Mapleton Mobile-izers

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The Mapleton Mobile-izer is issued quarterly, following the MHA membership meetings. Special editions are issued as needed, for example before a quarterly meeting where MHA members will be voting for executives or making an important decision...


MHA BLOG Volume 4.4 Newsletter of the Mapleton Home Association [MHA] July 1999

4th ANNUAL GOOSE CREEK FLOOD FESTIVAL
POTLUCK SATURDAY AUGUST 21 FROM 4PM TO 6 PM


Inside This Issue



Business plan report
by Mark Reeder
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With help of Dave Drake, a local entrepreneur, the Business Committee has been looking into the ways and means of purchasing the Mapleton Mobile Home Park from the City of Boulder. Dave has strong business ties within the Boulder community and has agreed to help the MHA pro bono. After having talked with the MHA�s lawyer, Dennis Frohlich who is a real estate attorney, and several prominent area business men, the good news is that preliminary figures indicate purchasing the park will be within the monthly budgets of Mapleton Park�s residents.
The other news is that we only need 75% or more of the residents behind the plan to buy the Park to make this future come true. With 40 residents of Mapleton Park already committed to buying the Park through the Escrow Fund, we only need another 60 residents to join the Escrow Fund in order to reach the level of resident involvement that will make this future come true. And we have four years to achieve this goal. As the Nike commercial says: JUST DO IT!.



Festival for all residents and friends
by Mark Reeder
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The Mapleton Home Association will hold the fourth Annual Goose Creek Flood Festival this August 21 at Dumpster Park from 4 P.M. to 6 P.M. The annual party celebrates the diverse neighborhood of Mapleton Mobile Home Park. This year the theme is once again a potluck. Residents are also invited to bring their musical instruments.
This year's Festival will also include the Quarterly Meeting of the Mapleton Home Association. MHA President Ben Jensen, #178, is asking residents to bring their concerns about the future of the Park as well as their suggestions to help with the Mapleton Home Association's goal of purchasing the Park from the current owners, the City of Boulder. (See Exec Speaks Out, p. 2.)
Last year over fifty residents attended and the food was abundant and delicious. So get out there everyone and have a good time!



Exec Speaks Out
by Ben Jensen
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Greetings fellow Mapleton home residents! It's already summer (time sure seems to fly by quickly), and that means it's time for the Fourth Annual Goose Creek Festival. It will be held at the Dumpster Park on Saturday August 21, 1999 from 4:00 p.m. till about 6:00 p.m. (or until the last person leaves). This year's festival will take on the form of a potluck and the second quarterly meeting of the Mapleton Home Association (M.H.A.). As you may remember, last year's festival theme was the formation of the Escrow account (and was a tremendous success).
This year's theme is the M.H.A. business plan. The business plan committee is currently writing the tentative document to plan the purchasing of the park. Do you have suggestions or advice to give about the future of our park? Do you have thoughts or ideas on how the park should be run when we own it? Do you have recommendations about how we should purchase and finance the park?
These are the issues currently facing the business plan committee and we need your input. Bring your ideas to the Goose Creek Festival on August 21 at 4:00 p.m. We will have a suggestion box as well as an opportunity to discuss some of (but probably not all) the issues of the business plan during the quarterly meeting part of the potluck. We may (but no guarantee) have a rough list of covenants and plan guidelines so you can review them and get an idea of what the plan may look like.
So remember to keep you calendar open on August 21 at 4:00 p.m. so you can come to the Fourth Annual Goose Creek Festival and quarterly meeting to discuss the park's future business plan. Remember EVERY TENANT IS WELCOME WITH OPEN ARMS AND ENCOURAGED TO COME AND PARTICIPATE IN THIS EVENT. We will continue reminding you of this important day with flyers being distributed to keep you posted. Hope to see you there!!!

Hast & Company to the Rescue
by the editors

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 The following is a true story; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. (Music: ala Dragnet: Dum da Dum Dum.)
We returned late Saturday to a bad smell issuing from under our trailer. The cause of our olfactory distress was immediately discovered--sewer line clog. A call to Loretta Milcarek produced results within a couple of hours. Sonny, one of Garvin's best operatives, was on the scene quickly with his partner, Mr. Roto. But as in the case of this kind of garbage crime, the rot at the surface was only an indication of a deeper malignant corruption. In our case a broken sewer pipe.
Knowing that behemoths such as our mobile home are immovable, we despaired that the problem could be solved easily. But Hast and Co. had Precision Plumbing at our home by early Monday Morning. By afternoon, the break was solved. Hast and Co. and Loretta Milcarek in particular once more disproved that old adage "the wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly." A home is once more sweet smelling and the only evidence of our distress will be a bumper mushroom crop next summer.

A Day (Off) on Goose Creek
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by Pete Caterina
I awoke this morning to the "Call of Mother Nature".......the sound of wrens and blue jays chirping in the cottonwood trees, a pair of brown squirrels scurrying across my roof, and that lovely sound Western Disposal's big trucks make when dropping a dumpster after emptying it.......three times!
As I sat looking out my bedroom window contemplating the Nature of the Universe and watching the Mallard ducks with their iridescent green necks splashing and preening in Goose Creek, I begin to ponder the meaning of life....as these July days flow swiftly through the currents of Time. Then, it occurred to me that I do this almost everyday! And that reminded me of the words of the great philosopher Garfield (the cat) who once said: "Everyday is just like another....if you're doing things right!"
After answering the "Call of Nature" (different meaning), I made my way down the hall of the mobile home I own on mighty Goose Creek. In the kitchen, I ground fresh beans and brewed a pot of some exotic coffee while reading the Daily Camera to see what the rest of Boulder was up to. Completing the crossword puzzle, I looked out my front window at the majestic foothills....of the Front Range....of the Colorado Rocky Mountains--a view I'm forced to "endure" every single day I continue to rent a lot in Mapleton Park. If I only owned (or at least had some control of) the land underneath and around me, life would be perfect, I thought.
While dressing, I decided to leave the confines of my secure, 15 acre wildlife sanctuary in the middle of a city of 100,000 people and walk into downtown for brunch. I could have gone south to the University campus, east to the Crossroads Mall, or north to Kmart /Albertsons, but the words of Horace Greely rang in my ears this day: "Go west, young man."
So, I proceeded through Mapleton Park where both deer and children were playing. After mailing a letter and dropping off my garbage in the freshly emptied trash receptacles, which along with water and sewer service are an easily forgotten part of my fore-mentioned lot rent, I walked the one and a half miles of residential blocks that leads to the Pearl Street Mall and old downtown Boulder, stopping to "smell the flowers" numerous times along the way. Home after home, block after block, my eyes were dazzled by the beautiful colors of Summer. I was almost sad when it finally opened up into shops and restaurants. Eventually, I wandered my way home. By this time the afternoon sun was beating down. And, even though my well-maintained swamp cooler was doing its best, the "Dog Days of Summer" were winning.
Since I was already sweating it occurred to me I might as well do something constructive to pay for my existence and fulfill one of my minor obligations....that comes with the equitable lease negotiated by the Mapleton Home Association....that allows me to live in the hidden city-forest we call Mapleton Park. So, I headed to my overflowing shed and started up the old lawn mower.
It was the ultimate challenge: Man versus Nature. There is nothing like doing battle with the mighty crab grass or the eternal dandelions to remind one of his or her place in the Cosmos. But, I fought the "good fight" and was eventually rewarded with a cooling breeze as I finished up the trimming and pruning of my perennials.
While proudly perusing the now evenly cut battlefield, it seemed as if Time stood still. The silence of the late afternoon was broken only by the gentle mumble of Goose Creek which, obliged by gravity to follow in its still natural path, was fated to meet its eventual confluence with the fabled Boulder & Whiterock Ditch. And there, the resident doe and her two spotted fawns were doing some of their own trimming and pruning.
"Where else in Boulder could someone live an affordable, yet independent life-style while still being surrounded by a small, yet diverse community and protected by its incorporated, yet non-profit Homeowners Association?" I thought to myself.
I don't know whether it was these heady thoughts or the hot sun, but my head started to hurt so I went inside, took a refreshing shower and lay in the cool of my mobile fortress.
Streaks of orange and violet mixed with the gray-white of clouds and the darkening blue of the early night sky as I now sat at my kitchen table again in deep and earnest thought. I was about to make the most important and most difficult decision of the day.......one that would affect my entire biological being. And so, with an imaginary drum roll in the back of my head, I struck my clenched fist on the table and declared, "Tonight it will be FISH for dinner!"
History will record this was indeed the right decision. Nice sized chunks of fresh cod lightly sauteed in olive oil with garlic, onion, green pepper, black olives, lemon, dill, and black pepper poured over a bed of steamed rice was the entree. For dessert I had cut up squares of honeydew while sitting on a lawn chair in the privacy of my green back yard among the tall trees. And Goose Creek, shimmering in the moonlight, continued its relentless flow to the sea.
By now the stars were coming out in the night sky. So, with a cooling breeze out of the northwest I once again entered the unconscious world of dreams.......the same way I had begun the day.

ESCROW ACCOUNT UPDATE
by the editors
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 The Mapleton Home Association's Escrow Account now has over $16,000 dollars toward the down payment of the purchase price. The residents who have joined have shown their willingness to participate in the future ownership of Mapleton Park. Become a member today and be a part of the future of ownership of Mapleton park. Please talk with Mark Reeder, #14, Nan Lederer, #77, Pete Caterina, #176, Ann Crone #82, or John Hollin #159 if you have any questions. Forms for the Escrow Fund can be obtained from the Escrow Account manager, Nan Lederer in #77.

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The Mapleton Mobile-izer is published quarterly by the Mapleton Home Association and is distributed free to all residents of Mapleton Mobile Home Park.