Henrietta Hay's Column

Have you been to Aspen recently? Going there is something we should all do now and then for entertainment, like seeing an old movie or reading a romance novel. I know perfectly well that Aspen is no longer an awakening mining camp. I know that it is one of the richest properties in the country and that $1 million is a small price to pay for an old victorian house there. I know that it is where people go to conspicuously consume. I know that there is a good chance that most of the people wandering around in the shops could pay cash for a Rolls Royce. One of my friends who used to live there calls it the Rich Ghetto.

But due to a time warp in my brain, that is not Aspen. Aspen is a little ghost town with dirt streets, shabby victorian houses, a broken down hotel called the Jerome, and musicians and intellectuals wandering around. That's the way it was in 1949 when I went to the Goethe Bicentennial and listened to Albert Schweitzer speak.

When my friend the philosopher told me about the Winterskol parade last year, and the golden retrievers chasing tennis balls in front of the Hotel Jerome, my mental picture was of the dogs leaping around on a dirt street in front of a seedy hotel. That was what my subconscious really expected to see when I drove into town on a recent Sunday morning to collect my Phoenix grandson. It ain't that way any more!

Generally I'm not much for nostalgia, so I decided to forget the 1949 Aspen and stick with the modern version. I was there to meet and enjoy my 6 feet tall sixteen-year-old grandson. We had a wonderful Sunday morning before heading for Grand Junction and a plane to Phoenix. He took me on a guided tour of downtown Aspen. The only time I nearly hit him was when we were sitting on a bench munching on croissants. Naturally! What else would you eat for breakfast in Aspen but croissants? He commented that the scenery wasn't much there. I reached over, pointed his head at the mountains and said, "Look," He explained that he and the friends with whom he had been visiting for a couple of weeks had been up above timberline exploring and fishing. Up there, he explained, the scenery was beyond beautiful and into spectacular. He was simply speaking comparatively. For a kid raised on the Arizona desert, those mountains were impressive. The town was not.

You really don't look at the mountains in Aspen as much as you do at the people and the ambience. The one new addition to the Los Angeles of the Rockies that is beyond my comprehension is the new Ritz Carleton Hotel. That kind of luxury and glitz in a mountain town (pardonnez moi, Aspen) verges on the obscene.

The Hotel Jerome, however, remains is a historical treasure. It is no longer seedy. I hauled Ian into the lobby so he could see what hotels looked like during the gold rush. The lobby looks exactly as I remember it from forty years ago, probably the way it looked in the 1880's if I had been around then to look. Well, not exactly. The brass is all shiny and the wood has been polished to a high sheen and the upholstery has been replaced. Everything has been refurbished with tender loving care, and the original appearance and feel have been retained.

We drove around and looked at the sights, but how do you make a city kid appreciate a historical treasure when the atmosphere feels a little like Disneyland? You don't, of course. So we forgot Aspen and got re-acquainted. I don't see him often enough.

I have two kids. One of them speaks only when he has something to say and the other one was born talking. Ian is the son of the former and he too is not much of a talker. I think it was Erma Bombeck who said that the reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well together is that they share a common enemy.

By the time I put him on the plane for Phoenix, we were buddies. I even made the supreme grandmotherly sacrifice of letting him drive my sports car. Aspen is interesting, but I'll take grandsons - anywhere they happen to be.