STEAMBOAT SPRINGS COLORADO

This is the longest segment of my 87 years. The family moved to Steamboat January 1, 1976. We stayed off and on until January of 2001. Renee actually went first as she didn't want to ride with her maniacally father and Chris stayed behind to finish high school as he was a senior. To make the transition I decided to purchase a brand new 1975 VW Rabbit. More on that later! We arrived on January 1 when the temperature was a balmy -5 degrees zero. We had brought plants from California which promptly froze. I'm not sure how long I stayed as I had agreed to work until March with Intech, so I flew off again. At that time Frontier was flying a Convair STL into the airport. I flew in most weekends. Now for the good part. I quit a job paying almost 6 figures a year and bought an OLD motel that grossed $25,000 per year. The motel was built in the 1920s and the house that was with it dated from before 1906. The motel had 8 units with kitchens and all the furniture dated from the 1950 era. Think metal springs for beds and you get the idea. Ellen's mother rented rooms in the house but that wouldn't work for as as we needed all the bedrooms for our family. She also rented weekly or monthly and our plan was to turn that into nightly to take advantage of ski season. The place had two coal fired furnaces, one in the house and the other for the units. The furnace in the house used an auger (Montgomery Ward) dating from who knows when used to feed the coal to the furnace. The unit no longer could get spare parts. Because of my work schedule it fell to our son Tony to clean the furnace and set the hot ashes out to be collected. In addition it was important to make sure rocks were not in the coal. That's a lot of responsibility for a 10 year old boy who would rather be fishing (and often did, catching one at a time from the creek). Of course the coals were hot when cleaned from the furnace so they were supposed to cool before being  set to the curb. So for the coldest months my family was more or less on their own trying to stay warm. The heating system in the house was supposed to be steam heat  but no steam ever reached the extremities of the house. Brrrrr

The outside furnace was supposed to be hot water heat but again the units at ends of the motel were never that warm. There is a story about that for a later time if I don't forget. As you might guess a rock got jammed in the house furnace and ruined the auger. I fired Tony from his job. You can't imagine how distraught he was over that (ha, ha). I think he danced all the way to school after that.

Renee was very unhappy about leaving California and a beautiful home and area to move to a "dump" I think she said. I never regretted the move over all and the three younger children thrived. I felt bad for Renee as it WAS a big change for all of us and a big cultural shock for her. Why she still talks to me is a mystery. More at another day!


1975 VW Rabbit


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