Saturday, October 12, 2013

Blockbuster® circa 1995 is alive and well at the High Mountain Lodge


When Julie and I bought the High Mountain Lodge over four years ago, we went through the usual negotiations with the seller about what was going to be left with the property, and what the seller wanted to retain.

One of the most amusing contingencies in the contract was that the seller wanted to retain possession of the library of video tapes that, at the time, were on shelves in the Lodge's office. When our real estate agents mentioned that contingency, I almost fell over laughing. "You're kidding, right? Who wants a bunch of VHS tapes? They don't even make VCRs any more!"

Well, evidently, the seller came to his senses; when we took possession of the Lodge, there they were, in all their paleolithic glory, still on the shelves. The seller never exercised that particular contingency.

In the years since we bought the Lodge, as our friends' and relatives' VCRs  bit the dust, we have been the recipients of their video libraries. Our unwelcome collection of VHS tapes has tripled in size since the seller abandoned his original collection, and the tapes have been collecting dust in boxes in just about every room of our living quarters since we didn't have any more space in the office to shelve them with the original collection.

Just this past month, since the government shutdown and the consequent closure of Rocky Mountain National Park left us without our usual compliment of guests coming up to the high country to ooh and aah at the changing color of the aspens, we set about accomplishing a project that had been hanging fire for at least a year.

We built a series of shelves at the end of our rec room designed for videos. For three days, now, we have been carting over boxes of tapes and arranging them on the shelves. The shelves cover the entire back wall of the rec room, and already, we're wondering if we need more room to house them all.

Lest you think we're complete Luddites, there is also a rather good selection of DVDs, as well.

When you visit us, feel free to indulge yourself in a marathon of trashy movies from the 80s and 90s. But please don't feel obligated to bring your old videos with you. Our shelves are full.

2 comments:

  1. Luddite in Chief here--if you have any that you want to part with, let me know! We still have 2 working VCR's!
    Cece

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  2. Wow! That is a larger selection than what we saw in the office! I'm glad that someone will be able to continue the education of such novelties as a VHS to younger generations.

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