Colorado Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, makes her late father’s extensive bolo collection available to other legislators, statehouse staff and visitors on Bolo and Bow Tie Day each Friday in the chamber. (By Joey Bunch, The Denver Post)
Friday is the first Bolo or Bow Tie Day of the new session in the Colorado House of Representatives. The bolos honor Colorado’s Western heritage. The bow ties honor Pee Wee Herman. (I kid, I kid.)
Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, took the lectern Thursday morning to remind older legislators and inform the new ones that they’re welcome to borrow one of her late father’s 50-year collection of string neckwear, if they don’t have one of their own.
Bolo and Bow Tie Day has been a statehouse tradition for a good while, but a couple of years ago Court decided to put her father’s hobby to good use.
The late Arnold Court, at right, the father of state Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, wears one of his favorite bolo ties as he talks with a colleague at a Western Meteorological Association meeting in the 1980s.
Legislators, staff and House visitors are welcome to choose from a variety of interesting styles housed in a wooden case on the wall of the Democrats’ House Majority Office. The case has a picture of father, Arnold Court, from the 1980s wearing one of her favorites. In the picture, he’s wearing a large mostly white bolo with a florid eagle silhouette at the Western Meteorological Association. The native Oklahoman .
He passed away in 1999.
Arnold Court made many of the bolos in his collection. One is a clock. Another is made from a piece of driftwood, and another is a fossil.
Taking one is on the honor system.
“I trust Republicans as much as Democrats, well, more actually,” Court, the Democratic Majority Caucus chair, said with a laugh.
