So the Broncos didn’t make it into the finals. Life goes on…or it doesn’t.
Tonight we went to a Celebration of Life for Kit Eldridge at the Shriner’s Club. The place was packed, all of Kit’s family and friends and workmen buddies were there, the food was plentiful, and Audrey ‘almost’ held it together. Understandable, you say, for her to be fragile. It was her husband, after all. Wait until you hear their story…
Audrey, age 13, lived in the Broadmoor, and her parents owned a liquor store. Kit, age 20, worked with the elephants at the Cheyenne Mtn. Zoo, among other places, and would frequently frequent Audrey’s parents liquor store. Her mom was crazy about Kit and they would frequently chat on his frequent visits. One evening she asked him why his hair was always wet when he came in for beer, and he told her one of his other jobs was running a swimming/diving program at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind. She mentioned she had a beautiful daughter who was also a competitive swimmer and wanted to learn to dive. It didn’t take long before she hired Kit to give her daughter diving lessons.
We’ve all heard the jokes about the perfect girlfriend requirements being: young, beautiful, athletic, and having rich parents who own a liquor store. The other side has perfect requirements, too: tall, dark, handsome, long hair (this WAS the 70’s), sharp dresser (bell-bottoms, peace symbol belt buckle), drives a Camero.
So, that’s how Audrey met Kit. She was more than smitten on first meeting. She had the script completely written by their 2nd diving lesson. There was no ‘maybe’. Kit was the one she would spend her life adoring.
There were a few adjustments: the Camero was souped up and trashed out. Upholstery cotton and springs were visible. OMG! Audrey, upscale Jewish girl had never ridden in anything but Cadillacs and Lincolns. AND he was MUCH older. AND he had girlfriends. AND it was just another job for Kit.
The lessons continued. Soon Audrey was 14 and more in love than ever. She was so freaked out at the upholstery in Kit’s car, that her parents bought him a brand new Subaru to drive Audrey to her diving lessons. (I think maybe the parents were reading her script).
Audrey recalled that they had their first “real date” when she was 14 and he invited her to come to the zoo and see what he did for a living. They toured the back scenes and then he told her to jump in the truck – he had to make a delivery…to the dump. She had never been in a truck, much less to a dump, but she was with Kit and it wasn’t a diving lesson! To her, it was a REAL date.
When they arrived at the 26th St. landfill, Kit jumped out, elevated the dump bed, and all sorts of noises emitted from the truck. However, the thing that finally got through to Audrey was the god-awful, eye-burning, incredibly bad smell!! She jumped out of the truck and yelled at Kit, “what’s that terrible odor??”
“Elephant shit, Audrey. What did you think we were hauling?”
That was their first date…according to Audrey.
The diving lessons continued. Her high school days continued and so did Kit’s life. He had girlfriends, and one of them inconveniently got pregnant (this was not in Audrey’s original script). Kit, being the ultimate ethical person we all knew, insisted on marrying the girl, even though everyone knew they were ill-suited, and the marriage lasted a very short time.
Audrey was now 15, Kit was 22. Without a lot of details in the story, we can assume they spent the rest of their years together from this point on. The math doesn’t quite work, but they were ‘together’ and then married 25 years.
The things he built as he became a master carpenter, the things they did together, the people’s lives they affected are side stories to the main script. They were soul-mates. This wasn’t Hollywood, but their story was better than a lot that made it to the screen.
I have started reading Audrey’s blog of Kit’s last 16 months as pancreatic cancer took him down. It is beautifully written, but I have to stop after a couple of entries. It’s just too vivid. I’ve cried buckets.
Thank God for metadata.
