Yesterday I rummaged through a drawer where some of my keepsakes lay which are, for the most part, seldom looked at. After I left graduate school I decided to purchase for myself a college class ring. Well, there it sat looking pretty much like a new one since I never wore it that much. The year of graduation inscribed on it made me take notice, and I’ve been reminiscing about those days ever since. Nineteen sixty-nine was the year, and when I did a little simple math I realized it has been 40 years since I graduated with my master of arts degree. I remember that year with pleasure; along with studies we had a great social time. There were about a dozen of us taking classes in the administration department; we were a diverse lot who established the Driftwood Lounge in Greeley as the headquarters for our shenanigans, story-telling, and general all-around shiftless behavior.
Colorado, still not over-populated at the time, possessed many scenic wonders, and I got around to see them as much as I could. Looking westward from the campus the Rocky Mountains rose high and sharply serving as a source of eye-candy for this flatlander. I still remember the time when large flakes of snow floated on the air, and a girl who had never seen snow fall sat transfixed in front of the student union’s west windows. She probably remembers seeing snow for the first time in her life; I remember the total scene: the girl, the snow, the mountains.
How can I forget to mention the odor of manure that swept the campus each time the wind blew from the northwest. The Monfort Feed Lot with 100,000 head of cattle fattening in its pens reminded us of their presence, and as they always said in Wahpeton with its foul smell of sugar beet processing, that’s the smell of money. I believe Monfort’s capacity has grown, but it has also relocated its operation to a more favorable position as regarding its wind-borne odors.
Forty years! So much has transpired over that period of time. A wife, two sons, grandchildren, jobs, and now retirement. The responsibilities a person assumes can almost hobble him at times, and the scars a man bears have been earned. I just typed and framed a quotation from Tennyson’s poem Ulysses:
“Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are…”
No matter what I wish now that I would have done or shouldn’t have done with my life, I will continually remind myself “that which we are, we are.” Colorado was one of the bright spots, and it came at the end of an odyssey similar to Ulysses' when I drove to Alaska searching for great things, ended up in Greeley in graduate school, and lived the first days of the rest of my life.
