It is hard to say anymore which is more real: today or yesterday. I would probably vote for yesterday, as in the theme song of my 1965 freshman year at Allegheny: “All our troubles seemed so far away. . . . I believe in yesterday.”

I don’t have many troubles this Christmas, aside from the usual nagging problems of growing old. This will be a very busy and very joyous one here: all three of our granddaughters, two of our sons, and our daughter-in-law are making the journey to our house. And now it is snowing gently, flakes drifting down outside my parallelogram windows as I write, blanketing the spruces at the edge of the path. Park City looks like the quintessential Christmas town, particularly along Main Street and the (mostly renovated) miners’ shacks that stagger up the hills toward the ski areas. Though it was colder last night, we have not had the bitter temperatures of a couple of weeks ago, the sub-zero deep freezes that made me huddle on the couch at night wrapped in my fuzzy white blanket.

I usually say my postings won’t be long and then they are, but this time I mean it. I just have enough time to go out the door with my cross-country skis and make the loop around the meadow half a block away before it is time to pop the already-stuffed turkey in the oven.

There is just enough time to say what I mean to say: that it is the little things of Christmas that stay with us, eventually eclipsing everything else and coming to be the central part of our conscious grasp of what this winter holiday means.

For me, it is a sugar cube house. I think we had one a single time, though I could be wrong. The house sat on top of our high upright dark piano, resting on an oval linen Christmas cloth that was imprinted with a village scene. I have that cloth on top of my own upright piano, though I have not made (nor have I ever made) a sugar cube house. I can see this house clearly and I can almost taste the glittering sweet cubes. I don’t know what the cement was that held the white blocks together, but it must have been something edible. I thought that it was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen. I loved sugar as a child, so much so that it is a miracle I have any teeth left. I used to pick tender lettuce leaves from our garden and put a teaspoon of sugar in the middle of the leaf, rolling it up and shoving the whole thing into my mouth. Desserts were a staple of our household; my mother had an aluminum cake pan with a top that slid over it and there was nearly always a cake in it, red velvet or yellow.

My other treasured memory of Christmas in Titusville also focuses on the piano: Christmas music. My mother played the piano and sang in our church choir, and my sisters and I took lessons. Often our house resounded with tunes from sixties musicals that my mother plunked out:  “Oklahoma,” “South Pacific,” “Fiddler on the Roof.” I still hear those melodies in my head. Best of all, though, were our Christmas songfests, when my Uncle Gordon boomed out the lyrics in his deep voice. Gordon Cross lived in Manhattan and rural Connecticut; he sang in New York’s synagogues, and, to our family’s eternal pride, he was on the Mitch Miller Show, where he was its official photographer and a choral member. Every Saturday night we gathered in the family  room around the TV set, my Uncle Bill who lived next door often joining us, leaning against the doorway to watch when Gordon appeared.

“There he is!” one of us would shout.

Often he was featured taking shots of Mitch and other actors, in a sort of meta-commentary on artifice that was almost post-modern. We couldn’t believe it: someone in our family was on television!

He and his family usually came to Titusville over the holidays to stay with my great-aunt Edna next door, as the Christmas show was shot ahead of time and his synagogue work was done as soon as Hanukkah was over.

On Christmas morning we awoke to find our stockings pinned to the end of our bedspreads. We were allowed to open those right away, though I think the house rule was that we had to wait until daylight to come downstairs. My sister Catherine was the early riser, sometimes up as early as 2AM anticipating Santa’s arrival. I believed in Santa fervently until the second grade, when my friend Marian Jordan (who just happened to be the only African-American girl in the Elm Street School) who had come to swing with me in my backyard leaned back from her perch and whispered,

“You know, Susan, there isn’t any such thing as Santa Claus—he is your parents.”

I don’t think I answered her; I merely filed this remark away. The seed of doubt had been planted though,  and I started to wonder whether my five foot eight inch thin Irish father could possibly be the fat, jolly Kris Kringle.

Our Christmases passed in a whirl of cookies, candies, sledding, ice-skating, and building snow forts along the street where the plows heaped up snow banks sometimes eight feet high. My granddaughters live in sunny climes—Atlanta and California—so it will be a treat for them just to be in the snow. Three-year-old Abby recently announced,

“I am going to my Papa’s house to build a snowman and stick a carrot in its face for the nose.”

Nothing more need be said, except that I wish everyone a happy, healthy, and peaceful holiday season. I will write again after the first of the year.

22/12/2013

Where was I?  Oh yes . . . . with the women who might have lived in the abandoned log cabins in this remote wilderness.  I suppose they just survived. After all, where could they go, particularly if they had children?

And where could I go, when this exciting summer adventure lost some of its glimmer? Read on, dear reader, and you will find out my destination.

In some ways I think that the summer was a metaphor for my entire life: I want to try things, I want to have adventures, I am perennially curious, I become easily bored with routines. So, off I rush eager to excel at my newest passion (read: skiing, golf, yoga, tai chi, writing, painting, playing the piano—though not necessarily in that order). I put enormous amounts of time and energy into these various passions, only to burn out and decide that I would be much better at doing --- X. This summer was no different. Before we departed for camp in early July (the earliest when the camp site was completely free of snow), I spent many hours looking up recipes and copying them onto white index cards. I found this project very interesting, for a time at least. Remember this was pre-Internet, so I combed through my own limited library of cookbooks, looked at magazines, and even checked out books from the Salida library. (Poncha Springs was too small to have one.) I gave little thought for what kind of ingredients would be available—this is typical of my approach to life: full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes. I also gave no thought to how inventive I would be at 5:30 in the morning, when my day’s work started.

Not only did I amass recipes for things like coq au vin, boeuf en daube, duchesse potatoes, corn fritters, chocolate puffs, etc., I even shopped for cooking equipment. I found two large metal coffee pots at the Salvation Army store in Canyon City (coffee was an essential for cold mountain mornings) as well as a giant soup pot and an old-fashioned waffle iron that went over a gas burner. I happily packed these items, along with (not enough) disposable diapers, warm clothing for all of us, and various books that I would finish that summer. I left out my two-volume Scott Moncrief translation of Proust, though—I was enough of a realist to know that I probably would not finish this project at field camp. I took Jane Austen, instead—talk about women’s lives removed from mine.

Well, as you have probably already guessed, it only took a matter of hours after I arrived at said camp for my balloon (becoming a gourmet chef) to deflate. During our first camp meeting, I decided I would ask campers what kinds of food they wanted me to prepare. The novice geologist liked chicken and vegetarian casseroles, one summer student wanted pate and Perrier water, the field technician would only eat beef, and Tony, another student, handed me his mother’s recipe for snickerdoodles—I am not kidding.

And then there was the shock of my first morning in the cook tent. After my trek down to Beaver Creek, I opened the flap to a dark, cold tent. I lit the stove first, then the Coleman lantern. After sweeping up the cats’ nocturnal kill of mice and chipmunks, I brought in drinking water from the plastic tanks next to the tent. Though I used water from the creek to boil for cooking, we did not dare drink the creek water, as there were many cows ranging in this area. Since the potable water came from a well ten miles away, I soon learned to hoard our supply.  I boiled a large kettle of water and poured it into the top halves of my metal pots. After it percolated I poured it into insulated servers. Breakfast and lunch preparation went by in a blur; then it was time to think about dinner.

Days passed; overall and despite my constant fatigue, I thought I was doing well. But I had not reckoned with my boss, Bill. (Need I mention here that it is almost never a good ideasto work for one’s spouse???) I was not the only cook: two of the other wives filled in, as we went back to Poncha Springs every other week for a few days’ rest.  Occasionally we were all in camp at the same time. Bill summoned the three of us together late one afternoon. I was sure he would compliment us on the wonderful meals. Nope: none of that positive reinforcement! He complained: we were not serving enough protein at breakfast. His crew spent long days hiking and carrying backpacks full of rocks up and down Fourteeners; this group had to be well fueled. He had made it clear from the start that we could spend as we needed for supplies: good food was essential to morale. Being the fair-minded person he was (and is), he did NOT say that I, in fact, always had protein at my breakfasts. Since I was married to him (at that moment, at least), he did not say that I had done a better job than the other two women.

I was furious. All this—and then a scolding? Needless to say I did not speak to him for days, but he probably did not notice. I don’t want to generalize about gender behaviors, but he has never picked up on people’s moods like I do. It is probably acculturated behavior, but women in general seem to have a better grasp of how others feel. He might have noticed the frosty glares I gave him every time I saw him that something was wrong—but on the other hand, probably not. He was tired, too.

So, that plus the wretched working conditions (I haven’t even talked about cleaning up in that cook tent!) pretty much ended my career as chef. I should note here that camp life was challenging for nearly everyone, except the children and dogs who continued to love it: our wine and beer account grew as the days in camp lengthened.

I still remember, though, that I had the best desert I have ever had in this primitive camp. In early August of that summer the other mom, Cinda, and I spent an afternoon picking raspberries by a beautiful and precipitous mountain stream, listening for the bears that also loved the berries. That evening she made a raspberry torte. I can still taste it.

Other things about this perfect summer came up short. I could almost here my mother saying, “I told you so,” but since there was no phone service at our campsite I could not call her. It was just as well. First, she didn’t need to hear about this, as she was grappling with her own issues; second, I was ashamed to admit that I had been wrong. I was not superwoman, after all. Surprise. . . . 

From the start sleep deprivation was a problem for Bill and me. Fifteen-month-old Daniel, who slept very well in his room at home, immediately went on strike. We had comfortable cots for the boys, low to the floor and padded with warm sleeping bags. On the first night we put them to bed, both crashed instantly, exhausted from running around the open field. Bill and I, too, were asleep in minutes. But around midnight Dan started in:

“Wah, Wah: I want my cwib!”

This wail continued on and off until 5:00AM, when it was time for me to get up to start the day’s chores. We tried various measures, including letting him sleep between us, but nothing worked.

Okay, after two weeks it was time for our trek back to Poncha. On the way I convinced Bill that he would have to dismantle said “cwib” and bring it back to the camp. That worked. Aha, sleep at last.

Nope. No sleep. Although Dan dozed peacefully through the night, secure behind those familiar bars, Bill started squirming: kicking, wriggling, moving a lot.

“Stop this!” I finally whispered. “I cannot sleep. Would you puleeze stop moving so much?”

“I am not wiggling,” he growled back in a low tone.

Before bed the next night I warned him, “Please try to hold still tonight!”

Same thing.

By the third night, we were really exhausted—beyond even being tired. Around 2AM Bill started again.

“Stop kicking me!” I yelled. “I am going to the truck to sleep.”

He sat upright and announced he had barely moved. As we stared at one another, we realized that the movement continued. Bill picked up the flashlight next to our cot and shone it on the bed. We saw rippling beneath the sleeping bag.

This nocturnal culprit was a chipmunk, who had managed to wiggle between the bag and our sheet. He must have been seeking the warmth. Marriage destroyer, that one.  The next night we brought one of the cats to sleep in our shelter. That solved it—at least, it solved that problem.

In August, the weather turned. In July, a rainy day had meant a welcome break for almost of us. The crew stayed in camp sorting samples and drinking coffee, happy for a break, and I had people to talk too. The three preschoolers, though, proved difficult to entertain inside these small tents. Uncle Lyle played cards with anyone who had the time to sit with him, but the boys weren’t old enough for anything like that. The dogs just slept near the cook stove, glad to be warm, but the boys bounced and shouted and fought. Later in the summer, such days came all too often.

I clearly recall a four-day stretch of freezing rain and then snow, confined to our twelve by fourteen foot tent some hours, the cook tent full of grumblers the next hours. I can’t remember now what Bill said to me. It probably was nothing; by now we almost never spoke to one another aside from an occasional grumble or growl. We both suffered from every classical symptom of sleep deprivation, irritability and irrationality heading the list. Maybe the word “protein” came up—or perhaps even the remark that I was his paid employee?—I just don’t recall what the trigger was, but suddenly I found myself throwing his favorite pint and a half (just-the-right-size) thermos out of the book tent door, barely missing a summer student, and breaking it on a rock (granite schist??). I vaguely recall that I accompanied this dramatic action with an expletive or too, words related to where he could put said thermos and the entire camp, for that matter. Though Bill was distraught at the loss of the thermos, at least I hadn’t thrown out one of the children. (Certainly I might have thrown him out, but he is bigger than I am.)

“I am cooking the breakfast in the morning, and then I am driving you and the boys back to Poncha Springs.”

That was the last thing he said to me for weeks.

Sure enough, the next morning he got up at 5 a.m. I was relieved: angry, but relieved that my once-anticipated-and-looked-forward-to summer would end. Bill marched to the cook tent. I had laid out ingredients for corn fritters the night before, but Bill poured milk into the bowl and cooked pancakes. Whatever. Then he broke down the “cwib” while I threw our belongings into duffle bags. He loaded the three of us in the Bronco and stepped on the gas. I never looked back as we pulled away from the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness group campsite.

Five hours later, with only one stop for gas and the toilet, we arrived at our log home. Bill unloaded the crib and bags and threw them into the yard, while I quickly took the boys inside our never-looked-better house, complete with hot running water and indoor toilets. Our wonderful neighbor Jack remembered our dramatic re-entry for years: Bill driving in, throwing everything (including his family and dog) onto the lawn, and turning around without even a wave to head back up Poncha Pass for camp, arriving there late that same night.

Well, I guess there is no moral to this story, except that our marriage survived the summer.  Fortunately both of us are exceptionally stubborn: I can’t think of another reason why we are still together—except of course that we love each other. When the camp closed in September, after record early snows, Bill and I left the boys with our sainted neighbor Karen and went to Aspen for the weekend. In search of decadence after a summer of bathing in Beaver Creek, I booked a luxury hotel with a sauna and a swim-up bar.

It was at least a decade before I remembered the good things about that summer: the friendships that we made, the remarkable beauty of the camp, the wildlife and flowers, the solitude, living without any links to the outside world other than the post office in Cowdrey. The grapevine has it that the Jackson County Forest Service dismantled our tent platforms years ago, but we could still go back and camp there. I have such strong memories, and I am hoping that a visit will recreate them all. I suspect it is one of the few places left where I have lived that has not changed. It is one thing that I want to do before I am dismantled.

P.S. To this day Bill buys steel thermoses.

file://localhost/Users/susanegunter/Downloads/Sue_North%20Park%201980-2.jpg

At our age, sometimes some small thing triggers an association and with it a flood of rippling memories that submerge us, blotting out our immediate present. For those of you who have forgotten their Proust (or perhaps have just shelved him for future perusal), that is what happened to the narrator, Marcel, in the “Overture” to Swann’s Way, the first of the seven volumes of Proust’s monumental Recherche du Temps Perdue, translated variously as “Remembrance of Things Past” or “In Search of Lost Time.” I prefer the latter title, as I think it more accurately expresses what Proust tried to do—and what all of us try to do as we grow old: capture what we have lost in a meaningful enough way that others might benefit from (or at least understand) our unique experiences.

I must confess here, on this page, that I have never finished said monumental text. At nineteen I started reading it in French, when I was spending the summer working at Ocean City, New Jersey. I was distracted from this interesting project by, of all things, a boyfriend who showed up. I was crazy about him and wasn’t sure whether he reciprocated my feelings, so I dropped my reading in favor of spending long afternoons with him in his tiny apartment just off the beach.

I didn’t pick up Proust again until my thirties. This time I tried to read it in English, so my reading went faster, but I stopped about 300 pages short of my goal. I even taught Swann’s Way in a seminar on Modernism (along with parts of Ulysses and all of James’s The Wings of the Dove—the students liked Proust best). In graduate school, while studying poetry with James Dickey, I wrote a couplet about Proust:

In Proust most single sentences of brevity are free

to underscore the weighty thought of madeleines and tea.

This brings me once again back to where I started—involuntary memory and how it places us squarely in the past. For Proust’s semi-fictional Marcel, it was the taste of a madeleine and lime flower tea that took him back to his childhood in Combray, with the magic lantern, the walks, his mother. For me it was the pictures above, which are of my two young sons during the summer of 1980, when we lived in field camp in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness area near the Colorado/Wyoming border. I took very few pictures that summer, but an old and dear friend, Craig Horlacher, sent Bill these photos a few days ago. I was instantly transported to what was one of the most interesting and challenging summers of my life. Bear with me—this probably will take weeks to tell, so hang on. . . .

So, field camp. In 1980, when Ben and Dan were small, we lived in the beautiful town of Poncha Springs, Colorado, population 250 plus (the plus being the friendly dogs who wandered its dirt streets). My geologist husband Bill was often away from home, leaving me alone with a three year old and a one year old. I had not even wanted children until I married Bill at age 28; I was surprised when I wanted them and even more surprised at how completely I loved them right away. Despite my continuing love for them, however, it was difficult to parent on my own so much of the time. I had become involved in the town—I was the town secretary and I belonged to a baby-sitting coop, an organic food-buying coop, and La Leche League—but still when Bill was gone for ten days at a time there were moments –hours—days—when I thought I would lose it. I used to take the boys to the high school track and put them in the middle of the field on the grass with their toys, while I ran round and round them as fast as I could. Or, when they were both napping, I would go outside and jump rope for hundreds of times. For some reason I did not go insane, but I did push Bill to a) find another career, b) send someone else from his office out prospecting, or c) move me closer to my extended family. I remember sitting in the corner of our log house rocking a crying child at night, watching for his truck headlights to come down the pass from Buena Vista. (This area was so remote that few cars ever passed through the town at night, in case you were wondering how I could recognize his lights.) And when he arrived, I usually turned over the boys to him and disappeared to spend the night in a motel in the nearest town, returning the next morning rested and happy.

So that was my life at that point. I vaguely recall that we fought fairly often, me because I was angry that we did not have shared parenting, Bill because he probably couldn’t figure out how to do anything about it. I think he loved his work, and frankly there aren’t many urban areas (with graduate schools and libraries) where he could have found employment. We laugh about all this now, but as I write about it I am there again and I can feel my own frustration.

At any rate, in the spring of 1980 he announced that he had a joint venture with a British company and a French company to fund a search in northern Colorado for a massive sulfide deposit. Well, fine—but it meant that he would be gone for several months, living five hours from our house. Great.

Instantly I hatched a couple of plans:

A) go back to Titusville, Pa., for the entire summer.

B) take the boys and go with Bill and all the others to field camp.

I had already made plans to go home for a couple of weeks in late May to visit, but when I got there I could see that my poor mother had deteriorated. She had been a polio victim as a child, and as she grew older she suffered various physical and mental ailments. My father was struggling to take care of her, and I realized that adding two little kids to the mix would not be helpful. My dear sister was there, but she too had young children, and her husband ran a big business out of their house. Unless I rented my own place in the town, plan A would not work.

But as I said in last week’s blog, according to Susann, always be ready to go with Plan B. I talked this over with my parents. My mother, who was a very bright woman and still in command of her mental faculties, said that Plan B was out.

“Susan, you cannot possibly take a three year old and one year old to live in a camp in the wilderness for months!”

Well, that did it. Unfortunately I am still that way: if someone tells me I can’t do something, I immediately figure out how to do it, whether it is good for me or not.  And not only did I end up going, I ended up persuading my husband to hire me as one of the camp cooks for the summer.  What a brilliant idea: I would earn a handsome $3.00 per hour, and my children could be by my side as I worked.

So off we went in early July. We were fifteen in all that epic summer: a middle-aged Aussie geologist escaped from the soulless bush for a six weeks’ sojourn in the green Rockies); four summer geology students (two male, two female—I had nagged Bill to hire women); a senior field technician with his wife, two year old, and eighty-three-year-old uncle Lyle; a young geologist and his pregnant wife; and the four of us, camp director Bill, three year old Benjamin, one year old Daniel, and me, a haggard thirty three year old. Two mixed breed dogs, two predatory cats, a herd of elk, and various uninvited rodents completed our singular entourage.

Together we spent the summer in one of the earth’s most beautiful spots. We were 37 miles from the crossroads of Cowdrey, population 45, and 42 miles from the town of Walden, population 1000. While much of the landscape in Jackson County, Colorado, is arid and open, dotted with cacti, sagebrush, juniper, and pinion, the Mt. Zirkel wilderness area is green and spectacular. Throughout the summer the field in our encampment was carpeted with tiny wild flowers, beautiful alpine orchid species in shades of violet, mauve, ad blue. This large open field was bordered by trees at its north end, where our tents were pitched, and sloped down to Beaver Creek at the south, dropping off over a steep brambly edge to the creek bed below. Parts of Beaver Creek were clear and rocky, though other sections widened into boggy mosquito-infested swamps.

An owl nested in a single tall dead tree in one such swamp a quarter-mile southwest of our camp; he circled our field on moonlit nights in search of tasty midnight snacks. At first these night sounds startled me: the owl’s clear hoot, the coyote’s chilling cries, the noises of large animals crashing through the high country timber. Morning sunrises were stunning. As the sun’s red light reflected on the snowy peaks to the west, it bathed our valley in a rosy glow. I loved the dawn quiet: privacy was at a premium here, with fifteen of us sharing common living areas. The three boys in the camp, of course, loved camp. They could play all day long—no structure, no media, nothing but insects, rocks, plants, and two happy dogs.

The camp was set up to expedite the mapping of significant geologic occurrences. The forest service had allowed us to build platforms on which to erect our large canvas tents. Each family group had a tent for sleeping, plus there was a large cook tent and another large tent that served as an office. Our site was next to an abandoned gravel pit filled with water; at first some of us bathed there, but as its water table lowered week by week it looked less and less inviting.  There were two latrines set back from the camp in the woods. (My older son was potty trained when we went, but for weeks he refused to use these facilities, leaving me with two in diapers at a time when disposal diapers were scarce.)

Not only was there no electricity here, there was no water, so I arose at 5:30AM each day to take my water jugs down to Beaver Creek and haul them back up, next heating the propane stove to boil my water for coffee and for cooking chores. Sometimes when the boys napped in the afternoon, I would sneak back to the creek to wash my hair in the icy water, my head aching.

The hills around us were dotted with abandoned cabins. I used to think about the women who might have lived there. If I struggled for a short summer, what must it have been like for them when winter came, with no doctors, no stores, no neighbors. . . . .  I have never fully been able to tell their stories. Next week I will finish this “camp cook” episode, leaving you to imagine what might happen next--debilitating illness, a psychotic breakdown, divorce—but you probably aren’t thinking  “happily ever after!”

I am sorry that I missed posting anything yesterday--I was still basking in the glow of a Thanksgiving visit to our youngest son, his wife, cat Hudson, and puppy Kieran,--and trying to jog off the calories I put on from our tour of the Theo Chocolate Factory in Seattle. I did pretty well at the Thanksgiving dinner itself, as said puppy needed hours of walking that day, but I succumbed to the smells and then samples at the factory. After our tour Dan looked up information about Theo's (thinking that working there as an engineer might be more fun and less stressful than his current job as a manager at an aerospace company) and learned that the Oompa Loompas who stamp the bars with pretty designs and sprinkle goodies on top of them also do not have ideal jobs. In fact, they have been trying to form a workers' union because the job is tough, but management has employed some strong-arms tactics--and in the lunchroom of all the ironic places! So much for a job at the chocolate factory. My favorite bar was the peppermint-coconut--unbelievable. And we did learn about where my favorite food comes from and how it is processed, from the tall green tree with beautiful white flowers to the beautifully wrapped treats. These cocoa beans come, mostly, from Ghana and the Congo. While Theo's claims to be a fair trade company, we wondered how many well-paid and happy workers there are in the Congo, not to mention some of their disgruntled employees at home. At any rate, their chocolate is very good and the tour was quite interesting; I would recommend it, though maybe not on a Thanksgiving weekend when most people are already eating way more food than they need!
This will be brief, though, as I think maybe my last blog was too long. Anyway, we returned from Seattle to an empty house, with the usual feeling of sadness that the kids, dogs, cats, ducks, rabbits, and chickens we lived with over our 38 years together are gone. (Of purse we have forgotten that one of the dogs tried to eat two of the chickens, that the three rabbits died in their cages in the July heat in South Carolina while Bill was gone--I still remember having to bury them in the woods and then going in the house to throw up, that the ducks flew away in the fall, that the cats got a rare disease and died, and that the teenaged kids were enough to drive us straight to the mental hospital--though they are now super adults.) So, I decided that since our neighborhood is beautiful but not particularly welcoming, we needed to get out of the house and go somewhere. I am someone who needs the company of other people. My geologist husband does too, though since his forty-year plus career involved walking in the mountains and deserts alone with no other company than rocks, he can better tolerate solitude and silence. I need solitude (which I don't always get now that said geologist is retired!) but I do need conversation.
So I came up with Plan B. I had a good friend and neighbor here who said that the main thing about life was to always be ready to go with Plan B. I listened and learned from Susann. It was indeed Plan B day. I remembered that our wonderful Park City Film Series, which shows lots of indy films and documentaries every weekend at the local library, needs volunteers. I figured out how to sign us up online, and Sunday afternoon at 5PM we marched into the auditorium. Yep--just what the doctor (me, in this case) ordered: lights, people, action. 
I ended up with what might be considered, for me, the perfect job. Shay, a full-time ski patroller and part-time theatre manager, asked me to ask everyone who came in whether or not they were full-time residents of Summit County. He gave me a clipboard with a sheet with the day's date. There were two columns: one for full-time Summit County residents, one for people who live outside our country. At first I thought that this might be because the film series gets local tax money, and the county commissioners want to be sure that people who pay taxes here are benefiting from this amenity. Nope: they want more out-of-county residents, because we have a local surtax which is meant to support projects that bring in more tourists.
Okay, I could do this. And it turned out to be REALLY easy, because after almost 26 years here I know a lot of people and in many cases I did not need to ask them where they lived. I just made a little black slash on the paper in the "full-time Summit County resident" column. I just add to total up the numbers at the end, and as there is not much in the way of quality control in this operation, no one would know if I missed a patron or two. . . . and no job evaluations, either, thank the lord.
Yep, easy. I didn't have to think, I got to see a number of old friends that I had not seen for a while, and it only took me abut 45 minutes to do this job, between the early arrivals and those who were late--being late, in fact, is a typical Park City thing. It turns out that lots of ski patrollers came because the movie "Summit" was an adventure flic about mountain climbing on K-2 or some place like that, and since Bill was a volunteer patroller here for 12 years, we got to see that group--great people.
And, last but not least, though the job pays nothing, I get to see a free movie AND--all the popcorn that I can eat with as much butter on it as I want! Mary, who was selling popcorn, even offered to send a bucket home with me. And listen to this: there is a bucket full of melted real butter next to the popcorn machine, so patrons can pour their own butter over the popped kernels. 
Dream job, here I come--I just have to figure out how I can exercise more so that I can burn off that butter.
Who said that retirement can't be even better??