"Oh, well, I take care of the lawn and grow a few flowers," Eddie says modestly. "I've never grown a melon, and I never knew A.F. Ray personally, although I've lived here forty years. I remember the first day I came here, and all I could smell was the cow manure, and I thought, man, this is cornball. But I wouldn't trade it for nothing now, and I wouldn't go live in a big city if you paid me."
Before coming to Garden City as a teenager, he'd traveled the country with his parents, who performed "knockabout comedy" in vaudeville shows. They'd settled briefly in Santa Monica, where Eddie put his budding keyboard talent to use playing "the California sound." But his uncle, one of the earliest Rosedale investors, invited the Millers out to take over the inn, and the opportunity seemed too good to pass up.
John Johnston
John Johnston
Garden City's first bartender.
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"I mean, everything else was dry, all the way to Laramie," Eddie recalls. "My dad took over in 1956. He changed the name to the Club Lido, and we booked shows from Denver. And strippers -- when strippers were strippers. I had the band that played along with them, and I kept on playing -- classics, jazz, the California sound. I just finished a ten-year gig at the U-Park Holiday Inn in Fort Collins."
Forty-three years ago, Mary, his future wife, walked into the Club Lido and was instantly hired as a bartender. The two have worked together, on one project or another, ever since. But their main source of pride is the 120-acre municipality of Garden City.
"Oh, well, it's nice," Eddie says, affecting unconcern. "It's quiet. It's no big deal."
The second possibly fertile yard belongs to Dennis and Nina Kendrick -- and Janis is right that it looks promising. Even in winter, there's unmistakable evidence that a gardener with a strong personality is waiting in the wings for spring.
"No, it looks pretty pathetic," Nina says. "We have sand blowing in all over the grass. But I do have quite a collection of old farm equipment. They practically give it away out east if you'll just get it off their land. I like it because each piece tells a story on its own."
In summer, the old, rusted cornhusker and rake cutter are surrounded by lilies, tulips, jonquils, crocuses and "almost any flower you might want," Nina adds. "I have alliums. You should get you some. Even when the flowers fall off they look nice. When I lived in Rock Springs, Wyoming, I used to get dried manure and scatter it everywhere. If I could do that here, my flowers would look even better, but I'm not about to pay for some manure."
Which is why she no longer bothers with edible vegetables. "I used to," she says. "And of course I grew watermelons. Watermelons and mushmelons. Jeez, but they were a good size -- basketball or bigger."
Big enough to serve as a whiskey bottle stash?
"Sure," Nina says, without missing a beat. "And they weren't no particular variety, either. I just picked up a seed packet at the Wal-Mart or wherever. And drowned 'em in Miracle-Gro. There is a secret, though, to growing a watermelon in Garden City."
I wait, holding my breath.
"You don't let 'em vine out. Make sure there's only a couple of flowers on each plant, and cut all the rest of the vines way back. No, I don't know if that's how A.F. Ray did it. My husband might."
"I knew him," Dennis says. "He was one sharp businessman. A.F. Ray looked out for A.F. Ray. My Uncle Ed, who ran the Rosedale Inn in the beginning, was different. He was a real quiet man who always spoke godly and never spent a cent on anything until he was too old to enjoy it. I learned from that. I live life."
After growing up in Garden City, Dennis became a carpet layer in Greeley, then a gas-field worker in Wyoming. He came back ten years ago to care for his and Nina's aging parents, all of whom have since died. "But my dad built this house a little at a time, and I was so attached to it," Dennis explains. "We bought it and moved back in."
Since then, he says, he's seen disturbing changes in his boyhood town. His wife heard the gunshots one night last month when a security guard was shot to death in the parking lot of the El Toro Bravo Inn, which occupies the original home of A.F. Ray's Nob Hill; he suspects drugs arrive in town off the bus from El Paso; his own renter recently was held up at gunpoint and relieved of her car.
"It makes me nervous, but I'm too proud to be chased away," he says. "And I want to see what we can do about all this. And I want our neighborhood back, with our average garden in our average yard. Nothing spectacular. Nothing to put us on the map. Just a name, really."
