AND THEN THERE WAS DENVER No no. Not Denver Colorado, a place similar to Baltimore, Washington D.C., Norfolk, Miami and Hell. (The latter I might not avoid, the others I’ll do my best to stay out of.) Denver, the rock. My pet rock. It seemed everyone had a pet rock back in the latter years of the 1970s. I couldn’t turn on the radio or sit down before the idiot box… umm… television, without hearing a commercial for “pet rock” food, houses, leashes and bath soap. (Is it possible I heard such commercials once and they just looped about in my semi-pickled brain?) Middle sister had a pet rock, much to the surprise of everyone in the house. She tended to be one of the few practical members of the clan and continued to hold that place among us once she explained her rock was a wild one she went down the creek and captured, and eventually tamed. (What money she earned was too dear to spend on some factory-produced rock that needed …show more content…
No. I was at the factory mixing some bagged cement to repair part of the building that age and weather had dropped in what used to be a flowerbed out front. Having a handful of the “mud” left over I carefully shaped a ball of it and set it on a shelf in the shop to dry. Weeks later, when I was smearing masonry paint across the front of the building I chanced to have some paint left and recalled the rock. A quick dip into the paint bucket, a return to the shelf and a few weeks later I had my own pet rock. I don’t recall what tricks middle sister may have taught her wild rock. I know my rock was mostly a paperweight and a conversation piece. When my friends come over to get drag me off to get drunk, and having navigated the piles of books, magazines, clothes, model cars, boats, aircraft, coolers, odd bits of furniture that cluttered me and middle brother’s bedroom they’d pick up my rock from my writing desk. “What’s