num_pages: 101
description: Before dropping out was fashionable, or Aspen was, as well; when today's $60 lift ticket was $6, and newer Aspen houses sold for $10 a square foot; when most Americans had never heard of Aspen, I lived there. I had stumbled on a place better than any I knew, or had a right to expect. Thirty-five years later I have written Aspen Bummin'. I hope it conveys the thrill I still feel on reflection, the great fun of living in Aspen, where every day life had an excitement, a sense that the mundane was special in that one place. Some of these stories were celebrated around town, representing Aspen attitudes of the time, as many of us postponed further "growing up", that is, facing families' conventional expectations. Aspen was different then, different from other places, and different from what it seems today. The book refers to locally meaningful sites, now humbled by opulence, and sketches well-known locals of the long-time restaurant personalities Myrna and "Army" Armstrong; Dr. "Bugsy" Barnard, the slow growth mayor; Stuart Mace, Aspen's first naturalist; Ralph Jackson, "King Of The Ski Bums"; jazz bandleader Freddie "Old Snicklefritz" Fisher; trout stream diviner and beer drinker Homer Jaycox; two-fisted saloon keeper, flower guide and dorm hotelier "Trader Ed" Brennan. Actions of early ski era locals describe their take on what living in Aspen meant to them, and define their legacies. Aspen Bummin' looks with humor at what Aspen was like in the formative years of the early sixties. We had fun. I hope the reader will too, plus learn a little about the town. And perhaps these pages will reignite for some, long-forgotten fun with rhymed lines.
language: English
title: Aspen Bummin' : Aspen Ski Bum Stories From The Sixties
titlecomplete: Aspen Bummin' : Aspen Ski Bum Stories From The Sixties
publisher: Stuart Kinkade