Off to Clifton Kansas, a long way from Table Rock Lake. Western Kansas, a girlfriend at K-State, and my first losing season as a basketball coach and it was out of there. Brian Jackson, David Bowman, and Greg Michels all ended up in Emporia and have kept in touch. The most interesting happening related to Clifton was a ski trip to Winter Park. By this time I had a pickup with a camper so of course, the relative distance to Denver being shortened a trip to the white slopes was planned. Randy Clark, Gary Carlson, Mark Taddiken, Galen Haas, Brian Jackson, headed to the slopes in the trusty camper. At Phillipsburg we cooked some food and added warmth with the oven. We ran out of propane and changed the bottle forgetting to turn off the oven. Six hours later we are in the parking lot of Winter Park with three hours to rest up. The wind was blowing about 70 mph and a good thing. It got very cold toward daybreak so I leaned over to light the over for a little heat. BOOM, the back door was blown open, the roof on one side was vented, the front window was gone, and one side glass was gone. We couldn�t let these events stop the skiing so we skied all day, stayed in the lodge at night, finish the schedule for skiing, tied the top down, put the cushions over the windows and headed home. I think some of the Clifton basketball players came to Table Rock with me but the memory lapses.
That summer I purchased an 8x25 ft. Silver Star mobile home and attended summer school in Manhattan. I had resigned at Clifton to become a math teacher at Wamego High School. I moved the trailer to Wamego and lived in it the next year. Wow what an experience. The next spring that trailer headed to Table Rock Lake. Skiing near Big M, knowing Art and Paul real well, that is where I wanted to be. There was no trailer space. Eagle Rock was the closest court so it was a commute. After the court manager unplugged my outdoor refrigerator that was full of buffalo meat, I talked Art into starting a trailer court for me. The Silver Star was the first trailer in the court across from the old bar.
I was the math teacher and there was a super neat young faculty. Ron Hollandsworth had a boat, I lived with Tony Dutton and Jim Lee, and got to play bridge with Sue Mosher and Lily Kober. This bunch made many trips to Tutle Creek Lake. We made one where it got real cold and if Jim hadn�t stayed up all night drinking beer and keeping the fire going it would have gotten real cold. Another fun time at Tutle was when Ann, my squeeze, and I had skied on Friday night, had tied the boat very securely and had headed back into town planning to ski the next day. By this time I had replaced the old 75 with a 90 horse motor. The next day it rained all day so we stayed in town. About 6:00 we headed to Tutle to load the boat. Mission accomplished after we used the trailer wench to pull a sunken boat about 100 feet over the newly submerged shore. If you get the boat up on the trailer far enough you can start dipping water out of the boat and it will eventually float. The motor may never run right again but your boat floats.
The lesson learned was, you never tie a boat real securely when the lake is going to come up about a foot in one day. If the wind changes to blow toward the back of the boat it doesn�t help either.
Got to relate the happenings of another snow ski trip. Met all these neat people while going to Manhattan. Got a lot of my valuable education in counseling that summer. I had a class where we spent a lot of time in sensitivity training. A real fun group so why not invite them snow skiing. Jim Lee and his girl friend were going to go. Jim a real strong catholic and his future wife being the same, them going on this trip was a shock to many.
By the way Jim coached football for many years, won some state championships, raised some very strong, I think, catholic children and is retired on a farm near Paola, Kansas. Well there is Jim, future wife, Gary, my brother, Ruthie, his wife, a couple of girls and a guy from my sensitivity class to head to Colorado in my, Charger the guy�s GTO.
We were going to stay in a cabin owned by the librarian at Wamego High. Well we got to Colorado and the cabin just happened to be down about a � mile from the road that was covered by 12 inches of new snow. After wading snow up above our crouch, digging below 5 foot of snow to get wood, we made ourselves at home in the dirty cabin. That night the two girls gave us a thrill by sleeping nude together. That was one of many experiences with alternative life styles. The next morning our nudes decided to stay home from skiing on a ski trip so the rest of us left for the slopes. By nightfall the group excluding the nudes decided to forget the bargain housing and get housing on the slopes. Well the nudes didn�t have any money, had cleaned the cabin and didn�t want to leave. Rather than hitchhike the nudes went along. Needless to say the dude didn�t have chains so when the pass got slick he had to use my chains, hitchhike back so I would have them. I am real giving but not with my chains on the top of Loveland pass when it is covered with ice. Outside of a hitting aVolkswagon that turned 360 degrees in front of the charger, being scared out of our mind about being hit by cars trying to miss us, and sleeping on the floor of the motel room that was too small, it was a good trip.