I always loved Colorado. I remember family vacations where my brother and I sat on the edge of our car seats for what seemed like hours as we approached the mountains on Highway 50 heading west competing for who saw the mountains first. While young we spent time in Manitou Springs and camped near the Garden of Gods and climbed up to the Kissing Camels where my brother slipped and fell and landed in a cactus. I’ve never had more fun watching as they pulled out the barbs from his rear end.

While still in high school, I discovered Aspen which to this day is more than special to me. Aspen was a bit different than Wichita. In fact, it was mind-blowing different. People dressed differently, thought differently and seemed to always be smiling and laughing. There was an appreciation for arts, culture and open-mindedness by the whole community that was contagious. In 1949 the Aspen Institute was founded and Albert Schweitzer gave a talk as did founder Walter Paepcke. By the time I discovered Aspen in the 60’s, Bucky Fuller had already been there as had Edmund Wilson. Even back then their conferences were titled, “The Environment, Energy and Institutional Structures.” In fact, the current President and CEO of the Aspen Institute is Walter Isaacson, who was educated by Telluride’s own, L.L. Nunn at Deep Springs College.

Many memorial “first” experiences in my life took place in Aspen. And, oh yeah, I met Alan Ginsburg sitting on a park bench when I was sixteen, he was there for the summer as part of the Artist-in Residence program. We sat on this bench overlooking the Rugby Field and talked about things I still think about more than forty years later. Telluride’s L.L. Nunn, who built Telluride House at Cornell University, hosted Ginsburg as an Artist in Residence at the Telluride House about the same time. Some other interesting artists and scientists that lived at Telluride House include: Linus Pauling, Rudolph Diesel, Richard Feynman, and Michael Foucault to name a few.
STAINED GLASS DAYS

In college while visiting Aspen, I met John Hayes, who was an incredible Aspen hustler. He walked with a bad limp courtesy of Viet Nam and somehow got into selling old stained glass windows in Aspen, he also involved in a pizza place called, Little Annie’s which had stained glass lamps which I made. When he found out that I knew how to do stained glass and even had a large antique glass collection, he enlisted me to go in with him. My job, since I was living on a farm in Lawrence, Kansas and still in school, was to repair these old windows that John bought in Atlanta and Savannah and the like. He’d drop off a load at the farm and pick up the last batch and drive them out to Aspen and sell them. It was a pretty good deal for me.

When I graduated, it was just a natural to move to Aspen with my stained glass business. Some buddies of mine were already living there and had opened a leather shop called Aspen Boot and Leather and it was Shangri-La. We climbed and hiked the mountains all day and then went to a night club called “Little Nell” and listened to the Eagles and danced all night. The owner of the club, Wally, didn’t even charge us a cover at the door, he just gave us the local’s nod. Of course, we tipped the girls big in return and were there every night. I still remember a song they played called “Lucifer’s” that the crowd loved, it was a boot stomper (we all wore mountaineering grade hiking boots in those days). When they went back to Los Angeles at the end of the summer they came out with their debut album, with songs like “Take it Easy, Witchy Woman and Peaceful, Easy Feeling, all of which we had heard numerous time, but not surprisingly it didn’t have Lucifer on it. Their next album, Desperado, seemed to be all about the summer they spent in Aspen and we were sure that they were talking about us and all the fun we had that summer. The members of the Eagles when they were living and playing in Aspen were Don Henley, Bernie Leadon, Randy Meisner and Glenn Frey—great music, great guys.

For years one of Telluride’s silliest battle cries was, “We don’t want to be like Aspen.”

Well, after getting into some heated argument with people that had never lived in Aspen or really knew anything about it, I just learned to not say much when the latest “newcomer” arrived explaining how we needed to “close the gate at society turn and not just let any more people in to spoil it for us lucky ones that got here first.”

Sounds a little silly doesn’t it, but I still hear that from time to time 35 years later.

Before long, it was obvious, that studio space for my stained glass shop was just too expensive and the girls were too pretty and the bands too hot and my graduation cash too diminutive to make a go of it in Aspen unless I wanted to change my ways and my occupation..

“We’d been hearing about Telluride long before the money ran out,” and Telluride was being talked about all over Aspen. An old Aspen family, the Barber’s gave us the low down that Telluride was the next Aspen and that lots of Aspen people had already invested in Telluride.

The truth is that Aspen gave birth to Telluride in many ways. Joe Zoline was from Aspen and heard about Telluride from Aspen people that had already invested heavily in Telluride. People like Joern and Louise Gerdts, John Doremus, Frank Bailey, Nancy Ward, Hattie Billings, Lasse Latvala, Tom Hale, Terry Starr, Dave and Sherri Farney, Louie Renquist, to name a few were promoting Telluride.

The stories sounded good to me, and so in early summer, I headed for Telluride with some friends. I still remember coming up Keystone Hill somewhat sleepy and as yet, not that impressed when we crested the hill and saw the valley. We were stunned and the tape deck was playing Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Marrakesh Express.

I don’t even remember seeing what we now call the Valley Floor, I was so captivated by the majestic setting of the town in a dead-end valley. Our wake-up call came when a Ford Fairlane began wailing a siren and flashing red lights. I pulled over to the curb and waited. We had made it at least fifty yards into town before we were pulled over by the law.

This was my first introduction to Telluride’s famous Marshall, Everett Morrow, who over the next few years became a friend. In true western cowboy fashion, Everett sauntered up to the driver’s window looked in with beady eyes and said, “We don’t like your kind around here.”

I was staggered. I didn’t expect that. Before I could say anything, Everett added, “You just turn this thing around right here and go back to wherever you came from.”

Being a college graduate with some history in battling segregation, inequality and marching for freedom, I quickly said, “This is America, and as a citizen of this country, I have rights….”

At this point, with a wry smile, Everett pulled out his pistol from his western movie style holster which he had secured to his leg with a leather string for purposes of quick draw action if need be and pointed it at my head and said, “This is the law around here.”

Swallowing and hoping no one in the car did anything stupid, I responded with a pleasant smile and said, “Yes, Sir.”

I immediately made a u-turn and headed out. We went to Illium Valley and set up camp and didn’t really even talk about it. At dusk, we loaded up and headed back to town.

We ended up at the Roma Bar and met Kate Mulvey the owner who was a real “oldtimer” and a couple of people who looked like us. Kate told us that scaring off hippies was Everett’s job and as far as she knew, he hadn’t shot anyone, yet.

Comforted by this declaration, we settled in for a few beers and some fun and eventually made it home to our camp.

What I eventually learned is that one of Joe Zoline’s conditions for taking on the job of starting a ski resort in Telluride was that the town leaders had to agree to “keep the hippies out.” It was understandable, see Joe was from Aspen where he had bought property back in the 50’s with the Paepcke rebirth. They were both from Chicago. Well, the people that invested in Aspen in the 50’s didn’t like the long haired group that moved into Aspen in the 60’s and believed that the hippies had ruined Aspen. So, Everett was hired and told to scare off the hippies. Interestingly, very few people who know the truth of the whole episode have ever bothered to tell the truth about it. Let’s just say that I believe in truth and the real story is better than fiction.

The next day we caught up with some Wichita people that had a couple of homes at the top of Pine Street, Bill and Susan Nelson, who adopted us, taught us where to fish, gave us endless lessons in Scrabble, and some other board games that were stored in their original cardboard boxes, but which looked like they were from the days of the Roman Empire, they were so used. I can’t remember ever winning a game and even their children, who were young, were really good at Scrabble and the like. (It turned out the little Tonya who must have been eight years old grew up to be the very accomplished and famous writer—Antonya Nelson.)

At the end of the summer, Bill and I were sitting on a rock down on the San Miguel chewing on cheese sandwiches and Bill said,“Brown, you seem to like it here.” To which, I smiled and said, “I do.”

So, why don’t you rent one of our houses for the winter and just stick around. We are gong to be leaving in a week or so,” Bill added.
My mind raced with this news, I really hadn’t been thinking as far ahead as a week or so, and I said, “What kinda rent would you need?”

“How about ten dollars a month,” Bill replied.

And, so it came to pass that I moved to Telluride. I went back to Kansas and gathered up my stuff and swung through Aspen and loaded of the stained glass studio and arrived in Telluride with everything I owned, except of course the stuff I left with my parents that I didn’t need.