It'll be awhile before I can go back to sleep. All of this happened right outside the bedroom window of my RV. It gets pretty rowdy at 2 a.m. when the Leadville saloons close. I was parked close. In fact the nearest one is named after Doc Holliday, who did in fact hang out in Leadville back in the 1870's.

From time to time some yahoo would wake me up and I would think, "It's just some drunk," and then go back to sleep. After all, it's their annual "Boom Days."

But one drunk got really loud and threatening to a woman. The next thing I know there were police lights right outside my bedroom window. I guess they arrested the man. The woman babbled on for fifteen minutes before they walked her away. The police were awfully forbearing. But hey, it's a rough old town.

It's not that I was in any danger. But it was a surreal experience to have this happening so close and to be half asleep through it all. The dogs didn't react to it at all!
Later this morning I was sitting outside the coffee shop. A police car arrived and one of the officers went inside. The other one stayed outside. I commented on the excitement of a couple hours ago.  He laughed it off as nothing like the old days. (He was about sixty.) Then he started reminiscing about a Leadville Saturday night in his youth, before there were open-container laws and everybody carried a gun...

It's funny but I had a different attitude about this experience after that conversation. It may surprise you that I even have a favorite cinematic love-story, but in the The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, the Ghost (Rex Harrison) corrects Mrs. Muir (the exquisite Gene Tierney) about a nautical term that she misused. He was an old sea captain, you know. Well, she said, I don't know anything about the sea, but I know that it's romantic. The Ghost said, That's how all landlubbers think, when they're sitting safe at home.

And so it is with us as we sit in the safety of the post-industrial age, dreaming tourist industry-approved fantasies about the old mining towns.