Examine any well-stocked magazine rack in Colorado, and you’ll find plenty of publications that detail all aspects of the gracious mountain lifestyle, from explaining how two people can manage in a house of only 6,000 square feet to methods of snow clearance for your private airstrip.
None of these slick magazines, though, ever deals with the real Colorado rural lifestyle, and that’s probably just as well. A publisher won’t attract many advertisers with articles like “Thrift Stores vs. Alley Cruising: Which provides the best furniture when it’s time to redecorate?” or “10 tips for coming back from the county landfill with less than you took.”
Further, the traditional rural lifestyle may vanish anyway, because it’s always under assault from the Colorado General Assembly. The most recent attack is contained in House Bill 1235, an animal protection measure. Among other things, it defines bestiality as cruelty to animals.
No one, including me, is going to speak up for bestiality. But prohibitions on conduct have a way of turning into restrictions on speech, and backwoods saloon conversation is going to be a lot more difficult if you can’t tell sheep jokes because such humor could contribute to an environment that is receptive to animal cruelty.
Another provision of HB 1235 would make it illegal for dogs to ride in the beds of pickups. This would not affect me personally. I have owned dogs and I have owned pickups, but I have never owned a dog that would ride in the bed. My pooches have always jumped out before I could get into the cab and get the truck started. Or, they’re so much faster than I am that they beat me into the cab, especially when they’re wet and feel a need to shake themselves vigorously.
Granted, there are legitimate highway safety and animal-protection issues here. But there’s a difference between a busy interstate at 75 mph and an isolated back road at 10 mph, and our legislature may not be able to write a law which takes that into account. Not that anyone bouncing along a rutted washboard road that gets maintained only in years when that district’s county commissioner is up for re-election will care what Colorado law says about canine transport, but it is another example of insensitivity to the traditional rural Colorado lifestyle.
It’s easy to think of more potential legislation, proposed with good intentions, that might also have that effect.
For instance, the legislature could decide that public safety requires a ban on the public carrying of belt knives, which are a common article of clothing in the boondocks. The sharp implements range from small Leatherman knock-offs which provide handy pliers and screwdrivers to immense eight-inch hunting knives.
People use them to open packages, remove bottle caps and repair computers. But they could hurt themselves or others, and since it’s already illegal to take one to school or on an airplane, a comprehensive view of public health requires that they be banned in all public places.
The legislature might also address wood heat in the interest of improving the lot of Colorado’s oppressed rural gentry. Woodpiles are unsightly and thus lower property values, thereby reducing potential property tax revenues. Wood smoke causes air pollution and endangers public health. Wood-sellers are, by and large, local yokels who do not make campaign contributions, and they’re often negligent about collecting sales taxes. Wood-burners are derelict in their civic duty to support the big corporations that produce and sell natural gas, propane and fuel oil. Colorado’s air and economy, not to mention tax revenues, could well improve if we just got rid of them.
To further upgrade the quality of Colorado residents, the General Assembly might also order a crackdown on cracked windshields. As it is in the boondocks, you never replace a cracked windshield unless there’s an actual hole, or there’s such a dense web of cracks that you can’t see through it. That’s because a new windshield will last less than a month before it, too, is cracked.
Stepped-up enforcement with stiff fines would inspire a lot of undesirable rural residents to move, leaving the mountains to the proper sort of upscale residents, the kind of people who would pave all the roads, keep their lap dogs in carrying cases, heat their homes and driveways with propane, and hire someone from the next town over to deal with screwdrivers and knives.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
