Lo-Fidelity: AHS Homecoming – burning down the float

Aspen High School’s class of 1985 Homecoming started off bad, then quickly turned worse. What was intended to be a relatively innocuous prank of vandalism flared into a fiendish felony in a matter of minutes. Whenever I recount the story, people often ask incredulously, “Did that really happen?” Oh. It happened. The Aspen Times even reported on the fiasco: “Videon, Weissman and Kissler were suspended from school for their part in a Homecoming float torching incident Wednesday night.”

This weekend is our Aspen High Class of 1985’s 40th reunion. I’d like to formally welcome my classmates who don’t live here back to town. Welcome home, firestarters!

To the best of my dazed and confused recollection, and with some help from one the perpetrator’s, this is how the deal went down: Four seniors armed themselves with cans of spray-paint with the intent of defacing the sophomores’ float. One went rogue, pulled out a lighter, and turned the canister into a flame-thrower. The sophomore float burst into flame and belched a column of thick black smoke from underneath the Castle Creek Bridge. A legend was born badly burned.

The principal, Mr. Parsons, who happened to live nearby at the Aspen Villas, heard the sirens and hurried to the scene of the crime. As he was sprinting down Power Plant Road, he broke his ankle badly. Needless to say, he was irate. The next day at school, a booming voice came over the intercom: “ALL SCHOOL ASSEMBLY — NOW!” The entire homecoming was in jeopardy of being cancelled unless the culprits fessed up. The peer pressure was too much. They buckled.   

Poetic justice prevailed. In a show of pride and resilience the sophomores defiantly steered their burnt float through downtown Aspen, and homecoming continued with a pall of float-smoke hovering over the proceedings. In retrospect, the sophomores should’ve taken a hint from the senior class of 1983 who constructed their fireproof float entirely of beer cans.

The night before the homecoming football game, another group of pubescent vandals cut down one of the goalposts at Islen Field with a blowtorch and a hacksaw. The coaches, staff, and players were all in absolute shock. Every time in the second half whenever the visiting tram scored, both teams had to march to the other end of the field (where there still was a goalpost) for the extra point. The game took forever. The Roaring Fork Rams beat the Skiers 82-0. 

Regardless, the fiery folklore has aged like a fine Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler, the girls’ extra-curricular beverage of choice. The sophomores’ faults are still unclear to me; even hindsight is a blurry 20/200 (aka legal blindness). 

Keep in mind, the ’80s were an era when “hazing” was very much alive. Here’s an excerpt of an interview I did for the Skier Scribbler newspaper in 2019 — a haunting memory of my first day at Aspen High School: 

“‘The seniors had hung freshman by their underwear on the coat hooks around the brick walls of the skier dome and were throwing basketballs at them, a barbaric scene if you ever did see one. My only saving grace was that my oldest sister was a senior. Some of the perpetrators had taken a liking to her. So as her little brother, there was a hazing exemption loophole for me,’ Semple said.” 

The article was adeptly written by student journalist Bella Hoffman, who went on to describe Aspen High in the mid-’80s as ” … a dark and peculiar place … .” I continued to reflect in the moment, “I think there was an element that if you came forward, things would be a lot worse. Now, that’s not to say that no one got in trouble for hazing, but the culture at the high school was different. It was not uncommon to see a car in the parking lot with a gun rack holding a rifle in the window. The concept of a school shooting hadn’t even been invented yet.” 

Later that year, a teenaged gunman blasted a head-sized hole through the handcrafted wooden Aspen High School sign with a shotgun. Incidentally, I got my start in journalism writing for the school paper, called the Aspen “High Times.” The first article I typed was about gun control. 

I still wonder sometimes, what kind of between-age madness was infecting our school? There were pregnancies, rampant drug and alcohol use, and teacher/student sexual relations. Even so, I’ve managed to effectively compartmentalize the bad memories and rewrite a happier, more glorified narrative in my mind of what my life was like back then — when in reality, I was spiraling out of control.

In retrospect, it’s worth noting and somewhat entertaining that the general attitude exuding from my angst-ridden teenage cohort was A.) This town sucks, and B.) The second we graduate, we are so out of here, man! Also amusing because these days, I hear a fair amount of adult, local adults expressing our same teenage displeasure with living here, some even threatening to leave. I consider myself one of the lucky ones who stayed.

I’m at that point of life where you’re facing early-onset this-and-that, and the years are all starting to blend hopelessly together. The cliques and upper/lower class feuds have largely faded into the past. Since then ,we’ve endured weddings, divorces, births, deaths, stratospheric victories, and subterranean defeats. Time has proven a remorseless, unbiased equalizer.

I hope all of the attendees and alumni have a blast this weekend and know there’s a (as of Thursday) Stage 2 fire ban in place now. Go, Skiers!

Contact Lorenzo via suityourself@sopris.net.