," it was lots easy to get to them. ingly unkempt serfs in the background, of blue-collar jobs in the mines, on the In fact, most people are too young or too tilling the fields, or the curs underfoot, ranches or in the woods. recently arrived to actu- snarling for bones/' ally know "Colorado as In fact, large it used to be." This pur^^^^^^^^^^a^^^m • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • " • • parts of Colorado ported past has more to even today arc do with mythology than nostalgia. It's King Colorado as it used to be. Not much has changed in Arthur's Court without those annoyingly unkempt the little farm towns of the High Plains, just beyond serfs in the background, tilling the fields, or the eyeshot of the Rockies, in 30. 40, even 50 years. Even mountain valleys have several such places. I curs underfoot, snarling for bones. Colorado and the West as they used to be were lived in some of those towns. I won't return. blotted with discomforts and also with dark Yet, 1 do understand the attraction of select parts thoughts. Bigotry ran rampant. Chinese on the min- of the past. I love the knotty pine that was the de"cor ing frontier were tolerated only when they made during the golden age of automobile tourism. I less money than anybody else and did those jobs hunger for the big empties of the landscape, miles that no one else wanted. The rare African- without a stoplight, much less a mansion. Americans are remembered on. the geographic But this pining away for "Colorado as it used to landscape as "Negro Bill" and such, although I sus- be" is ultimately an illusion. We don't truly hunger pecl the original names were different, and deroga- for the past, but instead yearn to be at the intertory. Do we want this part of "Colorado as it used face. We want urban amenities on one side and to be?" wide-open spaces on the other, the two linked by Maybe the "Colorado as it used to be" that peo- little-used roads, and the real estate within our ple Want is what the first pioneers in this Era of budgets. Recreation and Leisure found in the 1940s to 1970s, It is a dream as old as the first suburb. All the when they arrived to take possession of the old rest is marketing and sales. mining towns of Breckenridge. Aspen and Allen Best is a contributor to Writers on the Telluride. The Victorian houses were rotting, their Range, a service <?/High Country News (hcn.org). paint peeling, available for little more than a song. He lives in the Denver area of Colorado. wave of yearning for "Colorado as it used to be" has been sweeping the state and I susA pect much of the West. It's almost enough to make |