Seven years before he died, George Murray inscribed his Last Will and Testament by hand. “And it better be legal, as it comes from my heart,” he wrote, with his usual intensity. “Anyone who doubts this, I will come back after my death and haunt THEM.” The time is right…

part 1 of 2 Sister Maureen Kottenstette is trying to escape the office for the third time this evening when a knock sounds at the door. She needs to leave before dark, she explains, because she’s just had cataract surgery and can’t see to drive at night. As she gets…

part 2 of 2 This Christmas it was the Kauffman family’s turn to be creepidential. “It’s a big family,” Sister Maureen says, “and they put all the money they would have spent on presents for each other into an envelope. I just received this envelope–with nearly a thousand dollars in…

The Saint Nick’s Santa, who suddenly appeared at this Christmas-only shop on South Santa Fe Drive one day seven years ago, is mysterious when asked the standard question all Santas get asked. Reached at the Ute Trail Motel in Hot Sulphur Springs, Colorado, where he spends his weekdays, Santa (or…

At 26, Sarah Steinberg has the dogged persistence of a door-to-door salesman twice her age. In the face of a changing music industry, how else could the young deli worker/songwriter carry on? “I want to make it in the pop line,” she explains, “but pop is not what it was…

Ronnie Crawford and Russell Enloe are making their semi-annual trip to see Vic. Although their quest for cool old stuff continues every day of the year, taking them to thrift shops, basements and attics all over town, a visit to Vic’s department store in southern Colorado is more of a…

It is autumn in northwest Denver, and the smell of roasting green chile is why. From now until the first frost, the fragrance will hit you as you drive down Federal Boulevard, past the hand-lettered signs with neon green letters reading: HATCH/PUEBLO CHILI! FREE ROASTING! At least fifty two-bushel burlap…

Florence Nixon moved from Aurora to Sequim, Washington, eight years ago. Her husband, a retired Air Force major, was ready for adventure. The new house was beautiful, and they also owned a state-of-the-art motor home. Children and friends visited often. Yet Florence was desperate. “Some friends were leaving to go…

In the beginning, there is Tower Road. A vanishing point leads east toward I-70 and the rising sun. The view offers not just amber waves of grain, but purple mountains’ majesty as well. Downtown Denver hangs fifteen miles to the west, a few water towers impersonate giant golf balls on…

In the editorial offices of the Ranchland News in Simla, Monty Gaddy, whose CB radio is going wild with news of grass fires in the surrounding country, thinks instead of the fabulous hook that came to him in the shower this morning. “I get great lines in the shower,” he…

Even as you read this, a very librarian process is going on. Under the leadership of the Denver Public Library’s director of marketing, Pat Hodapp, a corps of assistants is transcribing the entries to the “Words for All Time” contest. “Each will be the same,” explains Hodapp. “Typed, so that…

I take up a station near Romance and Mystery in the Denver Public Library, Central Branch. It is only eight feet from a water fountain and a stone’s throw from the elevators. I sit at a round table scored with the pocketknife blades of the ages, thinking about Weldon Kees,…

March 10 was a good day. Bad days had been the rule for Will Eddings almost since Thanksgiving, when he’d started a program of chemotherapy to combat Kaposi’s sarcoma. “Yeah, I thought I was going to be one of those miracle people,” he recalls. “I thought the chemo wouldn’t make…

Jack Kern is in his customary spot: at the counter of the last White Spot restaurant. He has been one of the faithful for so long that he forgets when it all started. Eight years ago, maybe? At first he came in for a cup of coffee, but he soon…

Joe from Crest has always been too busy to talk to me. Whenever I am swept into the cyclone of stuff that is Crest Distributing, browsing obsessively, Joe fixes me with his my-hearing-aid-ain’t-turned-off-YET look and says, “I know what you’re up to, don’t think I don’t.” But I keep right…

One day five years ago, Lucien Wulsin was walking down the hallway at the Naropa Institute. By then his white hair had grown out into a ponytail, and he’d abandoned the suits that had seen him through several distinguished roles: attorney, CEO of Baldwin United Corporation, chairman of the board…

Bad things are happening to old ladies,” Batman explains. “They’re getting jumped. Their purses are being snatched. You know how it makes me feel? Ticked off.” His eyes narrow like Clint Eastwood’s. “Real ticked off. So I says, `Don’t worry, ladies, I’ll walk the streets.'” Tonight, those streets have led…

Austreberto Aguirre’s big vision is a shadow of its former self. This week’s edition, anyway. La Gaceta, the newspaper he’s published in one form or another since 1947, today is little more than a few Xeroxed pages stapled together. Inside, where Senor Aguirre, editor and founder, once ran hard-hitting exposes…

Two strong forces conspired to put my head in the hands of the Ultima College of Cosmetology. The first was the inimitable ARC Value Village store at 72nd and Federal, where I have shopped for life’s little necessities for nigh on to a decade. Several years ago, ever on the…

In order to maintain his buffness, Playgirl’s Man for March Greg Lane eats practically no fat at all. He says this caused his blood cells to get “all clumped up.” Luckily, a blood doctor told him to eat mass quantities of broccoli, and he was cured. At the moment, Greg…

Pat Rossiter is contemplating taxi-driver etiquette. It would be permissible, he thinks, to yell, “Hey, pal, your iambic pentameter stinks,” over the radio. Something truly vulgar, however, would not be. And should a cabdriver ever attempt to interrupt a live, on-the-air poetry recitation–well, that would be a “capital offense.” These…

Julie Ireland storms into rehearsal, late, her long dress and long hair streaming behind her, her bare feet stomping along. “These guys are very, very fast,” she says of the comedy group she is about to direct. “Anything you teach them, they suck up like a sponge, although there’s quite…