Wake-Up Call: A week of goodbyes

I'm looking out my back window over the Platte Valley, across the highway and the river and the railyards to Union Station, and thinking that I'll never see the Ski Train pull up again. After close to seventy years, the last twenty of them under owner Phil Anschutz, the train...

By Patricia Calhoun

April 24, 2009

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I'm looking out my back window over the Platte Valley, across the highway and the river and the railyards to Union Station, and thinking that I'll never see the Ski Train pull up again. After close to seventy years, the last twenty of them under owner Phil Anschutz, the train has jumped track, the equipment sold to Canada, leaving behind just a memory. Many memories.

I'm looking at the newspapers spread out on my kitchen table in front of the window, right beside the computer that's helping hasten their demise. If the course of history ran smoothly, there would be a copy of the Rocky Mountain News among them, the first edition of the paper's 151st year. But the News folded seven weeks shy of its 150th birthday on April 23.

Like the Ski Train, it reached the end of the line long before we were ready to see it go.

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Patricia Calhoun is editor-in-chief of Westword, the alt-weekly she co-founded in September 1977. She’s been inducted into the Colorado Press Association Hall of Fame, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Hall of Fame and the Colorado Restaurant Association Hall of Fame. She’s also received dozens of local, state and national awards for writing, including first place for feature writing and first place for column writing with the Society of Professional Journalists. Patricia is a weekly commentator on Colorado Inside Out, PBS 12's public affairs roundtable, which has won two Emmys.

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