Letter from Slim Wolfe
Modern life – June 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorado Central:
O.K. Martha, you win. I’ll concede your point [April]. Yes, the world has become a better place in our lifetime, despite my endless complaints. Some of the kids and young people today have a much better and broader education than was common 50 years ago. The Spectrum is much broader, in music, food, thought, fashion, language, and technology. Maybe there’s too much for anyone to absorb, and maybe a lot of it is crap, but there are more options, no doubt. Mainly the world is a better place though, because no one has to wear those horrid ladies hats of blue-blackened mold-hard straw with the tropical feather geegaws or the pompadour hairstyles which were foisted on the young men.
I liked Marcia Darnell’s idea to tax the heck out of the gas guzzlers, but sometimes there are extenuating circumstances. Like on an extended northern winter cruise, when the back of a van makes a much better motel room than the back of a pickup. And while those new economy vans might save on petrol, think of the resources that must be expended to manufacture a new minivan, when a 25-year-old dinosaur can still run like a top. And what better way to gauge how the rest of the civilized world looks askance at the Ugly American than a northern winter cruise to B.C.? Imagine a nation not feeling the crush of 280 million people or trying to live down a history of slavery and Vietnams.
They may not be saints, but they do seem to get by without so many huge and garish billboards, at least in the backcountry. A good indicator of self-esteem, eh? They assume you have the intelligence to find their ski-slope without ramming it down your throat from twenty miles away. What a concept! Once there was life without megacrap here in Central Colorado, too.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
