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Memoirs recount slower times in Avon

Bobby Magill
Post Independent Staff
Post Independent/Kara K. Pearson
ALL |

Bobby Hart’s tale of his carefree youth in what once was a quaint and agrarian Avon was originally intended for his family.

But then his family urged him to turn his memoirs into a book and sell it to the public. Hart will be in Glenwood Springs next week to sign copes of his memoirs, “Bob-O’s Turn in Avon, Colorado: Memoirs of a boy’s life in the 1930s,” which he published himself through Authorhouse.

Hart, 82, who lives alternately in an RV and with his daughter in South Canyon, served as a motor machinist in the Navy and a sanitarian for the state of Oregon before moving to Glenwood Springs, where he worked as a pharmacist and raised four kids with is wife Georgia.



At family reunions over the years, Hart told tales of is youth in Avon, when it was a “paradisiacal haven” hugged by verdant farms ” a far cry from the condo-packed Avon of today. After his family encouraged him to commit his tales to paper, Hart said another author friend of his urged him publish his memoirs.

“Bob-O’s Turn” is the result of a decade’s worth of work recounting faded memories in Avon before it was transformed by the development boom of the late 20th Century.



Hart said he didn’t think he’d ever get more than five pages written, but with the encouragement of his children, the book slowly became a 170 page tome.

“I wrote it for them to put on their book shelf,” he said. “Turned out they liked it, and it might be interesting enough for people to read.”

He writes that the book ends where it does because “the bucket is empty and my memories seem to have stopped coming.”

He said his memoir is significant because it chronicles his footloose youth. Most kids in those days, he said, were all working on farms and didn’t enjoy the freedom he did.

Asked how he feels about the changes in Avon and the surrounding areas over the last 70 years, he said, “It’s heartbreaking to see all the houses taking over the beauty. I don’t feel too bad about it because the architects are doing a pretty good job, but, of course, nothing beats nature, you know.”

Contact Bobby Magill: 945-8515, ext. 520

bmagill@postindependent.com


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