Arrival
Anna flies from Fresno to Denver, rents a car and arrives at Lucy’s house Saturday afternoon. They pick Janice and Alpha up that evening from the Colorado Springs airport and have a patio dinner with the one dish non-domestic Lucy knows how to prepare: teriyaki chicken. She adds brown rice, salad and a bottle of wine to the patio table in her backyard garden of native trees, shrubs and wildflowers. She is proud of the fact that Colorado has no mosquitoes this summer, so her guests diplomatically do not mention that they are continuously swatting bees away from the food and their faces.
They haven’t seen Anna for awhile. She is very slender—downright willowy, which she attributes to her adherence to her three favorite food groups: Toast, cookies and potatoes.
They talk and laugh until it is dark, the wine bottle is empty and the bees have gone home. The honey they make tonight will no doubt taste like teriyaki chicken.
It’s bedtime. Janice and Alpha retire to the guest room and Anna gets the trundle bed upstairs. Lucy yanks at the sliding bedframe under it. “Oh Lucy, just leave it! Anna says, “Half of it is wide enough.” True, Lucy thinks, since Anna is slim enough to fit on a shelf.
Which Golden Girl Are You?
The next morning Alpha sleeps in. Lucy, Anna and Janice have a cup of coffee while they wait for her to show up for breakfast. Janice says, “There are four of us, just like the Golden Girls.” They’ve all watched the show since it began, when it was all about these old ladies and now inexplicably, it’s about younger ones, with the exception of Ma.
Lucy laughs. “Ok, which one would you be?”
Anna speaks up, “I’m Dorothy.” Janice and Lucy nod in agreement. Dorothy has that teacher bossiness that you don’t argue with her for fear she will make you sit in the corner. Janice says, “I’m Ma.” This is more debatable. They are all close to Ma’s age. Lucy matches Ma’s height. But Janice wins because she has the most grandchildren.
Lucy says, “That’s okay. I’m not Ma. I’m Blanche.” Janice visualizing the sexy, man-obsessed character looks puzzled, but Anna, who was Lucy’s roommate when they moved to Colorado Springs, understands. A late social bloomer, Lucy never dated until she came to Colorado Springs, home of Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy, ENT Air Force base and the statistic that said, “Eight guys for every girl.” Her bleach blonde hair and mini-skirts have given way to red hair and cami tops, but she can still spot a cute guy a block away. (Of course, it helps now that he’s using a walker.) This leaves the naive, but ultimately wise Rose character for Alpha.
Alpha comes upstairs to the kitchen in her robe and pajamas.
“You’re Rose,” they tell her.
“Huh?”
They explain and she says, “Good. I’m not as scatter-brained as Rose, but I like her.”
Tourist Attractions
It’s time to see the sights. Their first destination is the Air Force Academy, specifically the Chapel where Anna married her pilot instructor husband in the seventies.
Anna drives the rental car. They stop at the check-point gate and the severe-faced woman in uniform causes them all to dig in their purses for a photo ID. But the gatekeeper is only interested in the driver’s.
“I guess we don’t look like terrorists,” Alpha says as they drive on.
“This old-lady disguise fools them every time.” Lucy adds.
After they tour, Anna suggests having lunch at Palmer Lake, a small scenic town about ten miles north. The hottest spot in town seems to be the biker bar, with at least eight tattooed, muscle-bound guys milling around. They consider it, but rule it out in favor of the historic restaurant in the original town depot. Janice, Lucy and Alpha dine on salads and hamburgers, while Anna, true to form, has beer-battered French Fries and root beer with refills.
That night they go to supper at the Golden Bee, an English pub at the Broadmoor resort, where Anna’s favorite memory is the appetizer cheese and crackers. She is disappointed that over the years it has diminished in size. They tour the hotel and walk around the lake before leaving.
The valet zooms up in Lucy’s 2008 Honda Fit and the passengers shove dollar bills into Lucy’s hand for the tip. Lucy, aware that the rest of the cars in the area are Mercedes or similar luxury vehicles, says to the valet, “Do you like my car?” The valet unsure if she is kidding or really means it, is at a loss for words. He gets the five crumpled up dollar bills anyway.
The next day they hit another popular attraction in Colorado Springs—the Garden of the Gods—visited by a million tourists annually. This city park is a geological area formed millions of years ago. The red rocks were upturned by glaciers, and now form beautiful formations.
From there they go up a winding two-lane road to Helen Hunt Falls. They admire the Falls, take pictures, and start down. The trip downhill is fast, mainly because Anna does not know how to shift into a lower gear on the rental car. Janice and Alpha give advice, sometimes conflicting. Lucy trusts in the brakes and is glad they are not coming down Pikes Peak.
The Dakota Golden Girls Do Taos
When Anna and Lucy taught in Colorado Springs in the sixties, they discovered Taos and want their friends to see it. The next morning they set out on Interstate 25 south toward Pueblo. Conversation takes the place of the radio, and the miles fly by. At Walsenburg they turn west, crossing beautiful LaVeta Pass. They turn south at Fort Garland for the last leg of the journey, which will cross from Colorado to New Mexico and take them into Taos.
Everyone is hungry, but Lucy advises that San Luis will have more restaurants available than Fort Garland, which appears to have none, and so they continue on.
The weather is dry and sunny and traffic moves along with no problem on this two-lane highway. Suddenly they all stop talking. A patrol car that passed in the opposite direction has begun to flash its lights, and Anna sees he has turned around and is following them. Yes, everyone realizes, he is after us. Anna pulls over onto the narrow shoulder.
The patrolman comes up on the passenger side, the highway too narrow to approach the driver’s window, and says “Ma’am, you were driving 82 mph in a 65 mph zone. I will have to issue you a citation.”
He goes back to his car, and after a lengthy time returns, informing Anna of a $170 fine, and how she can take care of it. By this time Anna has relaxed into her usual way of handling life, which is to look at the funny side. She looks over at him, deadpan serious, and says, “We are all celebrating our 75th birthdays, and we have to get to Taos quick before one of us dies.”
Lucy, who has been cracking up over Anna’s jokes for the last 50 years, cracks up again. If she didn’t have her seat belt on, she’d be rolling on the floor mat.
The patrolman who, if he has a sense of humor, seems to have left it at home this morning, may have smiled, but none of them could see his face. However, he does want to get the last joke in, so he replies, “Wild horses cross this road, and I don’t think you can fit another passenger in here.”
HA HA and Goodbye, they all think, and finally arrive in San Luis, the oldest town in Colorado. Lucy’s memories of the charming restaurants do not materialize. They drive up and down Main Street, finding closed signs on both ends of town, and finally decide on a store that seems it might have over-priced snacks for sale.
Looking around they see a bar-type restaurant in the next room, that sports a pizza sign. One lonely pizza is being taken from an ancient cast iron oven, no doubt the oldest pizza oven in Colorado, and everyone buys a slice. The pizza is hot, greasy and good.
The ticket was a bummer, but at age 75, they know there are worse things in life.
They arrive at the Taos Inn, where Lucy has made reservations for the night. Before dinner at the legendary “Doc Martin’s” restaurant, the friends relax with a glass of wine at the patio table outside their room.
It is a time to catch up on each other’s lives from marriage and children to the death of spouses and the changes the decades have brought.
They fall into an unplanned conversation that could not be better for giving snapshots of their lives. “Where were you when JFK died?” starts the rollback of the years. In 1963 Lucy and Anna were at the University of North Dakota where only weeks before his death, President Kennedy had spoken to the students who’d filled the Field House.
The “where were you?” questions continue. The crash of the Challenger? Lucy recalls being in the faculty lounge where the sixth grade teacher known for his jokes gave them the news, and no one believed him, everyone waiting, waiting for the punch line.
The Oklahoma City bombing? Anna remembers driving to her elementary school in Modesto, CA and hearing radio reports of children’s bodies being carried from a day care center.
9-11? Janice recalls comforting first graders in her Bowbells, North Dakota, classroom—bewildered little faces who knew something bad had happened, they didn’t know what. Lucy saying they had found out on September 10 that her husband’s last experimental cancer treatment had failed and there was no more that could be done. Her mind so filled with despair, she couldn’t comprehend 9-11.
Alpha sighs, and they know she wants to tell them something. “We’ve heard more facts about Steve’s death,” she says quietly. The other three know that he was working for the State Department in Viet Nam and that he’d been captured and led away during the TET offensive. The new details are more tragic, more horrific than any of them, who all knew Steve, can bear to imagine.
The pain of losing their own spouses wells up and joins Alpha’s pain in a cloud that surrounds them as night falls. They reach a hand out to each other and sit in silence. At last Anna breaks the reverie saying, “Well, . . let’s go eat.”
The special of chicken enchiladas, beans and rice appeals to everyone. But Anna continues to investigate the menu. She has spotted “peach cobbler garnished with one scoop of vanilla ice cream and two scoops of whipped cream.” “I’ll take this, too,” she informs the waiter, “and bring it at the same time as the dinner, please.” Anna divides her eating time equally between the two dishes, and there’s enough warm gooey cobbler left at the end, for everyone to sample.
The Charm of New Mexico
The next day Janice and Anna return to the square for more shopping. Alpha and Lucy check out a nearby art studio.
The owner features local artists and his personal photography. A photo of wild horses crossing a highway near Mount Blanco looks familiar and reminds them of the patrolman’s lame joke. They tell the owner about the speeding ticket.
“Was that in New Mexico?” he asks.
“No, Colorado.”
“I thought so,” he says. “Too bad you weren’t in New Mexico. Our cop would have said, ‘Buy me a burrito and we’re even.’ ”
Later they stop at the Saint Francis of Assisi Mission Church that dates back to 1772. Made of straw and clay adobe with thick buttresses, it is one of the most depicted buildings through art and photography in the world. They plan to visit the Taos Pueblo, at the north edge of town, but it’s later than they thought and they must leave for home.
On the three-hour drive back to Colorado Springs, they begin to brainstorm possibilities for their 80th birthday reunion: Minnesota where Alpha has a cabin by the lake; Orlando where Lucy is joint home owner with her daughter; Anna’s house in California, close to Yosemite and the Redwoods. They all sound good.
Final Thoughts
What is the secret to the longevity of this friendship? And why has this 75th birthday reunion gone so smoothly, with no squabbles or upsets For one thing, the four friends have similar attitudes toward life. Upbeat and positive, they have lived long enough to not take themselves too seriously. They’ve been blessed with loved ones who cherish them, and people who have believed in them. They’ve been able to follow their hearts, do the things they love and share their talents with others. But maybe Anna holds the best answer to the secret of a happy life: Eat Dessert First.
Anna (Dorothy) Janice (Ma) Lucy (Blanche) Alpha (Rose)
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Lucy Bell’s 35-year teaching career included over twenty years as a writing consultant. Her latest book, Coming Up, A Boy’s Adventures in 1940s Colorado Springs, combines narrative non-fiction with the history of the black community of Colorado Springs. It features rare historical photographs and the watercolor illustrations of Linda Martin. Release date: October 14, 2018. Her children’s novel, Molly and the Cat Who Stole Her Tongue, published in 2016, is available at Poor Richard’s Bookstore, Colorado Springs and Amazon.
