A Girl Called Emily

And so we wake to another beautiful day here in Bailey. The sun is lighting up the tops of the trees, the hills are positively glowing and it's impossible not to admit how blessed we are to live here.

But there are no school buses driving down the street this morning. No kids with backpacks standing at the end of their drives. The girls from the house up the streeet aren't outside playing with their dog. Because today isn't just any beautiful morning in the Rockies. Today is different.

Because yesterday an unidentified man broke into a classroom at our little High School and lined the children up against the wall before sending the boys out at gunpoint. Later, he released most of the girls, but kept two behind. Negotiations broke down a few hours later but by the time SWAT team broke in, the gunman had shot himself. But not until after he'd shot one of the girls. A beautiful 16-year old called Emily. Who later died in hospital.

I'm sure there will be a lot of words written and spoken over the next few weeks, as people try to establish what happened. Who was he? What was his motivation? What actually happened in that classroom during those long hours of the standoff.

For me, there's only one question at the front of my mind as I look out at this gorgeous Rocky Mountain morning.

How could this happen here?




May you find peace Emily.

When the Phone Rings in the Night

There are no good phone calls in the middle of the night.

Some are merely annoyances, such as the drunk people in Phoenix who used to call me in the small hours to ask why I wasn't in the bar with them and would never believe they had the wrong number, (ten years earlier I would have gone and met them), or whoever it is that's convinced my home office line is a fax number and insists on trying to contact me during the night.

Then there's the potential-to-be-bad-but-as-it-turns-out-not-really type of call such as when my mother phoned from Scotland at 3am to tell me my Dad had suffered a heart attack. Half asleep, I was busily giving her instructions on loosening his clothing, before she explained that a) as heart attacks go, his was very mild, b) it had happened three days earlier and he was already home from the hospital and c) she hadn't wanted to worry us so she'd waited until she thought it was Saturday morning. (My Mum has challenges with the time difference.)

But, when the phone rang a little after midnight on Sunday and a man introduced himself as a neighbor of Dear Wife's 90-year old Grandmother, we knew it couldn't be good.

Grandma had seemed in fine fettle when we visited last May. A little slower getting around but not bad considering. And her mind still appeared to be sharp so we left feeling confident about her ability to keep living alone. It was later in the summer she began to tell us of the visitors. At first they were comforting, people like her late brother and husband, leading me to speculate that as she was perhaps approaching her time, the walls between the worlds were somewhat thinner than for the rest of us. Then came the people she didn't know, sitting on her couch, talking among themselves but ignoring her. Recently a group of them were selling stolen goods at her back door. The fact that her apartment doesn't have a back door was of little reassurance. She has told them to leave, but still they come.

A retirement home would seem the obvious solution but like many elderly folk, she fiercely guards her independence and resistance is strong. Assisted Living is another idea; where she could continue to live by herself but help would be available if needed. Unfortunately, on a recent visit to check out one such community, Grandma claims she saw a resident face down in his soup in the communal dining hall and refuses to consider the idea further. A succession of in-home helpers have come and gone; all dismissed on one pretext or another.

Until now, there was no reason to consider she was actually incapable of living alone and as DW already had a visit scheduled for next month, we reasoned she could use that to assess the situation and decide upon the appropriate course of action. But then on Sunday night a group of people came through the apartment wall and began threatening her. Fortunately, she was cognizant enough to cross the hall and ask the neighbor, an angel named Gabriel, for help. He in turn, called us. Grandma had already dialed 911 and the police were on their way. It was my fear they may decide she couldn't be left alone and would take her to some institution for observation - a process which would be devastating for her.

So at our request, Gabriel had the officers call us and we were able to reassure them that DW would be on a flight out first thing in the morning. She's there now, and from a phone call last night, it appears Grandma is in good spirits. There's no doubt in her mind however, that the people really did come through her walls and will no doubt return.

Poor Grandma. I have no wish for her to die, but it's my fervent hope she at least retains her dignity to the end.

It is autumn; not without
But within me is the cold.
Youth and spring are all about;
It is I that have grown old.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Autumn Within"

Hi! Remember Me?

So it’s been a while, huh? I suppose I could rattle off a whole bunch of excuses as to why The Gunsmoke Files hasn’t been updated in weeks, or updated with new material in even longer, work stuff, pipe band drama, personal headaches and general weariness coupled with a mere 24 hours in each day. But that wouldn’t really achieve anything.

Instead, I should just cut to the chase and say thank you for continuing to check the site for updates. (I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, then you are in fact checking the site.) I also wanted to let you know that the teeny part of my brain which looks after creativity has been giving signals that it’s ready to start work again, which means it’s time for me to put fingers to keyboard.

New Gunsmoke Files are on their way, although I’ve decided to dispense with the tyranny of my self-imposed 1,100 words, every Tuesday, rain or shine. Some anecdotes just don’t fit into such a neat window and I’m tired of trying to make them. Some might be longer, others shorter, as the tale requires. They’ll also appear on different days of the week, as the muse and available time present themselves. But they will be coming.

So again, thank you again for continuing to look in, and watch this space.

Getting There is Half the Fun

Hi everyone,
I know I haven't written anything new for 3 weeks now, and I apologize for that. I'm going through a rough spell right now, with problems at work, and pipe band drama (OK, drama's the norm for pipe band, but this one's a doozy and has the potential to bring it all to a halt). I've hardly been on-line and I'm afraid the muse has, for the moment, left me.

Instead, if you will indulge me, I'm going to rehash a Gunsmoke File from February 2004 which recounts our epic journey from Arizona to Colarado. It's a gesture of support for some dear friends who are undergoing some related, (but far worse) trauma of their own.

Getting There is Half the Fun

Recently I was asked if I had any travel disaster stories. My initial reaction was “yes, loads” but when it came down to it, I realized I’ve had many negative experiences, but none which truly stand out as being terrible. More like minor setbacks than true disasters and with the rosy-tinted benefit of hindsight, most of them were rather fun.

However, if I’d to choose one trip I’d least like to repeat, it would have to be when we moved here from Arizona. That was just plain ugly.

I’d been working in Colorado for a couple of months, while Dear Wife stayed in Phoenix, to handle the house sale. When it was time to move, I flew down on Friday night, anticipating that DW would have all our worldly goods and possessions packed and ready to go. We were scheduled to close on our new house, first thing Tuesday morning so intended to load up and get a couple of hundred miles under our belts by Saturday night. Of course, it didn’t work out that way. She’s something of a pack rat and after 18 years in the house, had found the task somewhat overwhelming so had barely got started. We worked through the night but by the time our helpers arrived on Saturday morning, had still hardly scratched the surface. Leaving them to continue, we went out to collect the hire truck I’d reserved earlier in the week.

Which wasn’t ready. “Nope, sorry, nothing available” said the clerk; making it quite clear he couldn’t care less. So, back home and a session with the Yellow Pages before finding a truck 50 miles across town. It was lunchtime by the time we got back so already we were seriously behind schedule. Next task was to collect the horse trailer, which had been in storage. One of the tires was blown. Not just flat, but completely exploded. Reflecting that on balance, it was better to have happened now than on the road, we decided it would be as well to replace all 4 of them. That neatly filled the rest of the afternoon so the planned Saturday evening departure was a complete write off.

We did sleep for about 4 hours Saturday night and on Sunday (most of) the friends showed up once more for an unscheduled continuance of the process. I never realized just how much stuff we owned and even after leaving a phenomenal amount for the new house owners, it was something of a squeeze when we finally pulled shut the door of the truck. Almost exactly 24 hours behind schedule we waved goodbye to our old life and set off towards that night’s target of Flagstaff, which is almost entirely uphill. With a top speed of around 45-50 miles an hour it was almost midnight when we pulled in.

Up bright and early the next morning and our first challenge was that the moving truck keys were nowhere to be seen. We hunted all over the room, in our pickup truck, the horse trailer and the ground around, before eventually finding them in the ignition. A good job nobody else had found them first. We made pretty good time over the next stretch of the journey and at Santa Fe, decided we had time to pull in and eat a proper lunch. Now Santa Fe is a beautiful town and quite rightly, is a Mecca for tourists from all over the world. So nice in fact, you can’t leave.

We now know that the while I25 does indeed head north after passing Santa Fe, it’s quite definitely an east-west route close to town. Which meant that there was no way to access it from the northern end of the city as we were trying to do. Or at least we would have tried to do if we’d been able to get out of city center. Built in a different age, Santa Fe’s streets are narrow and nowadays, thoroughly traffic choked. No place to be trying to maneuver a 24-foot moving truck when you’re so tired you can barely see. After about 12 circuits of the main plaza and multiple tours of the city’s residential districts (some of the gardens really are spectacular by the way, and you can fully appreciate them when you’re up high) I finally blocked traffic for 20 minutes or so while a friendly native explained the facts of life. After an initial misunderstanding, where I thought I was debating the village idiot (“You want to go south” “No, I want to go north!”) we finally got back on the freeway by going south, just like the man said.

One of our dogs was still in Colorado; DW had the eldest with her, while the youngest was with me in the moving truck. I’m told house moves are just as stressful for animals as they are for humans and in addition, we’d only adopted her a few weeks before I left for Colorado. She hadn’t seen me for weeks, didn’t know me all that well in the first place and now after all these strangers had emptied her house, I’d loaded her into this strange vehicle and was keeping her trapped for hours at a stretch. Perhaps not surprisingly, she began shedding hair at an astonishing rate. So much so that I spent large parts of the journey trying to de-fur my eyes, nose and mouth.

At around 3am we pulled into Pueblo and spent the next 45 minutes searching for a cheap place to stay, where we’d be able to bring the dogs inside without needing a room inspection before checkout. We finally paid $80 for 2 hours sleep and a hot shower and it was worth every penny. Breakfast was eaten at the wheel and after negotiating Denver’s rush hour traffic for the first time and grinding our way up the hill, we finally pulled up outside the realtor’s office with 40 minutes to spare. Only to find the office locked up and empty because the realtor had moved. Fortunately the office next door explained they’d simply moved across the road and we were still able to arrive on time. We looked like death, but we were on time.

Frankly, I have no idea what I signed that morning although should we ever have a child, I don’t believe it will belong to us. I also think I might be married to the village chief’s daughter. However, we must have done something right because after several hours, we were handed the keys to our new home and only a few hours after that, spent the first night, blissfully asleep. Under grubby blankets on the living room floor.

There’s no place like home.