Greetings faithful readers. Here's this week's humble offering. Thanks up front to all of you who have been responding and corresponding with us through the "Friday Letter."
Detention
Every Christmas season, a group of musicians from St. Peter Catholic Church in Greeley makes a visit to the Platte Valley Youth Detention Center.
Ministers from St. Peter serve the center regularly all year long. But at Christmas, the singers and musicians make a special evening trip to sing carols, read Bible selections, tell holiday stories, and socialize.
The reception by the young men and women incarcerated there has always been gracious, mannerly -- even joyful. Even if the St. Peter parishioners didn't bring drinks and sweets, the visit would be well received.
The singalong has become a welcome tradition. Staff people and inmates alike express appreciation and thanks to those outsiders who take part.
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Climb aboard the Wayback Machine with us now to a time in the distant past, related in some important ways to the Youth Center holiday event.
The year is 1955 and the principal character is me, aged 12 or 13. The location is the Fort Lupton Junior-Senior High School, a seventh-grade classroom.
Almost every school day, with the permission and encouragement of my parents, my homeroom teacher detained me after the regular school day was over.
My marks were not good, and seemed to get worse as time passed. Arithmetic, history, geography, language, all took a back seat to my current true interests: trapping muskrats, riding my horse or my bicycle, melting plumber's lead in my hideout down by the swamp, and last but not least, Pursuing Girls.
My teacher was Mrs. Dorothy King, a dear sweet soul with beautiful gray hair in a French roll and gold-rimmed cat-eye glasses, a friend of my mother's. Mrs. King did her best with me.
Sadly, I did less than my best for her.
At the end of each after-hours session, she would go over my assignments, subject by subject. "Take this book home and read chapter so-and-so. Take this other book and read chapters so-and-so."
I would nod in agreement. The trick is, when I agreed to do the homework, I was telling the truth. My honest intention, at the moment of my departure from the classroom, was to do as she instructed.
Out the door. Down the stairs. Over to my locker. Blam. Books hit the floor, not to go home at all. The naughty little boy would give books no more thought until the next day.
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Disembark from the Wayback Machine. Return to the present.
The young men and women in the youth jail who have earned the privilege to attend the singalong are cheerful, reverent, participatory. They wade through, reading the scriptures as best they can. They sing along. They laugh. They enjoy the cookies and soda pop and the socialization.
The hour passes. The event ends. The staff marches them single-file down the hall, back to their detention quarters. Bam. Any thoughts they may have had of the Bible or the Christmas songs have vanished.
I know this is true. I was there. I was in "detention" after classes for almost a full school year. True, my own detention was brief, an antidote for simple adolescent inattention and not for criminal activity. But it was detention.
True enough, there is a chance The Word will travel through the ears and find permanent places in the gray matter of the young incarcerated people. And it's our Christian duty to try, to evangelize.
We've got the hot-and-cold short attention span -- to say nothing of the Devil's work -- against us in the endeavor.
But if one soul is saved, it's worth the effort. Your prayers are invited for those young people -- and the St. Peter people working to help.
Competition
Get on board the Wayback Machine again -- Fort Lupton again, 1955 again.
The Colorado Highway Department had decided to improve Highway 85 from Denver north, make it into a four-lane, taking the route outside towns where possible.
This plan wreaked havoc with the Hodge family business. The new highway route took most of the farm, the slaughterhouse, the smokehouse, the lard rendering building, the barns and sheds and school bus garage.
Dad, being a young entrepreneur at the time, determined to make something good out of what looked like a debacle.
"We'll build a gas station," he announced. And build he did. A brand-new green and white Conoco, with the familiar red triangle sign. Next door he constructed an A&W lookalike, "The Speedy Drive-in."
At the corner of new Highway 85 and Highway 52, you'd think the combination gas station and drive-in would go like wildfire. But basically it stiffed. The gas station broke even, and Speedy's was slow. Three years went by and not much was happening at the new intersection.
Then along came Johnny Martin. He was Dad's arch-enemy in Fort Lupton and had operated a Bay Gas station south of town on Old 85.
Martin bought the land opposite Dad's corner from Fred Paden. Martin built "The Branding Iron" restaurant, which continues in business at that location to this day. Martin also built a brand-new Bay station.
I'm quite sure Dad was terrified. I know Mom was real scared. But the opposite of their fears came true.
Competition, surprisingly, was good for business. Conoco gas sales soared. Speedy started handing burgers out the window one after another, 18 hours a day.
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At the risk of temporary dizziness, please get off the Wayback Machine again and do a fast forward to today.
In 1988, Laura and I had moved to Greeley and had determined to open a leather goods store, "The Real Leather Company."
We would offer biker-style protective leather garments, repairs, alterations and "The Leather Factory" leathers, tools, hardware, books and craft supplies.
Shortly after that, Mark Fellini opened "Old West Leather" on 8th Avenue in Garden City. He offered Tandy products, and did saddle and tack repairs, alterations and supplies.
A few years ago, Old West Leather moved to 18th Street. Between First and Second avenues. Real Leather is at 330 18th St., between Third and Second avenues. So we're real close. In a way.
The most quirky thing about our competitive situation has to do with "Tandy" and "The Leather Factory."
In the early eighties down in Fort Worth, a corporate insurrection was underway. A group of men at Tandy Company had become itchy about how things were going for the old-time name-brand company.
Eventually, they became so dissatisfied with Tandy operations that they jumped ship and started "The Leather Factory," also based in Fort Worth.
The new company simplified operations, kept fresher stock, gathered a group of "authorized sales centers" (including Real Leather) and became the corporation that Tandy should have been.
In the early '90s, Tandy made a fatal mistake: The company decided to close its retail stores and sell leather goods ''online." Dumb idea. Didn't work. Tandy went white side up.
Leather Factory bought the defunct Tandy -- including that important, easily identified trade name. Good idea.
We became an authorized Tandy Leather Factory Dealer. So did Old West Leather. It's the only place in the whole U.S. of A. where there are two Tandy dealers so close together.
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In 2004, hoping to fill a perceived need, Laura and I began buying inventory and established "Real Presence Catholic Books and Gifts" inside the leather store.
Shortly after that, our own St. Peter Parish established "Angelic Accents" Catholic gifts. The church isn't as near as that other leather store, but it isn't that far away either. It's directly competitive.
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In the end, Dad thought of competition as healthy. For us, it's a little bit like building two Conoco stations right across from each other. We don't know whether we're scared of competition or not.
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Word of the week: Panache. This one comes from French and Italian, pennachio, a feather or plume. In English, it means a plume of feathers, especially such a plume on a helmet.
Next week's word: Ubiquitous.
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