Those kind of people

"I remember the blizzard of '49. I dern near lost my mare," said my suited-up board member as we chatted over coffee in my break room. It was quite possibly the best thing I've heard in the last month, reminding me to resist getting too citified. I treasure these wise people that I get to know through my job. This man was the chaplain for years at one of the largest hospitals in Denver, he's on every ethics committee across the city that I've heard of, he speaks up in committee meetings to say things like "kick 'em in their cans," he's lost one wife to cancer and cherishes the other, he spends every other weekend alone in the wilderness fly-fishing and he has eccentric children he raised on his own - one of which is a 30 yr-old gay multi-millionaire living in Barcelona. He's been doing a lot of hunting this fall. With relatives in Kansas. They are real people - "the kind of people whose values were probably really great in the '50s. The kind of people who make that great jello with fruit floating in it. And sometimes even little marshmallows." Those kind of people.