This Wish List Drives Him to Distraction

I used my Continental Airlines pass to go to Colorado last week, dividing my time between my grandchildren in Boulder and a visit to Aspen, which I had never seen in winter. God obliged, giving me a little more winter than I really needed, which made it a rather hazardous drive from Denver to Aspen.

But I was determined, and I hung in, spending two glorious picture-postcard days in Aspen, which I had virtually to myself since I beat the beginning of the ski season by several weeks. All of which is a long preamble to Glenwood Canyon and the direction it set me thinking.

Glenwood Canyon is a 15-mile-long crevice in the Rocky Mountains that has to be navigated on I-70 to get from Denver to Grand Junction. For many years when I drove this route, I-70 dwindled to a torturous two-lane road for this 15 miles, usually spent behind trucks creeping along at 20 m.p.h. and impossible to pass.

About seven years ago, the state of Colorado set out to build four lanes of highway through Glenwood Canyon--and I have watched the project with fascination ever since. I have no engineering expertise and usually very little interest in such things, but this is a challenge hard to ignore. Each time I pass through, a little more of it is done. The one constant is the 30-to-60-minute delay.

Although it is totally out of character, I’ve never been impatient with the delay because it gives me time to study how this remarkable stretch of road is taking shape. I had to traverse Glenwood Canyon twice on this recent trip, each time with a 30-minute delay. Both ends of the road have been completed, but there is a seven-mile section in the middle--including a stretch of tunnel through solid rock--that is still under construction. And to this unpracticed eye, will be for a long time.

As I cleared the canyon and relaxed my grip on the steering wheel, I mused, half-aloud: “I hope I live to see this finished.” It’s an old cliche, but it set me to thinking--which is mostly what one does when driving long stretches of open highway alone. And on this Colorado highway on this day, I pondered the question: What else do I hope to live long enough to see or do?

The road was free enough of traffic that I could jot down my thoughts as they came to me. So here is a partial list in answer to that question:

* To watch the California Angels play in a World Series. I could probably have no better guarantee of longevity than this.

* To enjoy the experience, just once, of having our bubble-headed dachshund, Coco, come the first time I call her. Or the second.

* To see low-cost housing built in Newport Beach.

* To watch Bill Mulligan’s UC Irvine basketball team play in an NCAA tournament.

* To witness a U.S. political campaign devoted solely to the positions of the two candidates on the issues that divide them.

* To see a cure for AIDS.

* To drive a car powered by something other than an internal combustion engine.

* To see middle-class Southern Californians using public transportation.

* To know that my grandchildren will not have to go to war. Or anyone else’s grandchildren.

* To wallow in a Midwestern fall.

* To eat gravy without worrying about cholesterol.

* To see a cure for cancer.

* To witness an election in which a proud and avowed member of the ACLU wins public office in Orange County.

* To finish writing the novel that has been in my desk drawer for the last eight years.

* To hear Richard Nixon admit that he was wrong--and mean it.

* To see a revival of “Showboat” in which the lyrics of “Ol’ Man River” are sung as Oscar Hammerstein wrote them.

* To read Ariel and Will Durant’s “History of Mankind” and the “Interpreter’s Bible” in their entirety.

* To stop searching for simple answers to complex questions.

* To experience a great-grandchild.

* To spend a month is Paris--while I’m still strong and healthy enough to walk its streets every day.

* To procure another bathroom at home.

* To develop a tennis backhand strong enough that the people I’m playing will stop hitting every ball in that direction.

* To see the car telephone outlawed.

* To see the hole in the front of our house put there by a wayward motorist converted into a magnificent bay window.

* To no longer need to understand how God and evil can co-exist in the same universe.

I figure this list will carry me to about 2020 at least. I’ll have another look at it then--maybe on the four-lane highway through Glenwood Canyon.