We’re Here!

Man, is this a small town. I thought it had grown into a medium sized city, but in a lot of ways it is still a small town.

When I was a kid, we had a “party” telephone line in Fort Collins . I’ll bet some of you don’t even know what that is. When I was really young, if my parents needed to make a call, they picked up the phone and listened to make sure none of the neighbors were using the neighborhood phone line. As I got a little older, the “party” lines changed. You didn’t need to listen for another conversation on the line; you just got a busy signal when someone was using the line. It was a big deal when my folks paid extra to the phone company to get our own private line.

Holy cow, I’ve lived here a long time. Did I ever tell you my great-grandfather has a street named after him in Fort Collins ? Sorry, I don’t know why I brought that up!

Do you guys remember when there were two yarn stores on Linden before the Old Town Square? Another store was in the Opera Galleria block. That was before downtown was called Old Town . Heck in those days is was Only Town. And then they opened another store on Lemay and Drake, over by Toddy’s. Oh yeah, Toddy’s is gone too.

Elaine loved that store. That store and its owners will always hold a warm place in Elaine’s heart. When the store closed, Elaine and I had a conversation about acquiring the store. It was a five minute conversation, but it was a conversation. Gosh, we were just kids.

Now here we are on College Ave. It’s a pretty good spot for us. I wish our backroom storage was bigger. I wonder if we should occupy more space in the basement of this building. That would certainly give us more storage.

I talked to a realtor about finding a place with more storage and possibly an apartment someone could stay in after evening classes instead of driving to the ranch.

I forgot Fort Collins is still quite small in some ways. Word got out. Customers are worried. The other stores are talking. People are coming from other stores to ask us when we are closing. I didn’t know this but I guess we lost our lease. I think our landlords in California mentioned it to everybody but us at Your Daily Fiber. The landlords have asked us to extend the lease. oh decisions!

Some of you know Elaine spends every evening watching House Hunters International looking for beach property in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama . The problem is we are way too young to retire and the twins are still in school. (The Twins graduate from high school in 2021. That equates to more than 3000 more episodes of beach property planning.)

Things are going pretty well at Your Daily Fiber. Ivy and Elaine are having a blast in the store. The Twins can spin, knit and crochet. We plan on being here for at least two more generations. We are committed to Fort Collins . Like my great-grandfather, this is our town. I hope the city will name a round-a-bout after me. And don’t forget, I need a reason to keep writing this crap!

Our crazy lives!

Monner