Bob and Kitty Bennett lived one door down from our home up Boreas Pass. They are both highly intelligent, competent, and hard working. We went on vacations with them and our children played together and had lots of fun picnics. Kitty was born into the newspaper business and is an excellent writer, editor, and typesetter. I've sat with her as she set type on her Compugraphic in excess of 120 words per minute, while carrying on a conversation with me at the same time. Bob, a graduate of the University of Colorado, has tremendous talents and intellect. He tried out for a major part in a play at the Back Stage Theater in Breckenridge, without any previous experience as a lark. This theater has a good reputation in the state and obtaining a small role here is considered an achievement. Not only did he get the part, but it was a major role and  I was blown away by his performance.

One day Bob and Kitty told us they were moving to Florida. The whole community was disappointed to hear that the Bennetts were leaving. Before they left, we went up to the Overlook Restaurant just above our homes for one last visit.

Bob: "When I think of winter, I remember Saturday and Sunday mornings trying to bust a trail out of my driveway in the Toyota. You know the usual routine. Floating up on top of the snow and then getting out and pushing the car back through the tracks it just made. Then taking another run at it... ramming the snow. It worked, but most of the time I would say, `Well, I'll just stay home. It snowed last night and it was the second of June. I 'm glad I was here. It's like going to an amusement park, you know. It was fine, but you don't want to spend your whole life here. I'm not going to miss living here."

Kitty: "I don't think we'll miss it for the first few years. But I would like to know why everybody keeps coming back here, basically those who say they're never coming back. I've never yet figured what the lure is. Why do they keep coming back? I would really like to know why."

Bob: "With the regard to community, this is the closest thing to home since Lakewood, Ohio."

Kitty: "I think that's probably true, now that you said it that way. I think the attraction must be the people here. I really believe that! People are generally accepted, although there is gossip from one end of the county to the other. Everybody likes to talk about everybody else. I don't think of it as a vicious thing—it's like an information networking system. Everybody is really interested in what everybody else is doing, but everyone is also really accepting of what everybody else is doing. I'm afraid we're not going to find that in many other places. I'll bet you anything that is the attraction! I'll bet you anything, I mean from the most ungodly druggies to the Abundant Life Church. I really think that everybody is accepted and left alone to do what they want to do. I've been conscious of visitors here. They just can't believe that certain behaviors are accepted here.

"For instance, Bob, your sister who came out couldn't believe the kind of places we live in for the amount of money we have to pay to live here. First of all, because nobody pays that kind of money to live in places in Clear. She can't believe people aren't dressed to the `T' when they go out to Flipside to do whatever. We don't dress in jeans to go to church, but to them that's very much their identities—their cars and their clothes. They are sort of shocked that people around here haven't bought into that.

"I think people aren't as materialistic as in other places. On the other hand I don't think there is a priority for the family. In other words, there aren't really many middle class families here.

"On a small scale Breckenridge has two classes, a poor and upper class."

One of Bob's many jobs was mining at Climax.

Bob: "Originally, I came up here to work for the police chief and his crew of half a dozen who were running the town. As I understood it, they got into a bad situation with the town board because of the controversial manner in which they were cleaning up the town. He was not really currying favor, as they say, and had a falling out with the board. I guess the chief quit or got fired and all his loyal troops quit too. So, overnight, the town of Breckenridge had no police department, zero. They just walked away. So they quickly went out and hired a new police chief. And he quickly ran out and shopped around the state and found a bunch of moonlight cops who wanted come up here on their days off and make a little extra money. I was one of them.

"But, you see, I came here and saw the beautiful scenery. I perceived life here as seen through the eyes of a tourist. I naively thought that my life wouldn't be much different up here than someone working one job in Denver and having the weekends off. Gee, this would be nice, I thought. I'd like to have my weekends off up here every weekend and not have to go through that big drive.

"The first day I worked here there was the Fatty Open golf tournament. You can imagine the mid-size Colorado town, Boulder college town, cop figuring, `Hey now, I've seen it all—I've dealt with lunatics before.' And then you wake up Saturday morning to the Fatty golf tournament. I had a pretty neutral reaction to it, though. It wasn't like, `Oh, this is great, I really want to work here because these people are absolutely bonkers.' You know, I didn't feel that way. I didn't feel like, `Oh boy, what a headache this is going to be because these people are absolutely bonkers.' But it was fun."

Kitty: "Then somebody took Bob's hat or something. People would fall into the back of his patrol car and slur something like `Hi, officer, would you drive me home?'"

Bob: " That's true. I pulled up to the front of Fatty's just to talk—you know, being a CU cop, I'm ever PR conscious. I pulled down the window and asked, `Well how's it going, guys?' Before I had two sentences out, I had three drunks lying in the back seat of the car. They just reached through the window, opened the door, and crawled in. `Hey, take me down to the Gold Pan Bar, will you?' It was pretty insane. I told them, `Don't puke in my car, all right?'"

Kitty: "This was in the early days of Breckenridge. Our Breckenridge cops make great chauffeurs. In any case, it was I who puked in your car."

Bob: "Kent, it sounds as if we didn't tell you this one. I was dutifully patrolling the town one night and I was up on French Street. I looked up at the next intersection and these two headlights came around the corner. They blew right through the stop sign, made the corner on two wheels, and started roaring towards me. And then I realized it was my car and Kitty was driving. When the car stopped, I got Kitty out. Her friend was relatively sober, so she took the car and parked it some place.

"Between the intersection of French and Washington streets and Valdora Village I had to stop the patrol car five times so Kitty could barf in the gutter. It was really a class act. That was the night that killed you on Schnapps, wasn't it?

Kitty: "I doubt it, I think that was the Uhlerfest. You know, we drank our way through eight years of Breckenridge. Some people do drugs through Breckenridge. Sickening, isn't it? I don't throw up anymore."

Bob: "I really didn't have any expectations about Breckenridge. I just like the place and the surroundings, the physical surroundings. It's a beautiful place. However, I'm glad to leave behind the high costs, low wages, and the long winters that are part of the high costs. A winter that's eight to nine months long is an expensive son of a bitch when you've got to stay warm. Real expensive! And it is all a part of the expense scene. I'll be real happy to get away from that. I'll be happy to live someplace where you can go to a greasy spoon diner. A place where I can go out at three o'clock in the morning, if I want to, and eat breakfast for 97 cents instead of six bucks! There are 95-cent breakfasts in Breckenridge, but they charge you six dollars for them!

"One reason I'm bitter about this place is that I had a career once when I came here, a real good career. I worked my way up to three weeks of paid vacation, okay. I was looking at a full month of paid vacation every year. I was offered an administrative desk job as patrol lieutenant. You know, managing the whole patrol division. I turned that down to come up here and take this number two position in the Breckenridge police department.

"I started running into goofy people. The police chief here was one. I finally had my ear full of his crap. It may very well have been that I had just also coincidentally reached a point in my life where I had experienced enough bullshit. I was particularly unwilling to put up with any more of it. And so I stopped—just quit.

"Then I started in this sequence of one thing to another. From that point I quit the police job and piddled around with making and wholesaling wooden toys. That was not a big money maker and I found myself doing that in addition to working a security job at Everest Concrete Plant at Copper Mountain. Through that connection, I spent a little bit of time learning how to drive a dump truck. It was interesting. A little before that, I did my first carpentry for hire job. I framed a duplex in Frisco—no, two duplexes. After that, I started my first time around with Climax when work at the mine picked up. I worked there for a year and a half. Then I started our house. Then I quit Climax and took a job as town marshall for Silverthorne. That's when I finished the house. As matter a fact, I put the roof on the house while they were getting ready to fire me. After that I worked for Kitty at the typesetting shop. I plowed snow, sharpened saw blades, and performed at the Backstage Theater. Then I made the wooden toy stuff and filled orders for rubber band guns. I had one detective job come down the pipe that everyone else had too much pride to accept, but I was broke. I was taking anything that came along.

"After moving up here, we realized that you don't get weekends off. You don't get nights off. You don't get shit, but work, work, work to keep the wolf from your door for a year or two. And then the fear becomes so great that it can't be handled anymore.

"Two interesting things came out of this. Number one, all the hours of hard work we did still wasn't enough. We ended up losing the house. Even that didn't annoy me. Second, out of this came a big transition in my life. I started by quitting the first job with the Breckenridge police department. I was scared to death about not having a job! All I could do was police work. It was the only thing I knew. Now, I've learned an awful lot. I'm sitting here talking to you without a job and it doesn't bother me a bit. I've learned not to fear the unknown."

Kitty: "Any illusion to security is just a false one anyway. And so your only security is your family. I really believe that. Maybe you don't even have that."

Bob:. "Yeah, you don't even have that. We came here and lost a family."

Kitty: "We realized that this sounds real nice for kids, except kids don't ever see their parents. You know our kids really are programmed for never seeing their parents. There is no opportunity for a family to be together at all. I really don't think that is right and I don't think that's the way I ever want to live again.

"Nobody has weekends off. Most people have more than one job. Besides housework, I've worked three jobs at the same time. I see people everywhere doing the same, it's so strange. You go to the grocery store during the day to buy groceries and you see somebody there. If you go to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory at night, there they are again. If you go up to Flipside to have a cocktail you see them, and then you see them the next morning waitressing. My God, how many hours can one person work!

"I'm not into those kinds of extremes. I've put 60 to 80 hours a week into my business, but I don't see it as terrible, mindless, awful work. It got to the point where Bob and I would come home at midnight from the office and the house would be freezing. We could never afford to turn the public service on and keep it to a comfortable level we were happy with. We would spend weeks cutting firewood and we would build fires. Life got to be too much of a struggle, it really did. I thought of it as survival. Life here is all about keeping a roof over your head and putting food in your mouth. It was never about spending time with your family or enjoying oneself at all. You lived here but you couldn't enjoy it. We had no time to go skiing. We had no time to go hiking. There is no way the quality of life was remotely positive or the least bit satisfying, for years really. It was pretty much down to the grindstone. I really think we've reached the limit. We'll never get into that situation again, never ever!"

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Twelve years later, the Bennetts are happily located in St. Petersberg, Florida. Both have only one job each. Kitty works as a news researcher for the local newspaper and Bob is a custom wood boat builder. Bob expects to have his own 38-foot ketch in the water this year. They plan to sail the seas after that.

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