[UA] The UAest Place On Earth (or, at least, Colorado)

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- Stuart Anderson <stuartanderson at qwest.net> wrote:
> holycrow at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> > Now, the idea of someone making a castle in the
> middle of Colorado is pretty UA on its own.  Mr.
> Bishop's nigh-incessant feuding with the county
> officials about his castle adds a further UA twang. 
> But to me, what really makes this place UAble is
> that it is so much an expression of one man's
> obsession.  For thirty years he has built this
> unplanned monstrosity, simply because He Wills It. 
> That's gotta be good for some gaming.
> 
> At least one of his sons has died helping him. It's
> creepy as hell.
> I love to pull for the underdog and I love to find
> nobility in inexplicable obsessions. But shit,
> man--the place just creeped me out. I got none of
> that. It is a completely UAble site.  I think Rp's
> mentioned it.
> --Stu

Nope. Didn't mention it. I grew up in Colorado
Springs, of course, and I had friends in College who
lived in Rye and Buelah (I used to go down there and
visit one who was on House Arrest - he had one of
those collars that goes off when he leaves his house-
for a fatal road accident on weekends) but I never
went over to Bishops Castle. I actually spent most my
summers growing up in Mogote, in the San Luis Valley,
though.  Mogote (or Tres Mogotes) is a tiny little
roadstop inbetween Taos and Antonito (Alamosa is
easier to find on a map, and that's a bit north of
Antonito.)  I could walk to Antonito from my
Abuelita's house.  It was white-washed adobe with
cottonwood beams (that someone plastered over in the
50s but my Dad and uncles revealed and rennovated in
the late 80s, revealing a whole country of black widow
spiders.)

The San Luis Valley itself is an very UA-able place.
It's so full of weirdness that Hite did an article on
it.  When I was a little kid, there was this story of
a boogeyman called Coco (or Koko, no one ever spelled
it for me.) It was just a nursery bogey, really, but
it spent its days disguised as a sheep (or which there
are no shortage in the sage-brush-covered high plains
of the San Luis.)  My Abuelita used to scare us into
being good and going to bed with threats of Coco (who,
of course, ate bad children.)  During one story,
however, my cousin Ted, who did not want to go to
sleep, walked over to the door, threw it open and
cried into the night "Entre, Coco."  I've always
wanted to work that scene into a game (especially
since, about a decade later, this pretty goth girl
lured me up to the old cemetary where her brothers
locked me in a crate they claimed was a coffin and
jumped up and down on the lid shouting about how Coco
was going to eat all the half-breeds.)

The San Luis Valley contains two of the poorest
counties in Colorado, among them is Conejos ("rabbit")
county, where I grew up.  There's a lot of social
pressures there, which are great for UA in and of
themselves.  Books like the Milagro Beanfield War
(which features visitations by saints and some of the
great folk magic and stories which can be found in the
region) are, more-or-less, set in an area just like
San Luis.  It's not urban, but it is postmodern (if
rural can be postmodern.)

Of course, you have to cross through Walsenburg to get
to the San Luis Valley from Bishop's Castle, and you
have to go over a really steep pass, but it's worth if
for the epicure of the weird.


=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

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