The Curmudgeonly Professor

Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, Colorado: From the Archives mid-1950s

When I had just finished a master's degree in agricultural economics from Montana State University in 1954, I was hired at the ripe old age of 21 as an instructor in agricultural economics at then-named Colorado A & M (now Colorado State University).  When I arrived in Fort Collins the Friday before school started, my department head handed me a textbook in introductory agricultural economics and told me I would be teaching two large sections of 90 students each, five days a week each class, beginning the Monday after.  Many of my students were Korean War veterans and most were at least a couple of years older than I was, many in their middle to late 20s.  I was treated amazingly respectably and thus was baptized into the teaching profession, a profession I would not leave for 45 years.  In the summer, I was working on a research program collecting sheep marketing data from sheep ranchers throughout the state of Colorado.  I drove about every mountain pass and valley, and every desert range.  The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is and was one of the most awesome sights in Colorado.  This picture was taken in the mid-1950s with whatever camera I then had.

Lonesome Dead Pine Tree from the Archives 1950s

Compare the above photo I took with the inlaid marquetry picture below, one of the very first of what ultimately became hundreds of pictures my Dad made.  The picture with the simple design below was made in 1935 and used by my parents to pay a doctor bill.  The doctor's daughter returned the picture to me many decades later and my sister and her husband refinished it.  I think I had my dad's picture composition in mind when I saw the dead pine overlooking the valley in the photo above.