Letter from Clay Warren
October edition – November 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
October edition was enough to drive a man to drink
Editors:
Man! If ever there was an issue to drive a man to drink! O’course we’re talking ’bout a real lo-cal liquid that is best used for pouring over flag burners and bathing on Saturday nights whether ah need to or not. But ah will say thet the one advantage Tennessee has over Colorado, is a surplus o’aqua. Course hit has a surplus o’ rattlesnakes too, but ah wont bring thet up ’cause ah wouldn’t want to discourage any front rangers from moving there where good land is cheap and real green too.
Jan Evans in the piece on zoning laws asks if an emu is comparable to a chicken. Ah consulted with ma neighbor, the monologist, and he says a chicken is a potential MacArthur Award winner compared to an emu. (This is the kind of valuable information that ain’t posted on the Internet but which can be accessed through this magazine.) The article then claims that Frémont County has the best zoning laws, ’cause theirs is more complex, allow’in fer more loop-holes. The problem with this theory is that not everybody is as devious as yer average shyster and not everybody is equipped to think these things up, especially those of us who knew our fathers.
The editors keep putting in these box score items to keep track o’ how many geographical errors can be made about Salida, and Chaffee County in general, like how Bunie was goin’ ta be the next Aspen an’ this month Salida is 8000 feet high. Ah consider this a waste o’ time, cause no matter which way the pendulum swings, this here place ain’t normal now, in the past, er fer shore in the future neither. As an example in the letters section o’ last months magazine you had examples by both that rockologist guy and Lindell Cline juxtaposed, and each one o’em putting their foot in their mouths! Both trying to educate the general public about the facts o’life, and neither one o’em even mentioned sex. How in hell do they expect to keep people’s attention, anyway?
My personal advice to Lynda La Rocca is that the next time one o’them spandex nazis offers you his water bottles to fill without so much as a please, put vinegar in them. That’ll knock the you know what outta ’em, an yuh wont have to bruise yer knuckles on ’em either.
Well, back to the San Luis Valley. Hit finally dawned on me what the ruckus is all about: hit is a conflict between ignorance and technology versus politics and emotion and is a no win proposition. If they pump from the upper Closed Basin aquifer, all yer lovable, little, chico plants die fer a lack of sumptin to drink. If they pump from the Artesian Basin underneath hit, nobody knows what the facts are and the dadgum lawyers is going to get rich makin ’em up. Isn’t they any market fer some o’ thet Summitville natural, silver enriched, water?
On a more positive note, Allen Best pay attention, this question was actually asked at the local convenience store. To wit: “You’all have anything to hunt?” Readers smarter’n me can figure out what he meant, but the sad fact is that there was one o’them big orange, Welcome Hunters, banners hang’in up right thar! Perhaps some o’ ma faithful readers can suggest some answers?
An lastly ’bout Rosapepe’s complaint (don’t that sound jist like one o’them south of the border lower g.i. problems we hear so much about?), which is to say he don’t like riders that allow a small, undemocratic, vocal minority to get their way with Congress. What goes around comes around, an hit’s usually worse by the time hit arrives.
Yere’s til the elk quit buglin’.
Clay Warren Pseudonymous in Poncha