This past December, in order to get to my artificial Christmas tree for the first time in 10 years, I was forced to clean out my storage locker, which was not an easy task. I spent days going through years and years of ephemera, but happily found several boxes of photographs that my mother Mary kept over the years, one of which can be seen on the left. It was taken at Keystone, a ski resort about an hour or so west of Denver, where we went to an art festival one summer. I must have taken this particular photograph because I thought the dummy in the background was pretty amusing. As I recall, we walked all around the village and had a very pleasant afternoon. Neither of us bought any artwork. I am, of course, a notorious cheapskate. My mother, let's just say, was also kind of thrifty.
And ironically, during First Friday last week, I saw a dummy similar to the one we saw in that window up in Keystone at the back of an artist's studio, on the second floor of an art gallery on Denver's Santa Fe Boulevard. This time I didn't find the dummy so much amusing as creepy, standing there in that near vacant room with that grin pasted on it's face. I almost expected it to start emitting a sinister laugh. Funny how perceptions change depending on the situation. I wonder if I am only thinking this way because I am currently reading a Stephen King novel. If this were one of his plots, I would probably wake up one night and see that face staring down at me. Is my imagination finally getting away from me? Don't answer.
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