Number Thirty Eight

Greeley is the town where my dad grew up and where my mom went to college. A town where my parents met and decided to start a family. Two years and two weeks after my brother, I was born in Greeley, Colorado in 1996. Due to be born on Friday September 13^th, I didn’t make my entrance into the world until the following day, on Saturday the 14^th. This was the day of the “Cattle Baron’s Ball,” which my grandma was in charge of organizing that year. Apparently, she had told my mom she was allowed to have me on any day but the 14^th, and today I pride myself in the fact that I chose the one day deemed unacceptable to be born.

Greeley was the town that I lived until I was about four. Our house with the big green door and the sunroom I used to paint in. It is located about 50 miles north of Denver, and is a pinnacle of livestock and home to JBS (Monfort Feed Lot) slaughterhouse. Driving through Greeley as a child, my family would joke about the smell of cow manure wafting through the half-cracked car window in our silver suburban. “That’s the smell of money,” my crotchety grandpa (also a cattle-rancher) would explain when my brother and I would hold our thumb and pointer finger over our nose. Though I remember smelling a crisp five-dollar bill and thinking that it didn’t smell at all like my grandpa described.

I moved to Fort Collins (northwest of Greeley by about 30 miles) just before I started kindergarten. In fourth grade, we did a “Colorado” play, and I still remember the lyrics to the song, which was uniquely named “Colorado”:

Colorado, Colorado

It’s called the centennial state

Colorado, Colorado

Joined the U.S. as number “Thirty Eight” 

My special performing role gave me the opportunity to be a “train conductor” and wear overalls on stage. I was irritated that I had to be a train conductor, and had my mom take me to get special brown colored overalls so I would look different than everyone else. I saw someone wearing striped overalls the other day and thought of my fourth-grade self. Though I’m not sure the best way to differentiate yourself from a crowd is by wearing brown (or striped) overalls.

About halfway through the production, Mrs. Wagner put America the Beautiful in the CD player and blasted the “purple mountain majesty” lyrics. I never understood why the mountains were described as purple. To me, they always seemed grey or blue, aside from the pearly snow-capped peaks. However, I do remember a specific Crayola crayon named “purple mountain’s majesty.” I recall one time I tried to use it as a mountain color, because Crayola deemed it appropriate, although the result seemed far too forced. My friend, Lauren, wet her pants on stage of our final production, and her soggy denim seemed more purple than the mountains…

The only purple things in Colorado that I can think of is the Colombine flower (although, it is also described as “blue”) and the color of the state during election season. Although, I heard the other day that it was losing its status as a “purple state,” or one that is torn politically between Democrat and Republican, in favor of blue. But Donald Trump did just hold a campaign event last week in Loveland, a town halfway between my birthplace (Greeley) and my home in Fort Collins.

As a native Coloradoan, it is common to hear out-of-staters marvel at the beauty and exquisiteness of Colorado’s mountains and landscape (personally I think they’re kind of snooty about the mountains). I can’t say how many times I’ve been assumed to be a skier or a snowboarder, because duh, I grew up in Colorado. But the truth is, the last time I went skiing, I zipped my stuffed animal (a monkey named Emily) up in my coat before cautiously descending down the “green” slope in strictly “pizza” formation. I was ten. I think my lack of ski skills makes me somewhat of an outsider.

I recall a conversation I had in 2012 with my friend, Garrett in the lunch room of Kinard Middle School in eighth grade. He was wearing Nike socks with slide-on sandals and basketball shorts with a seam running up the right leg. I had just come from choir class and we had a substitute teacher that day. During the course of our lunch line chat, I mentioned that I thought our choir sub was a witch, and he told me: My mom is subbing in Mr. Wheeler’s class today. At that time, I believe I tried to play it off like I didn’t just call his mom a witch, and maybe he believed me because we still talk. Last summer, he invited our friends to go up to his condo in Vail, but his mom got sick and he ended up having to stay home. He goes to college in Washington D.C.

Our state capitol, located in Denver, welcomes 300,000 visitors annually. In 2015, I was one of them. I organized and booked my senior year government class’s tour. I picked a Friday because it allowed me to miss the most amount of classes possible. Our first tour guide was a sophomore in high school and wore braces and a forced smile. Our second tour guide spoke so quietly that you couldn’t hear her unless you were ten inches away from her mouth. The thing I remember most is the rose onyx marble used on nearly all the walls in the main entry way and in the show galleries. Tour guide number one gave us a “fun fact” and told us that the marble used in the capitol building depleted the entire known supply of that particular type of marble. It seems selfish to waste an entire resource on a single building, but I remember that no one on the tour was surprised.