In the fall of 1984 I found myself in Castle Rock, Colorado. At that time, nestled between Denver and Colorado Springs, it was a small friendly town, about the size of Tomahawk. Just like my hometown, everybody used to know everybody, but outsiders were already starting to move in. That was one of the draws for my friend Brenda and me; a growing town, close to the big city.

OK, so I just had to search for Castle Rock on the internet. In 1980, the population was 3,900 and now it is 42,000! That is crazy.

Anyway, back to my story.

I got a job at Daylight Donuts our second day there. Within a few days, we found a two bedroom apartment within walking distant. I worked Monday through Friday, from six am to around noon, at the counter of the donut shop. Within a month or so, I got a second job working two evenings a night at the 7-Eleven directly across the street from the apartment we rented.

Brenda and I settled in, bought a few dishes (I still have one of the yellow mixing bowls), and started exploring, tentatively finding our way to the closest mall in Denver, adventuring into the Rockies.

We were just two chicks from the sticks, having never been anywhere by ourselves. We drove all over the place in Brenda’s old blue Chevy Nova. We discovered lots of places to shop in both Denver and Colorado Springs. We also discovered some positively scary gravel roads going up and down the sides of the mountains.

And when we weren’t driving around, we were walking around Castle Rock. The city gets its name from a huge rock formation sitting on top of a hill next to town. The rock was shaped, I thought, more like a ship, but someone way back when must have thought it looked like a castle. There was a trail to the top from which there was a magnificent view of the Rockies.

Speaking of castles, there is an actual castle just down the road from where we lived. It was part of Cherokee Ranch and at the time I lived in Colorado, it was owned by Tweet Kimball. I could tell you all about it, but there are several articles on it on the internet. Our goal was always to visit the castle, but at that time, being privately owned, well, you had to have a lot of money to get invited to one of Tweet’s elaborate parties.

At some point in time that fall, though, this young man came into the donut shop, walking straight into the kitchen, like he owned the place. I thought, “who does he think he is, but who cares, coz he’s kind of cute”. I found out he had worked there before and had dated the owner. I do not want to even go there, but he would be the man I married the first time around.

Let me skip all that though and just share the happy memories. Ok, not all memories can be happy, but let’s only share the ones which further my story.