As I came into the age of reason in the eighth grade, my
first adult decision was to go to the all-boy prep high school my dad hated
instead of the coed party school, where I would waste all my time chasing
girls. My second big decision was to go to the best college I got into, even
though it was Catholic, in the Midwest, and Dad thought I would turn into a
rah-rah, go-go boy.
Picking classes for freshman year, I considered guitar
playing and American Hipster Literature, but Dad said he wouldn’t pay for that
and that I needed to get a job when I graduated. Took pre-med and
pre-engineering, and 20 credits my first semester because he said to take as
many classes as I could since the price was the same.
Got hammered, literally, and worked my ass off, but I soon
realized that all the pre-med people wanted to do was get rich, not help
people, while all the engineers drank beer and wore flannel shirts. Dad and
Gramps were engineers, so I was ‘in,’ and I got them off my back for a while.
Coming out of school, everyone was going to Chicago or New
York or grad school, but I wanted no part of that. I was burnt out and needed a
rest—for 50 years. Out West, and that’s where I was headed, young man. New
England was beautiful but poor, you can’t eat scenery, and the snow and skiing
were better out West. Dad was bummed that I didn’t have a job with a tie, but
at that point he trusted me and said so.
I didn’t want to be a traffic engineer because of all the
traffic, so I went out West to be a hydrologist, where there was no water but
lots of jobs. California had been ‘had,’ and Colorado was too groovy, so I
settled in a little Utah backwater mining ski town that was off the radar and
under the weather.
Park City streets were barely paved, and the bar patios were
a cable-spool table in a field or next to a dumpster. The skiing was
undeveloped but great, and the pow was the best. Positioned at the top of the
Colorado Plateau and the Great American Desert, when it wasn’t snowing, the sky
was bluebird clear. The roads south revealed endless colored canyons that
resembled Mars and would take a lifetime to explore.
The vibe in PC was already 60s–70s chill, friendly, free
love, Rocky Mountain High, quality-of-life thing, a cross between California
cool and Mork and Mindy mayhem. By the 80s, the weather cooperated one last
time and stacked snow to the second story consistently so that, at times, the
town felt like a snow globe, shaken, not stirred.
Work closed for powder mornings and ended at 4:30 on Friday
when someone showed up with a bottle of whiskey to be shared. Ski runs closed
without a rope and a sign were considered soft closings as long as you weren’t
obvious enough to make the ski patrol look silly. There were other
transgressions too, like snowball fights with tourists, après-ski wet T-shirt
contests, lines on the bar, bumps in the bathroom, or blunts and bones in the
back room, as well as a parade of exotic women in the bars followed by the cops
every Friday night.
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Summers were cool and clear and kept us around for good. The
town neglectfully ran out of water one summer but bought more, and the
six-story icon mine building mysteriously burned to the ground, paving the way
for endless development. Locals all said hello and were very inclusive of
newbies, although the miners would give you the stink-eye if you were a true
hippie.
We had a mass transit fleet of little blue buses borrowed
from the mental hospital, there wasn’t a traffic light in the county, and we
were 20 minutes away from a budding metropolis and an international airport. It
was 60/40 men to women, and the Mormon drinking rules were really weird, but no
one really cared, and we shared the women and the wine. Little did I know that
PC was to grow to be an international Olympic destination ski town with some of
the most valued real estate in the country. And we would help.
We would build Deer Valley to set the tone of the 80s for
customer service. We would develop the Sundance Festival and bring culture and
class to the town with our own radio and TV station. We supported surreal
events like Clown Day and the Tour de Suds, Art Fest, and Silly Market. We
weren’t weird; we were funky. We grew up together. We kept score, not with
money, but with ski days and vacations. We were individuals and a community,
inclusive and accepting. Live and let live.
These little decisions we make at ungodly young ages, with
little help from above, have huge implications for our future and make us what
we are. Could have chosen to build skyscrapers in New York City or perfect
sanitation in Mumbai, but my path was destined, serendipitously, for better
things, down the road least traveled.
I challenge the young folks to find that funky, chunky place
that no one knows about, is hard to get to, or is too cold, but speaks to your
heart, and make it your own. Bring a partner or find one there. Do your
homework and pay your dues but get a job that makes you happy in a place you
can grow with, raise a family, and sell your house for ten times what you paid
for it in 30 years. Need less and save more in a place everyone wants to be.
Let time and compound interest cover the rest. Be happy.
We weren’t just lucky, we were good. We didn’t invent this
lifestyle, but we perfected it. Find your own place and perfect it too.
