Autumn is but 12 days away. The annual Meeker Fall Festival, the last major celebration of the summer in Rio Blanco County, will be held in downtown Meeker on Sept. 27 and the full rifle hunting seasons will show up, signaling the start of winter weather, most likely.
I hope I am wrong and that the late-summer, fall-like weather will continue for another month or two – without a repeat of the heavy snows that ruined trees all over the county or the extreme cold that killed my wife’s car and severely injured mine last fall.
Having grown up in Colorado Springs, which fluoridated its water when I was growing up (I don’t know if they still do), I have to say I am in favor of Meeker ponying up and paying to fix its city water fluoridation system.
Thanks to my parents, my six siblings and I went to the dentist every six months, and every six months my parents were overjoyed because the dentist rarely found any cavities.
This continued until I was about 13 and moved to Boulder. The dentists I saw for the next 10 years always made a comment on how great my teeth were and how good they looked. The teeth, I believe, had one cavity total from the time I was born to the time I was about 23.
After that, I started ignoring the regular checkups and probably wasn’t the most diligent in my dental hygiene.
I was single, working for fairly low wages, having fun and, frankly, because I had such good luck with my teeth, the regular hygiene wasn’t all that important to me. Still, whenever I went to a dentist, the doctor would make a comment about how good my teeth looked and how hard they still appeared to be. But they would add that my teeth were starting to show signs of decay and that I should really start taking care of them again.
It was pretty obvious to them that I had grown up with fluoride but that the lack of fluoride in the ensuing years was just as easy to detect.
I continued to neglect my teeth more than I should have until about 20 years ago, when I obtained dental insurance along with my employment.
Since then, my teeth have become a nightmare.
I can’t even imagine how many thousands of dollars I have spent in the last 20 years on caps, fillings, bridges, root canals, etc. because I neglected my teeth and because other than in Colorado Springs, I had not had any fluoride in my water.
But I have a good memory for what dental work I didn’t need to have when I was growing up.
The early exposure to the fluoride in the water in Colorado Springs followed me a long time. The lack of fluoride continues to haunt me now.
So, I look pretty fondly on fluoride, and I figure that if the American Dental Association and the Centers for Disease Control as well as many other dental and medical associations outright recommend fluoridation, then they know what they are talking about.
Dr. Charles Vandiver, Meeker’s own dentist, and a Rifle dental hygienist whose letter appears in today’s newspaper, also strongly recommend fluoridating Meeker’s water. They just might know better than our town officials, who don’t want to spend money that they do have and for which they could get grants to repair the system.
For the sake of our young children, our young adults, our middle-aged adults and our senior citizens, you can sign me up as one of those strongly in favor of fixing the Meeker water system and having the town add fluoride to our water.
The Meeker Classic Championship Sheepdog Trials encompass a tremendous amount of work.
There are: Invitations to send out; press releases to send to the media; rounding up many, many volunteers; parking issues, including setting aside a slew of handicapped spots; helping visitors and dog handlers find accommodations; finding judges; finding and dealing with vendors; keeping records at the trials; making certain that the huge Ute Park is in shape for the trials; praying for good weather; making accommodations for the dogs and handlers at the trial site, etc.
In reality, it is a daunting task.
Well, the powers that be performed to near perfection for the five days that made up this year’s trials.
Everything seemed to run smoothly minus any major hitches — at least as far as I know. I would guess that between the five days there were probably 6,000 people who visited, and I didn’t hear a single complaint the entire time.
The trials ran smoothly, the dogs and handlers did more than their share of entertaining, and that means from great runs to the dogs applying an occasional set of teeth to one of the sheep (instant disqualification).
One of the best things the organizers did this year was to add an “education” room for the benefit of the school-aged children who made it to the trials. Craig children (four schools), Meeker Elementary School students and students from other Northwestern Colorado towns made it to the trials as a field trip. Once here, there were “educators” on site to help lead the tours and take the children to the education room and tell them all about the sheepdogs, the Classic and a number of related topics.
All of the students were educated on what was happening in the field; they also were given a lesson in wool spinning, where they each received a piece of hand-spun wool, and a free snow cone was included.
For the Craig students, the day trip to Meeker ended with a picnic lunch downtown and a trip to the White River Museum.
What a great educational and fun way to entertain and educate the students in a single day!
The students who visited the trials were from Northwestern Colorado, where sheep are a reality; where sheep are a prominent way of life.
Hats off to a well-run Meeker Classic, hats off to all the volunteers who made it happen and hats off to those who first thought of bringing these students on a field trip to the Meeker Classic, a practice that has been ongoing for a couple of years, although this is the first year for the “education” room.
The weather cooperated the entire weekend although it was a close call (about a quarter mile) on Sunday. The food was great, the seating accommodations were usually quite pleasant and the event was a joy, it seemed, to everyone who was there.
I got a kick out of one man I spoke with repeatedly who was also a food vendor from, I believe, the Roaring Fork valley (Woody Creek, where Hunter Thompson once lived).
He said that after frying food all day, he and his wife just couldn’t eat any more deep-fried food. The first night (Wednesday) of the trials, he said, he and his wife drove around Meeker trying to decide what food they wanted.
They decided that they would try California Wok on Market Street because “we just decided we needed vegetables.”
He said he considers himself an expert on Chinese food because that is where he eats often at home and quite often on the road.
“Not only was California Wok a wonderful break from the fried food, but it is one of the best Chinese food restaurants we’ve ever been to,” he said. “We decided to take it home and relax on Wednesday night, thoroughly enjoying the food, but we went back for four more meals while we were here. We had different food each time we went back and we thought each of our meals was wonderful.”
It was very nice to hear the compliments regarding Meeker from the many, many visitors who thought that Meeker was one of the most beautiful places around, but also spoke highly of the events on the courthouse lawn on Saturday afternoon and evening, when bagpipers and a Celtic music band performed while the Meeker Lions Club fed folks a delicious roast beef dinner.
Most of the vehicles in the parking lot were from out of county and about half were from out of state, so the word must be out and about.
Meeker was a gracious host, the weather was cooperative and it is a good bet that many of those who just wandered through will be back again sometime soon.
