My recollection is that I dialed John’s number in the alley across the 16th Street Mall from Denver’s art-deco Paramount Theater.  It was a dangerous call.  I was just merging onto the latest of the many ramps I’d gone up to yet another manic phase of my bipolar disorder.

But given that it happened over 15 years ago, not long before I launched my campaign for Colorado’s House District 37, my memory of details is sketchy.  (Especially since I’ve gotten to the age when I can hide my own Easter eggs.)  But there are some things of which I’m confident.  We were at the Paramount; Wikipedia refreshed my memory by confirming that, indeed, the Paramount was the last of the Mohicans for downtown movie palaces.  Which is not to say there are no other movie houses in downtown-there are.  But by comparison with the elegance of the Paramount, they have all the aesthetic appeal of a shoe box.

I was at the theater for one of the monthly meetings of the Leadership Program of the Rockies.  LPR is a sort of charm school for Republicans seeking elective office.  I was in the class of 2005.  In looking over the list of other participants, I still recognize many names; a number have gone on to bigger and better things in a wide range of fields.

LPR is the brain child of Shari Williams. Bob Schaffer is chair of the board and a former member of the US Congress who actually kept his pledge to limit his time in the DC swamp.

Something’s Happening Here. And You Don’t Know What It Is

But back to the goings on in the Paramount.  Bob Schaffer greeted us and made some opening remarks.  The substance of his comments?  Don’t have a clue.  But for some reason they got me sufficiently agitated that I got up in the middle of his presentation and made my way down the cramped row of fold up, old school movie seats, muttering “Excuse me,”  “Pardon me,”  “Sorry,” over and over until I got to the aisle leading to the lobby.

But when I got to there, it was immediately evident that I wasn’t the only one who needed a break; several clusters of LPRers were caucusing around the lobby already.  No place to make an emergency phone call to my political mentor, John Andrews.  And what a mentor to have: speech writer for President Nixon but the only advisor who resigned in protest as the Watergate scandal brought Nixon down, Republican nominee for Colorado governor in 1990, president of the Colorado Senate, founder and president of Colorado’s feisty and conservative political think tank, The Independence Institute.  And it goes on from there; John’s tireless.

So I headed out to the warm spring day looking for a place to make the call.  The mall itself?  No go: too noisy with the tourist hoards, office workers on lunch breaks, and the mall shuttle busses crawling back and forth.

On The Road With Jack Kerouac? 

So I ducked into a shady alley that, who knows, may have figured into Kerouac’s frantic-even manic-accounts of his brief layovers in Denver that were depicted in his famous novel.

“John?” I said as he answered.  “This is Spencer.  I just stepped out of a meeting of the Leadership Program of the Rockies where Bob Schaffer was talking.  You wouldn’t believe what he was saying . . .”  I rushed on from there, an agitated, untested political rookie, somehow impugning the reputation of one of the most admired Republican conservatives in the state.

It wasn’t long before John brought me up short:  “Spence,” he said, “I don’t know exactly what Bob said.  But I do know this.  If you keep acting this way, I can’t support your candidacy.”

What else was said?  It makes no difference.  I said goodbye, hung up, and stepped out of the alley into the sun beating down on the mall. I was gasping for air like a fish out of water.

But was that glimpse into the abyss enough to bring me to the point of trying to figure out what was really going on?  And deal with it?  No.  Of course not.

There were still miles to go before I slept.