Entry 127

01:30 PM EDT on Wednesday, August 31, 2005

My niece Heather and hubby Terry

I had a run-in with the Law! We’ll call today’s story, “DROP THE TOWELS AND PUT YOUR HANDS UP!”

This story requires a smidge of set up. The names have been changed because I fear for my life. I also don’t want G-Men, guns drawn, kicking in my front door and rooting through my linen closet. Lemme splain…

Saturday one of my 249 nieces got married. I said every cliché in the book: “I used to baby-sit Heather when she was a tike… “Oh I can’t believe she’s getting married”… And yes, I cried like a baby during the ceremony.

The wedding was in Durango, Colorado. Why my brother lives there is obvious. It’s stunning, clean, rugged and everywhere you look it’s a mountain postcard. How he found the place is a mystery. You know that cliché, “You can’t get there from here”? Durango is the ‘there’ you can’t get to.

Much of my family in Ohio (where the Redding clan was raised) flew in to Albuquerque, New Mexico, rented mules and mosied the last four hours of a whole day trip north to Durango. Seriously, it costs less and takes less time to fly to Europe. This explains why Durango has few residents… which explains why it’s so beautiful.

Our cabin at Lake Vallecito

It’s always more than a little crazy when my family shows up somewhere. All my brothers were there and two thirds of my sisters. Someday I’ll explain the insanity that is my family but that’s not for today. Today’s insanity is all about love and sharing and wanting to take a dull fork and stab a guy with a pony tail. Lemme splain pt 2…

We rented log cabins and stayed outside Durango on Lake Vallecito (pronounced Verycrazypeople). The people who manage the cabins have never heard the phrase, “customer service.” They also apparently want renters to never come back. I think they would be happy as pigs in a pile of dung if no one ever rented these cabins. Logic follows that they would go broke… but I’m certain logic, in any form, hasn’t crossed the microscopic fragments of what’s left of their minds.

Okay, that’s the set up.

View of Lake Vallecito from our cabin

Fast forward to the day after the wedding, Sunday morning, when my brother Keith and I are heading out to see Mesa Verde (it's where you can walk through those amazing cliff-side dwellings Native Americans built out of sandstone a thousand years ago… you’ve seen pictures in your textbooks growing up).

When our clan arrived at Lake Verycrazypeople we ran into a math problem. There were sixteen of us and only 8 towels in the cabins. I don’t like the idea of showering and drying off with a damp towel which has been rubbed on someone else’s armpits and genitals so we marched up to the “office” to get 8 more towels. I put office in quotes because to say it was an office is to suggest there was some organization to it. It was more like the county had decided to use the interior of the “office” as a landfill. Anyway, we banged on doors, rang doorbells… no one was “home.” I put home in quotes because, well, because the lights were on but….

Maybe I should have put quotes around the whole phrase, “no one was home.” I’m not sure.

Needless to say, after a whole day of us nervously eyeing one another, wondering who would have to share towels with whom, I decided to take action. I went and tried to buy towels. Lake Verycrazypeople is remote. Check that. Durango is in the middle of nowhere. We were 45 minutes outside of nowhere. The small lake-front store a couple miles down the way sold everything from booze to burritos but no towels. We drove for what seemed like hours but in fact was only 15 minutes. Time gets distorted when you’re very, very afraid.

Cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde

It was getting dark and I was getting desperate. So I did the unthinkable. I borrowed 8 towels from the lodge across the street. I know you thought I was going to say I broke into the “office” and stole the towels. Had I done that this story would make sense. “Sense” is on isle 9 with the nonexistent towels at Lake Verycrazypeople.

Before my brother Keith and I head out to see the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, we have to return the 8 towels to the kind souls at the other lodge. Problem is the cleaning crew already been through the cabins and confiscated all the used towels earlier that morning. So Keith and I went up to the “office” and explained the whole funny story, ha ha, so funny, and asked for the eight towels back.

This is our first encounter with the “humans” who rent out our cabins. Their names are Mr. & Mrs. Twitchy. Mr. Twitchy is a nervous, sweaty man with a long braided ponytail and Mrs. Twitchy has the bloodshot eyes of a woman who has lived with Mr. Twitchy a couple conspiracy theories too many. If the Una-bomber wasn’t already in jail, I would have called the FBI. The voices inside this man’s head were so loud I could hear them.

Here’s how that funny, oh so funny conversation went:

Me- “Hi, I’m Mike Redding, Cabin 23, and this is my brother Keith (long story short about not having enough towels and borrowing those navy blue ones there from the other lodge) ha ha so let me just grab them and take them across the street and...”

Keith & Sheriff's car

Mr Twitchy- “Touch those towels boy and there’s gonna be some trouble.”

Me- “Um… huh?”

Keith- “Ha ha ha, seriously, we just need those towels and we’ll be on our way...”

Mrs. Twitchy- (screaming and throwing her hands in the air) “THIS WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF EUROPEANS HADN’T COME ACROSS THE ATLANTIC AND SETTLED THE NEW WORLD!”

Mr. Twitchy- (screaming and throwing his hands in the air) “SHUT UP WOMAN! THEY WERE TRYING TO FIND A FASTER TRADE ROUTE TO THE FAR EAST!”

Me- (stupefied)

Keith- (dumbfounded)

Mr. Twitchy- (threateningly shouting and throwing his hands in the air) “YOU TWO GET OUT OF HERE! YOU’RE TRESSPASSING!”

Sheriffs Deputy Harris

Me- (not wanting to feel left out I throw my hands around and shout) “WE’RE NOT LEAVING WITHOUT THOSE TOWELS!”

(from this point on everything said was done so screaming and throwing our hands in the air in a threatening manner.)

Mrs. Twitchy- “OH WHY, WHY, WHY DID COLUMBUS HAVE TO SAIL THE OCEAN BLUE?”

Mr. Twitchy- “HE THOUGHT HE WAS FINDING A NEW TRADE ROUTE TO INDIA, WOMAN!”

Me- “AMERIGO VESPUCCI WAS THE FIRST EUROPEAN TO REALIZE THIS WAS THE NEW WORLD, YOU BAFOON!”

Keith- “VESPUCCI DIED OF MALARIA IN 1512… HE WAS ONLY 58!”

Me- “GIVE ME TOWELS OR GIVE ME DEATH!”

Mr. Twitchy- “YOU FOREIGNERS GET OUT OR I’LL CALL THE SHERIFF!”

Keith & Dep. Harris

Keith- “THAT’S THE SMARTEST THING YOU’VE SAID ALL DAY!”

Me- “THAT’S RIGHT AND BOTH COLUMBUS AND VESPUCCI WERE ITALIAN!

At that point Keith and I are so confused we have no idea what we’re arguing about. Mr. Twitchy tries to slam the door in our faces… but I was straddling the doorway and my foot caused the door to bounce back at him.

Mr Twitchy said he was going to call the Sheriff and stormed off. Mrs. Twitchy threw her hands in the air and shouted, “THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED IN MY LIFE!” My brother said, “Oh darlin’ if THIS is the worst thing that has ever happened to you, can we trade lives?”

When the La Plata County Sheriff’s deputy showed up she talked to Mr. Twitchy first and then she took my brother aside and then came over to me and said, “What’s your version?” I said, “I’m pissing away two hours of my day because of some used, damp TOWELS! And now you’re here. Welcome to hell.”

As Deputy-in-training Harris sorted through the facts, Keith and I sat on a log next to the deputy’s car and reflected on our lives. How did we end up here? Where had we gone wrong? Would we have to share towels in prison?

In the end, Deputy-in-training Harris brokered a compromise. We would go out to the Wal-Mart on the by-pass on the other side of Durango (yes there is a Wal-Mart in the middle of no where) and buy some towels for the neighboring lodge if Mr. Twitchy promised not kill us in our sleep that night.

That seemed like a fair trade to us and we were happy to get out of there with our sanity… I think.

You know, all of this could have been avoided if Native Americans had invented guns and bullets before Europeans did.

Be sane. Know your history. Bring your own towels.

Mike Redding

PS. If you go to durangoherald.com and click on the police blotter you’ll see this under the August 29 report… check the 10:44 AM item… also check the 1:31 PM incident because it’s funny:

La Plata County Sheriff

Sunday

1:32 a.m. A black sedan with no plates was stuck in the 13000 block of U.S. Highway 160, west of Durango.

9:33 a.m. Someone broke all four windows on a white Toyota pickup and burned the inside in the 1500 block of state Highway 140, west of Durango.

10:44 a.m. After a fight over towels escalated in the 14000 block of County Road 501, near Vallecito, two guests became very unruly.

1:31 p.m. A woman's ex-boyfriend threw Gatorade all over her bedroom, broke the VCR and began crying in the 30000 block of U.S. Highway 160, near Elmore's Corner.