Dan’s obituary stunned me. We hadn’t spoken for months, maybe longer. After retiring in March of 2021, I rarely see most of my old colleagues/friends, and he was one of my favorites. We were closer during my first “tour of duty” before attempting to live in Miami for the second time. I was an exclusive distributor for DuPont automotive paint from 1989-1997, which, because of its sales leadership position in the marketplace, allowed me to work closely with many amazing people and companies. He was a bodytech working for Truckland in Salt Lake City. He was a big strong cowboy with a super-human work ethic that quickly opened many advancement doors for him. This was not only the largest Ford truck dealership, it also had a massive body shop working on everything from Fords to Freightliners and covered an entire city block. Because of my close working relationship with this shop, we all became good friends. Some of my fondest memories were trips we all took to numerous NASCAR races. DuPont was a major race and team supporter so we all received first-class treatment at every race we went. Much alcohol and cigars were consumed and no rental cars were ever seriously harmed. There were also extravagant parties tied in with annual industry trade shows we attended . Special tickets were required for entrance and DuPont was THE EVENT with many turned away. I saw the invoicing for one particular event in 1995 and it exceeded $1M. Food, drink and autographs for me and my friends. Fast forward 20+ years. When I re-joined the industry in 2016, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew a lot of people; “knew” is the operative word here, so whenever I had the good fortune to meet an old colleague it was nice, but to find old friends, that was special. Dan was one of them. He had continued ranching on the side and working in the industry. By the time we met again, he was managing a nice shop and within two-years he owned it. He was always busy but always gave me his undivided attention when I came in to visit. I was a salesman but also an old friend and he treated me as such. I knew I would likely never win his business, but that was really secondary to being his friend. RIP Dan.

When Lisa and her mom were living in Miami, I became addicted to The Hallmark Channel. I found myself watching at least one movie a night, but the holidays were the worst ( binge watching). I would always be on the prowl for any Christmassy show because I knew that for that 90 minutes or so I could pretend that my wife was home. When they finally came home my interest in Hallmark waned considerably until I never watched the channel anymore. My sister-in-law didn’t understand the context of my need to watch Hallmark and thought I just liked the channel. Even now, six-years later she still sends me messages about the channel-certain that I would like to know her observations for future viewing. Just because I don’t watch the channel doesn’t mean I don’t like that genre of movies anymore. it only means I am more discriminating in what and when I watch. I love Christmas movies and I demand a happy ending, which is the Hallmark formula, but I don’t require that channel for my fix. To the bane of my wife, as soon as the Thanksgiving leftovers are shoehorned into the fridge, the Christmas movies appear-everywhere. Last night on Netflix, we watched “Falling for Christmas. My oh my. That is 1:20 minutes I will never get back. Ironically today’s local newspaper (SL Tribune on-line), did a column on it describing in perfect detail how bad it was, but how great it made our ski resorts look. My only wonder was where they got the snow. We had so little last year I’m curious how their schedule worked for filming… That same article brought up another topic which I found interesting, how to present the LGBTQ+ community in “Family” movies. This Netflix-Hallmark mashup had most groups represented and it didn’t bother me although the ending with the ex-fiance was a little strange I admit. The newspaper article continued by explaining the position of the former queen of Hallmark movies, Candace Cameron Bure. It stated that she had left Hallmark for GAC because it kept traditional marriage at its core. In other words, no gays. Being a content creator for the masses would be difficult I think, especially for the holidays. Happy storyline with maximum sugar content and enough diversity to keep everyone satisfied and offend the fewest groups possible. On the other hand, being a consumer is quite easy-watch-or turn the channel.