The Newspapers
Tom sat down at the kitchen table for his morning coffee. He expected to skim through the headlines of the morning paper as he usually did. He liked to pretend he was up on current events and fake his way through the majority of debates using plain common sense. The trouble with that is when it came to what was really going on he was lost. It wasn’t because of ignorance; it was that Tom looked at life in a simpler way. Tom’s mind was working his way through one of his challenging powder stashes. Today Tom would read.
Jilly had laid out the paper, front page up, to be sure he didn’t miss it. The headline was in bold black type, page one read:
“Arapahoe Basin: Death On The Slopes”
“I don’t believe this,” he shook his head. The story covered the entire front page of the Summit County Sentinel. Tom reread the dismal words, shaking his head over and over.
“They make it sound like it’s Joe’s fault.” He downed the last of his coffee, rolled up the paper and grabbed his coat. He was out the door on his way to the Basin without Toby. Impulsiveness was one of his strong weaknesses. Tom turned off the world and went into attack mode when a strong heavy emotion was triggered in him.
“Did you see this crap?” he held the newspaper up, storming into Joe’s office.
“Which crap are you referring to?” Joe pointed at top of his desk. The desk was littered with papers from all over the state, especially the Capital City, Denver. The all had the same slant and innuendo’s blaming Joe personally and then the management of the resort.
“I have even received a call from the Governor’s office. They want to know what is being done to combat the mounting problems and threats of skier fatalities.”
“What is going on here Joe?” Tom asked, “This is more than just sensationalism in journalism.”
“It’s simple the Senator wants this mountain. He owns everything from the valley floor to entrance of the parking lot and he wants this mountain and the lease with the forest service. He has the power and he controls the government and the media and he will stop at nothing to take the mountain.”
“But it’s not true what they're printing.”
“Tom you don’t get it, the new politics are to create doubt and fear and then feed off the fear by bending the facts to benefit your cause. They control the narrative and the media.”
“You have done everything humanly possible to see that no one gets hurt up here. I know I just signed on to get a pass, but this means too much to me now. My biggest problem is I have always fallen in love with the mountains I have wintered at. I’m here to the end Joe. They can’t have this dream. There’s nowhere else to go. This is the symbol of everything I have ever believed in life. I can’t see it fall.”
“It is truly going to be a fight, a dirty dog fight in the trenches and they just fired the salvo they think will sink us. I have some artillery of my own that I’m about to let fly. I’m proud to have you on our team. We will be lucky to keep our insurance now with all this publicity.”
“I’m going to go work on the generators, I’ll fix what I know how, Today,” Tom stormed out the door of Joe’s office. Leaving him alone to contemplate his fate and the onslaught against his life’s work. They were getting closer day by day.
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