Crested Butte: A brief History

                     CRESTED BUTTE: A BRIEF HISTORY

There will be a rain dance Friday night, weather permitting.

                                                                  George Carlin

 

Hello boys & girls. Welcome to the neighborhood. This is our neighborhood. We call it Crested Butte. Nobody knows why. I suppose it has something to do with the large pointed mountain that’s hard to miss to the east, of the same name. Ask any local what a Crested Butte is however and you’ll get the same answer…dunno.

  We’re a small town much like any larger town only smaller. We have our share of jerks, which I would list right here but my editor, whom I shall refer to as P.M.S, Prudent Mr. Stern, thinks it not good public relations. However, they know who they are.

 We have our share of cool dudes, & pretty girls, who also know who they are. We have freckled faced tow heads much like other towns’ but ours are born with exceptionally long arms, hence the moniker

‘Knuckle Draggers,’ a feature apparently evolving for snowboard stability.  We have old-timers, who used to be grizzled Slavic miners but are now most of my friends.

 The early miners traded bottles of chokecherry wine & taught each other the polka to survive the bitter winters. The introduction of women created all new possibilities with the polka.

 In the early 70’s…that’s 1970’s, Main Street was dirt, and the population made up of dope dealers trading bags of weeds, & stray dogs sniffing butts. In fact a dog ran for mayor in 71’ but lost by a hair. They have since been mostly incarcerated, neutered, or chained up.

 The dogs also have lost many of their freedoms.

In 72’ someone suggested paving Main Street and was promptly run out of town. Now of course every deer trail & alpine meadow in the county is being considered for pavement except of course the largest subdivision ‘Crested Butte South’ which remains dirt to this day.

 Today, the town is mostly made up of real estate brokers & police. The brokers sell pieces of the town to each other; the police see that all transactions go smoothly. It seems to work well as prices continue to climb & everyone gets fat…that is, until one of them leaves town with his profit….then the whole thing may collapse. Heaven help the last guy.

 We have a dress code in this town…no dresses, Halloween night being the exception. The way to get the best table in town is to wear a suit, the place will clear out. Ties are used to tie dogs to ‘No Dogs’ signs. Our ‘Gap’ clothing store is in the gap between the post office and the pizza joint called St. Judes. All clothing must have belonged to someone else, it must be a bit torn, paint, oil, or blood splattered. Underwear must be worn on the outside of the clothing…or on the head, or not at all.

There is only one good job in town & John Norton has that. The rest of us can only hope he leaves a good tip. If John does not leave a tip he is missing a good opportunity as there are tip jars everywhere, including the doctor’s office, the police department, and the bank president’s office. Remember if you speak to anyone in this town it is customary to tip. 20% is the norm.

 We like our tourists here. We hope they have worked very hard where they came from to bring us their hard earned money & hand it over so we don’t have to go to whereever they came from and work very hard. We thank you from the bottom of our freeloading hearts.

 We’re a lot like any other close knit community made up of nice neighbors, nosy neighbors, noisy neighbors, and nasty neighbors, a list of which I would include right here & now but for P.M.S.’ intervention. P.M.S. in fact runs a fairly tight ship here but for a few loose cannons rolling about the deck like Than and Dennis Hall…. but like small town papers all across this great country, folks can still voice their opinions…no matter how dull-witted, besotted, senseless, pig-headed and asinine they may be…. hence my own position at the paper.

 We’re a normal town here with mail-men in ear-phones, bankers in shorts, women in Carharts, men with large parrots on their heads, mammoth dogs, nervous cats, traffic jams of cows.

We have people in pain, people that are a pain. We have a Christmas production at the school that would soften the hardest heart, and fund drives for everything from livers to El Salvadorians. There are problem drinkers, and folks that need a drink. We’re as much like and as different from any town in the world…. and probably the biggest factor that makes this so is that this town rests in the bosom of Mother Nature. We Buttions are face down, up to our ears, in un-spoiled immaculate environment. A surrounding of serene solitude to calm the most nervous of wrecks. An area of awesome beauty & power to humble the most arrogant of human dilemmas.

 

And that is our neighborhood boys and girls…. welcome.