Soundings
If you were to ask him how it all began, Hawk might tell you of a time in Denver, back in 1995, early in September. It was an ominous night, as the sun sank low behind the foothills and the clouds began to fire up in burnt orange and magenta.
It was a hallowed night in Denver: the start of football season. The clouds were monstrous—jet-stream high and cumulous—and they appeared to pack plenty of snow. Sitting in his Subaru, he breathed a sigh of gratitude for all-wheel drive, and continued to marvel at the sky. It was either that or stare at a freeway crammed with 60,000 football fans, creeping toward Mile High Stadium on an asphalt track that was clogging like a fat man’s arteries.
It was the first Monday night game of a 1995 NFL season that had Super Bowl possibilities for the Denver fanatics. The Broncos were already 3 - 0, and this game would be a showcase for both the team and the city that fancied itself the center of all things cultural and technological in the Rocky Mountain West.
Now, what if it snowed? The clouds that were hovering over the ski resorts could just as easily slalom down to the stadium. Which made for interesting imagery. There was nothing like a blizzard on network TV to convince the rest of the nation that Denver was a nothing but a backwater outpost for mountain men who sat around and guzzled Coors all day.
The traffic came to a standstill just beyond the parking lot, and that’s when he saw it. He’d been gazing up at the Denver skyline—just a few, scant skyscrapers looming over a downtown he could walk across in twenty minutes. But the buildings were stunning, sparkling in the last rays of the fading sun. On the top floor of the tallest, an enormous neon sign spelled out the biggest employer in town, Telwest.
Your Future at the Speed of Light. He remembered running the focus group where someone had come up with that tagline. Telwest: once a stodgy, public utility, but nowadays a happening place in a deregulated industry, some would say. Purveyor of some glitzy new talk-toys. From POTS to PANS, the saying went: plain old telephone service to pretty amazing new stuff. It was said the video phone was almost ready for market. And that was just the beginning. One day, there’d be nothing less than three-dimensional television.
Telwest: guarantor of 60,000 jobs, enough to fill the Broncos’ stadium. The sign was a monument, in blazing blue, to the largest corporation in the time zone. It was said you could see a blur of neon blue all the way to Wyoming.
Finally he drove up to the parking lot attendant and turned his attention to terra firma. But as he fumbled with his wallet, something in the rearview mirror caught his eye. At first he blinked and shook his head. But no. It seemed the big, blue sign had begun to flicker. One letter at a time was going dark. As he passed through the gate, he looked back once more.
Now the skyline of Denver was a black void. He felt a sudden chill and shuddered. His one and only client worked for that corporation. For an instant, he had a shivering sense that Telwest was no more.
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Excerpt above is from Soundings copyright © 2007 by William Charland, published by Wheatmark. All rights reserved.
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