I started living with my dad in the mid-70s. We lived in Georgetown, Colorado, a small Victorian tourist town on Interstate 70 about 45 miles from Denver. My dad was an outrageously intelligent alcoholic sort-of-a-hippie chef who kept the beer flowing by working in virtually every restaurant in town at one time or another. Soon after I came to live with him, he permanently lost his drivers license after his fifth or sixth DUI, so I was no stranger to slower forms of transportation, like hitchhiking, walking or riding a bicycle.
By 1980, when I was 18 years old, my best friend was David Lewis. Aside from work, we spent most of our time listening to rock-n-roll and doing foolish things that I won’t get into right now, although some of them are now legal, at least in Colorado!
David’s dad, Merritt, was a master carpenter and contractor who’d built his own beautiful home in Georgetown. When he retired, he decided he wanted to sail around on the world on a custom sailboat, so he divorced his wife, and bought one. I am not sure why he had to divorce his wife, but this is a story about my midlife crisis, not Merritt’s!
Sadly, the boat builder went bankrupt before his sailboat was finished, so, instead of a boat, he got a fiberglass hull and lots of raw materials dumped into his yard at 8,500 feet above sea level and 1000 miles from the ocean. Being a skilled carpenter, he dauntlessly worked on it himself, and eventually his project reached the point where it was ready to be moved closer to the water.
My dear friend David and I were not very ambitious. Neither of us had any grand life plans. David was always looking for a way to make lots of money without working too hard, and I was content to follow in my dad’s footsteps and work in the restaurant business.
Merritt thought getting Dave out of Georgetown, putting him to work finishing the boat, and ultimately sailing around the world with him, might help David get his act together. Out of the blue, Merritt asked me if I’d be interested in joining them, because he thought I was more mature and serious than David was.
I don’t remember agonizing over this decision. We had nothing to lose and we both decided to go. We sold most of our stuff and rented a U-Haul trailer.
The night before we left Colorado, we borrowed David’s dad’s girlfriend’s daughter’s car for one last-minute trip from Denver to Georgetown. A mile east of the Evergreen exit from I-70, David fell asleep at the wheel, we crashed, the car flipped and was completely “totaled.”
Merritt insisted that we replace her car. Perhaps insurance wasn’t a thing back then (kidding!)? In order to buy her a replacement car, David and I were forced to relinquish most of our savings and sell David’s car.
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