Hi Pete
I really enjoy your website. Keep wishing more people would write in and tell
us what they are up to. Then I realized I had not. So many write in and talk
about how they will always think of Cimarron as home. Guess they are correct -
it is home and always will be. I love to come home and just drive around to all
those places I remember. Often see Tom Kelsay's place - the first place the
Bluejay Inn opened. (When I was in high school it
was the Mobil station and I worked for my uncle Frankie and Earl Condor)
I miss Chuck's place - but Dad and Mom don't! It was a
lot of work for them. I remember the old library with its creaky floors and
animal heads on walls. I remember seeing my aunt Betty working in the old
Stop-N-Go and I think that little store eventually became a mortuary did it
not? (Yes and still is)
Also remember Skidmore's cafe. I liked the little jukeboxes in the booths.
There was an old Ben Franklin store downtown too - where you could buy wax
pops. Remember the old VFW? It eventually became Cimarron Insurance Computer
building didn't it? (Yes, it was tore down and a
new complete building put in its place.) I
remember Hoskinson dinners there every year to accommodate all 11 kids and their
families. We used to run around for hours in that old building. Grandma and
Grandpa Hoskinson gave each grandkid a silver dollar each year. I remember
George Giddens and family - feeling sad over his cancer and early death. I
remember the Deardorf girls when I was younger and seeing them from the bus
window at the high school and dress of the 70's, hip huggers, mini-skirts.
Nothing has changed now! I remember Squirt Kramer the sheriff - and, as a small
child, I was fascinated that a mother would name her son such a name HA! Life
was and is good in Cimarron. Now I find myself going up to the Cemetery each
time I come to visit the graves of both sets of g'mas and g'pas and my friends,
cousins, acquaintances. It will always be home and I expect I will get back
there someday - even if it is to rest finally in the cemetery - but hope I get
there before then.
We had a rough winter here in Denver this year. 3 blizzards between Dec 18 and
Jan 10. We live within walking distance of a grocery store - it was almost
completely out of food for over a week. I attached the one picture that came
out. I took this early in the blizzard - I eventually measured 4 ft of snow on
the car when the snow stopped - but the drifts were much higher. I commented
that I had not seen snow like this since I was a kid. School would shut down in
Cimarron and my brother would haul me to town across the fields in the tractor
so I could make basketball practice!
Thanks Pete - great site.
Jacqueline (Hoskinson) Jambor
Greenwood Village, Colorado
Click on picture for larger view.