Henney Family

By special request, I will describe my first trip to Colorado as a young adult without the rest of my family. In November 1969 I was 18 years old, a freshman at Cornell University, and students at the school were given a week off to vote and work on behalf of their favorite candidate. At that time I had just had a cast removed from my wrist that had been with me since September when a 265 lb defensive tackle landed on my wrist during a half-speed football drill the day before a freshman game. That ended my football career in college and after all that time in a cast I wasn’t in the mood to go home and support my local candidate.

So, an engineering school buddy, Tom Molloy, and I decided to hitchhike to Colorado just for the adventure. We made it to Western New York through a series of short hops and somewhere near Buffalo we were picked up by a big Mexican guy with really colorful new western boots that he was very proud of, driving a medium-sized straight truck. Before we had gone too far, we learned that he was returning to San Antonio after dropping off a load of migrant farm workers in New York. Being a pretty naïve Midwestern guy, I had no clue whether to even wonder if the workers were in this country legally or not. Even if I had known at the time, I’m sure it wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other.

What really mattered was that this guy was very friendly and genuine. He admitted that he was lonely and picked us up just so that he would have someone to talk to. What I remember is that he talked ALOT about very personal things. It could be that he was trying to get some things off his chest, but I don’t really think that was it. I think he was truly lonely and also very open with his emotions, and Tom and I were fascinated by his story.

Somewhere around Kentucky he asked us to consider riding all the way to San Antonio with him just to keep him company. San Antonio seemed way out of the way for the short time we had available, so we thanked him for his generosity and he dropped us off in St. Louis. There were really only two things I remember about the travel between St. Louis and Colorado. One was that we spent about ten hours by the side of the road with our thumbs out in Kansas City. No one gave us a ride and Kansas City went to the top of my least favorite cities list. Shortly after we left Kansas City, we got a ride from an over-the-road trucker. I remember being really surprised that a trucker picked us up, but he soon explained that he was behind on making entries in his logbook. The authorities were unlikely to ask to see his logbook if they saw that there was somebody else as passenger who most likely was keeping up with the logbook. It also worked great for Tom and I because we alternated chatting with the driver as passenger and catching some zzzzz’s in his sleeper compartment.

I don’t recall anything in Denver, because we didn’t know anyone there and our hearts were set for the mountains, so we headed right up to Aspen. We wandered around that great little place (back in 1969 it was still pretty earthy). We asked around about places to stay and some kids our age directed us to The Snow Chase, a rustic little place just a few yards from the No. 1 lift on Aspen Mountain. We walked into the place and there were kids all over, including some playing cards with the little 65-year- old lady that owned the place. We asked her if she had a room available and she replied that she didn’t. We must have had some pretty long faces because she laughed and said that all she had was beds at $2/night (which was probably one of the last times you could spend the night on the side of Aspen Mountain for $2). She said her biggest reward was playing cards with young people and that’s why the beds were so cheap.

She showed us to a room with several bunk beds in it. That was the best bed I ever slept in. The room was fairly chilly, but there was about 12 inches of down quilts on each bed and once under those covers, I was completely zonked until the next morning. When I got up in the morning, I looked up on the mountain and saw the little old lady driving down the mountain in her Jeep with her dog sitting beside her and a deer draped across the back of the Jeep. She had it hung up in the tree beside The Snow Chase before I even ventured outside.

That night we went to a party at an Aspen home that someone had told us about and we found ourselves dazzled by the people and activity at this Rocky Mountain mecca. John Denver had not yet moved to Colorado or released Rocky Mountain High, but for all I know he may have been at that party. We didn’t stay in Aspen long, and were soon roaming the University of Colorado in Boulder where we heard some great music. I bought a simple backpack with the image of a cyclist on it and the name of the store, “The Spoke,” written on it that I used as a book bag for several years after that.

We were looking on the Ride Board at the Student Union for someone headed east, and found a Hippie guy that was headed to New York City the next day. He had a VW bus with a mattress behind the front two seats and a 3-month old fuzzy puppy that was very happy to meet a couple of new people. The four of us headed east, a cloud of smoke both inside and behind the van as I recall, alternating as driver, passenger, and sleeper (with puppy). We drove straight through to NYC, where Tom and I hitched back to Ithaca.