12.23.2008

A Democrat lawyer finds hippie Nirvana

From Midwest Bureau Cub Reporter Paul Knue:



Don Mooney's a good guy, and this is a nice piece about spending the holidays in Taos. I hate the cold, but this makes me want to go back. It's a beautiful place.


An aside:


The first time we visited to Taos was on our first RV adventure in a rented Class C rig, with Cruise America (the rental company) ads plastered all over the sides and back. We were a rolling billboard.


With us was our trusty sidekick Rocket, a retired racing greyhound who was reduced to a 90-pound quivering mass by the motion of the motorized box. We were desperate for a way to ease his anxiety attacks when we ran into a vet in a blustery campground on a mountain ridge outside of town. We described the symptoms, and she told us to go to a natural health store in Taos and ask for a certain concoction -- the name of which we promptly forgot.


In the store, we told the helpful clerk with rainbow-striped hair what the vet had told us, but that we didn't know the name of the product. She smiled and handed us a bottle: "This always works for me."


It worked for Rocket, too -- he spent the rest of the trip on a small bed in the back, blissfully zonked.


Sadly, Taos is also where my friend Max Jennings -- retired editor of The Dayton Daily News, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a wonderful companion on anybody's boat -- suffered a heart attack on a ski slope. Max was a great editor, an incredible teacher and one of the best story-tellers I've ever shared a bottle of bourbon with.

RIP, old friend.




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