Colorado Destinations - Burt Rashbaum and the Carousel of Happiness

A motorcycle road can take you somewhere beautiful, but every so often it takes you somewhere Truly Amazing.  We point our ride toward Nederland, Colorado, tucked along the Peak to Peak Highway, to visit a place I can’t stop talking about: the Carousel of Happiness. It’s a must-stop for a Colorado motorcycle ride, but it’s also good for your Soul.

I’m joined by Burt Rashbaum, a poet, musician, novelist and Carousel Operator who sometimes dances in it’s center with a clown nose on. Burt shares how a kid from Brooklyn fell in love with the Rockies, why Nederland feels like a haven for outsiders and artists, and what he’s learned from meeting people from around the world one conversation at a time. If you’re hungry for things to do in Nederland, Colorado that aren’t touristy and still feel personal, you’ll want to hear what he describes.

We also dig into the origin story that gives the carousel its weight. Scott Harrison, a Vietnam veteran, began carving as a way to heal and to honor friends he lost. That grief turned into something public, musical, and stubbornly hopeful. Burt tells stories of veterans being seen, older riders weeping without warning, disabled kids lighting up with pure joy, and why the motto “Don’t Delay Joy” is more than a nice slogan.

Resources:

https://carouselofhappiness.org/

From Where We Came

Of the Carousel (Poems)

Becoming an American

Tears for My Mother   

A Century of Love

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Transcript

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Riding Toward A Hidden Destination

Ron 0:02

As a motorcycle rider here in Colorado, people ask me where my favorite destination is. A destination off the typical tourist path, a place to meet the locals. Well, that's where we're going today. Today we're riding to a very special place to meet a very special person. The place is the small mountain village called Netherland, situated along the breathtaking Peak to Peak Highway. And if you've listened to this show before, you know I can't stop talking about Netherland and most importantly its crown jewel, which is the Carousel of Happiness. Today I'm incredibly honored to welcome a very special guest, Bert Ratchbaum, a poet, musician, novelist, and most importantly to me, the hippie clown who runs the carousel so often. Right there in the center, just dancing along with the music as we spit around on our horses and hippos and elephants. Join us today as Bert shares this fascinating story about his journey from New York to the Rockies, a powerful story of how the Carousel was built by a Vietnam veteran who did not want to delay joy, and the amazing, healing connection that Bert has seen firsthand that happens to people of all walks of life when they take a spin on that magical wooden masterpiece in Netherland, Colorado. Stay tuned. Recorded in beautiful lovely Colorado, welcome to Peace Love Moto, the podcast for motorcyclists seeking that peaceful, easy feeling as we cruise through this life together. Are you ready? Let's go. But one of my topics is typically great destinations to ride a motorcycle in Colorado. Because that's what I'm used to. That's what I absolutely love. And I have mentioned any number of times. In fact, even in a recent Instagram post, my love for a place called Netherland and a miracle, I would call it, called the Carousel of Happiness. And just to briefly introduce my guest today, I believe it was my very first visit to the carousel. It's probably with my with my wife, maybe extended family. And there was the nicest man, a hippie, who was there to welcome us to the carousel, to tell us the brief story of the carousel, to make sure that we were all boarded onto our animals. He started the music and then he put on a clown nose and then he danced in the center of the carousel as we spun around. And that is my guest today, Burt Rashbaum. I am so glad to have you. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

Burt Rashbaum 3:13

Thank you, Ron. It's a pleasure to be here.

Ron 3:15

So here it is. I I hope this wasn't an insult. I've called you a hippie clown.

Burt Rashbaum 3:22

You know, I like that. I, you know, the classic hippie clown was a man named Wavy Gravy, who's still around. He's in his 90s, I believe, in San Francisco. Um, but yeah, I was one of those um what they called hippies. And I like wearing my clown nose at the carousel. And what I tell people every now and then who compliment me on it, I always say, well, in my real job before I retired from it, if I wore a clown nose, they usually send me to HR, even though that's not really true. But uh, it's a place where I could sort of let my inner child come out and have fun and share the fun and the joy of, you know, our our our motto at the carousel is don't delay joy. And I I try to profess that and um share that with folks who come in.

Ron 4:18

And the t-shirt that I'm wearing right now, which I showed Bert a second ago when we started our video together, is I'm wearing my carousel of happiness t-shirt that says don't delay joy. So I'm sold, man. Um the spirit that you and Scott and Melody and others exhibit there at the carousel is inspiring. And that's my hope for our listeners is those of you who happen to ride a motorcycle and listen to this podcast and have a love for the great outdoors. And I talk about the Peak to Peak Highway. Along the Peak to Peak Highway is the beautiful little community, little village of Netherlands, and in the heart of it is the carousel.

Meeting Burt The Hippie Clown

Ron 4:58

So let's let's let's change gears a little bit. I need to know a little history, Bert. I don't, you know, you and I have just formally met not that long ago. I've seen you, I've circled around you many times on the carousel. You've circled around me, yes. Yeah, I've circled around you, but I haven't gotten to know you all that well until just now. So you are not a local to Colorado, are you?

Burt Rashbaum 5:23

No, I am not, and uh, and neither is Scott, who carved the carousel. And what I like to tell folks when I chat with them is that most of us of a certain age are from somewhere else, but all the kids are the natives. So I originated in uh New York City, Brooklyn, New York, and I went to college at the State University of New York at Buffalo, SUNY Buffalo is what it was called, probably still is called that. And while I was there, I had a girlfriend who I knew from when I was very young, and we kind of stayed in touch and eventually connected on a romantic level as young adults, and she was going to college at CU Boulder. And so there was a spring break, I believe it was 1971, and she was not going back home for spring break, she was from Brooklyn as well, and she said to me, If you want to hop on a plane and do spring break in Boulder, we can have a great time and I'll show you like where I'm living. And at the time, a flight from Buffalo to Denver was not prohibitive for me. So I flew to Colorado and um hung out with her, and I really fell in love with this little college town called Boulder. And we I I ended up we ended up meeting up with her sister and her husband, and we did a little camping, and we drove around, and we drove through Netherland. So that was again very early, and I it just barely registered on my radar, but I I liked Boulder, and I went back to Buffalo to make a long story short. She and I eventually split up, and I met the woman who would become my wife in Buffalo. And we were just doing our Buffalo life, she had a job, and I was finishing up my college education. And one day I get a phone call from an old roommate of mine from Buffalo who was now getting a master's degree in Milwaukee. And we're just chatting and catching up. And he says to me, So what are you doing next year? And I said, You know, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm I'm thinking of applying to graduate schools and and I might go back to the city, meaning New York City, and sort of join the rat race and get a job. And, you know, I have a girlfriend now, and so we're, you know, we're we're thinking this over. And he says to me, I'm moving to Boulder next year. And I said, Boulder? No kidding. Okay, so that I stowed that that away in my mind. And then when I was on the path of trying to think about graduate school, I went to see my mentor, who I took a fiction workshop with, a fabulous fiction workshop. He was at the time a world-renowned literary critic named Leslie Fiedler. And um, most people don't know who he is. He was the man who said in one of his books, comic books should be considered literature. And he brought like that part of the culture sort of into the canon of what could be looked at seriously. So I thought if I could get a recommendation from him, I'll get it, I'll get accepted into any graduate school that I want to go to. So I went to him during the office hours and he sat me down and he said, What can I do for you? And I said, Well, I'd like it, I'd like a recommendation uh for grad school. And he said to me, Aren't you working on a book? And I said, Well, yeah, you've seen some of that book. So he said, You want my recommendation? Go somewhere nice and finish your book. He said, If you go to graduate school, they're gonna knit you, and you're gonna have to become conforming to their view of what literature is. But if you're working on something already, find somewhere you like and finish that book. So my friend said, you know, Boulder, and then I mentioned it to my girlfriend, and she said, Oh, one of my best friends from high school is going to college in Boulder. Let me give her a call. So she called her up and she said, Oh, we live in a great big house. We have tons of room. If you want to move here, you guys could crash as long as you'd like until you get set up. And bingo, that's how it happened. That's how I ended up in Boulder.

From Brooklyn To Mountain Life

Ron 10:03

It's meant to be.

Burt Rashbaum 10:04

It was meant to be, yeah. And then, of course, while we were living there, we would take a drive up into the mountains, and that's where I first sort of fell in love with Netherland. And it was like, what kind of town is this? This is this real? Like, this is like like this is really the way this is. And we had friends who had a cabin up here, and they were moving to Lions, which is a little north of Boulder, and they said to us, if you guys want to take over our cabin, it's yours. And so in 1981, I mean it scared me initially because I didn't know how to chop wood. I didn't, you know. How are you gonna be a mountain man, right? How do how do I become a mountain man when I was barely figuring out how to live in Boulder, which is sort of cosmopolitan, but we made the made a leap, and um I it just stuck with me, and that's just be is who I became. And now I I it makes me laugh because I do consider myself on some level a mountain man or a mountain guy. And yet, you know, my I tell people the carousel, you know, I go back to New York City to visit relatives and and friends, but I don't feel at home now unless I'm above 8,000 feet. Ah that's and Netherland, and and Netherland to me, you know, it's in one sense it's a bedroom community because every morning you see all the cars going down the mountain, people going to work. But it I think of it as a town made up of black sheep from their own families, and as well as artists of many kinds, writers, uh glass blowers, you know, artists who work on canvases, um sculptors, uh, and we're all sort of eccentric in a way, and yet we all have found a community of like-minded souls. Yeah, and I wouldn't live anywhere else. So that's my story in a nutshell.

Ron 12:09

Oh, it is, it is a beautiful place. Um, my wife and I, along with our at the time two small children, moved up here in the late 90s. Uh, I say up here, we live in Loveland, so uh around 5,000 feet where we live. Um but as we travel here and there back and forth to Texas to visit family or visit the coasts or or wherever, it's always the air that I appreciate when we come back home. Literally getting off the getting onto the jetway off of the jet there at Denver International Airport. We take a deep breath, even though there's airplane fumes, you know, possibly. But we take a deep breath thinking, oh, we're back home uh because of the low humidity. And uh as you know too, uh, as you get up higher in the mountains, just the crystal clear air and the stars at night, and oh, there's just so many things. We have just loved it here uh over and over. My wife and I just getting into retirement now. We talk about would we want to be anywhere else? Nope, we would not. We would not being a motorcyclist, too. I mean, this is motorcycle heaven for me. I did I did a uh I was telling you a little bit ago, I did a ride uh two or three days ago. It was what was it, 280 miles, something like that, maybe. Um big loop through the mountains. And I think my average speed was 40. And rode again yesterday. That's why I'm a little bit in slow motion yesterday uh from yesterday. I rode well over 300. I think it was 340 miles yesterday, and I still love it, man. I've I've done it so many hundreds and thousands and thousands of miles of being up in the mountains, being on motorcycle or working as a tour guide in Rocky Mountain National Park. It's just magical. And I'd appreciate your opinion on this, Bert. I think part of it for me is the fact that what we're surrounded by is not man-made. It's not, it's it wasn't created by somebody's master plan and a realtor. Um instead, it's these mountain peaks that we look up at knowing that there's a vicious storm going on up there right now with a blizzard, and I'm down here in short sleeves and I'm comfortable, but I'm watching the storm from a distance. There's just so many elements like that, or watching a moose walk down the road, you know, it's things like that. That I guess it's the just the naturalness of it, and hopefully it will always stay that way. Uh, that's what attracts me to this place.

Burt Rashbaum 14:58

Yeah, you know, my wife used to always say, um, and again, she's from New York State, she grew up outside Albany, which is a major city. She would always say that when she's in the woods in the mountains, that's when she's in church.

unknown 15:12

Yeah.

Burt Rashbaum 15:13

And and I totally relate, and and I I completely agree with you. It's uh the mountain peaks, and uh they're never gonna build condominiums on those mountain peaks. That's right right outside my window, you know.

Ron 15:27

Right.

The Carousel’s Origin In Vietnam

Ron 15:29

So, Bert, tell me then the story. Now, there's so many things we could talk about. You are you are a poet, a musician, uh novelist, so many things. We'll we'll maybe circle back to that, but you're a ride operator at the carousel of happiness in Netherlands. I know you've seen a lot and you've experienced a lot just by telling the same story over and over again, but you you're an observer of people. What have you seen about the carousel that has touched hearts?

Burt Rashbaum 16:05

Well, you know, again, we all have our own ways of telling the story, but I'm a storyteller as well. And not I think I might be the only one who works there who has experience in telling stories. So I always start off by saying the first thing I'll say to someone, is this the first time you're seeing our carousel? And I could even though I'm asking that question, I know the answer because I see it in their face or in their eyes as soon as they walk in. And when they say to me, Oh, yes, this is the first time, I'll say, I could tell by your face. And so the carousel is some sort of a, I mean, it's been called a magical place, but it's a safe space where people allow themselves to open up. And when I have the time and the space to connect with someone and encourage that, I do hear incredible stories. And uh, and again, I meet people from all over the world, and I'll hear them talking to their kids or talking to a partner, and I'll say what language you're talking. And every now and then, it's a language I never heard of. So, of course, I want to hear about where they're from. Is this the first time you're ever in Colorado? Is this the first time you're in Netherland? And you know, when they say yes, I of course ask them about where they're from. I always ask them how do you say thank you in your language? And I'll give you one example of something that happened one time. On one wall, Scott, the carver, Scott Harrison, he put up photographs of the two young men he was in Vietnam Vietnam with who did not make it home. And in one sense, on one level, the they are the the reason that the carousel exists. And what happened was he and these two gentlemen met when they were all over there in a language program that they were put in as young Marines. And um Scott at the same time had been sent by his sister in Texas a little music box. So he would play the music box in between the firefights in the jungles out there in Vietnam. And it was the only thing that really calmed him back down. And when he lost his friends in the same battle, he decided for them he was going to, when he came home and at some point when he was together enough, create something that had music as a main component because it helped him so much that would give happiness back to the world, and that's where our name, the carousel of happiness, comes from that story of Scott's. So they're up there on the wall, and and there's a little bit of wordage, and also at the bottom of this, it's on like sort of a frame plaque with the two gentlemen in their marine uniforms, and at the bottom is a picture of Scott. And so, and also he got permission from the families to have the flags that veterans get upon their death, and they're up there too. So, so I will often see people looking at those pictures, and I'll explain what I just explained to you who they are, that story. And so, one time there was a gentleman and his wife, he looked a little bit older than me, and he's reading the wordage, and he's staring at those pictures way longer than someone would normally stare. And so I'm at I'm about to tell him the story, and he pointed to one of the two gentlemen, and he said, I was in boot camp with this guy, and that's where we met, and I went one way and he went the other way, and I never knew what happened to him. We didn't stay in touch, and I didn't know he only lasted a few months, really, you know. So, of course, that moved me, and because he just admitted to me he was a Vietnam vet, I said to him, you know what we say to Vietnam vets, don't you? Because a friend of mine in Buffalo who works with Vietnam vets using music therapy told me this. He said, No, what do you say to Vietnam vets? And I say, I said to him, We don't say thank you for your service, which is what you say to almost any other veteran of any other service. I say we say welcome home. Because you guys were not welcomed home properly. And all of a sudden he teared up and he grabbed me and he just started to weep in my arms. And his wife looked up to me and said, No one has ever said that to him ever, since he's back from the service, back from Vietnam. So we we you know separated from the hug, he wiped his eyes, he thanked me very, very much, and then off they went. And that's just one story of probably thousands. And I I had a kid come in, you know, we see a lot of a lot of disabled. Folks that come in. We have a wheelchair ramp that's got created. So if someone's in a wheelchair, they can roll up onto the carousel platform and they can have as much fun as everybody else. But every now and then I would find uh I would encounter, usually a young kid who's either with their parents or with a caregiver. And they come and they ride the carousel, and sometimes they can't speak. So I had a young kid, like a teenager, and he was in a wheelchair, and in front of him he had a keyboard. So I was like, oh, he's obviously he may be disabled physically, but he knows how to communicate. So he would come in often, and and our only interaction was with our eyes, basically. And so his caregiver would bring him up and strap him around. You know, we have a uh a seatbelt that has to kind of hold a wheelchair onto the frame of where that chair goes. And once the carousel starts, what I see in him, what I saw in him and other similarly disabled kids is the same joy that comes across in their eyes that I see in anybody else. And I think to myself, when they're on that carousel, this kid's not disabled. He's a human kid with a heart, and he's experiencing this joy that is again hard to put into words, and then the right ends. I always say good wave goodbye or pat him on the shoulder. He might give me a nod, and so I see, and a lot of times there are people who because I'll see this more in older folks who because of their lives and their various journeys, they don't share that stuff that's inside them with others, it's locked away, it's protected, and they get on the carousel and it's released. And it's like it's it's I mean, to call it magic, it's the wrong word, really, you know, it's something much deeper and much higher than what someone might call magic. But this thing that Scott created to heal himself, to remember his friends, gets into someone on such a deep level. And I feel privileged when I encounter this. And the other thing that I see over and over again, which was a mystery to me, is every now and then, and it's usually folks who are elder. So it might be people over 60, let's say, or even older, set over 70, they get on the carousel, I tell them the story, I check their seatbelt, the carousel starts, and they weep the whole ride, uncontrollably. All of a sudden, tears are flowing. And at times they're trying to hide their face, you know. But if I catch their eyes, I just put my hands over my heart, you know. And at the end, people will come over, tears are streaming down their face, and they hug me and they thank me, and they say, I've never experienced this. And so, as a poet, that was one of my mysteries. Why are these people weeping? And I would speak to them every now and then. One person might say, I rode the original carousel that this mechanism is from at Salt Air Park in 1948 when I was six years old, or in 1952 or 5061. Actually, the park closed in 58. Um, and so in my mind, they're being brought back to that childhood when they probably went to that carousel with a grandparent or even a parent who are now gone. And so it connects them right away to these early experiences of this pure joy, and they're almost in awe of the fact that this wooden machine is able to evoke that from their hearts. Yeah, and that's I've never I've had a lot of jobs in my life, Ron, and I've never had any kind of job that came close to what I mean. I don't even it's not even a job to me. It's it's it's uh it's a it's something I'm I I participate in. But it's a power, it's a powerful thing, and and I I've again, like I said, I feel privileged to have experienced it over and over and over again. Yeah. Over and yeah.

What Real Truth Feels Like

Ron 27:06

Oh, it is such a beautiful thing. I have a sense of urgency. Maybe that's a good way to put it. I have a sense of urgency for relaying to whoever listens to this podcast that there's hope. That yeah, we are going through a horrific time with wars, with injustice, with starvation, the world, you know, we can look at it one way and just get totally depressed and not want to get out of bed because everything seems to be just falling apart. But if we choose to get out of bed and go and go with an open heart and an open mind to visit, take the initiative to go and visit places such as this. I think you and I talked about it just a little bit before we started recording. What you're going to experience is something that you're not going to experience on Instagram or Facebook, YouTube, or anything else. You're going to experience something real. And with real comes truth, as you described it. So, what what do you mean about the part? I get the real part, but what do you mean about truth?

Burt Rashbaum 28:19

Wow, uh, truth. So in my writing journey, let's say, um uh, you know, I I have like two avenues. Uh I have my poetry and I have my fiction. Um my poetry, my truth is I try to write about things that are very difficult to articulate, but they're part of the human condition, and they're part of the human journey that people are on, if they're aware on any level, that connect to what I call an emotional landscape. And I learned about this phrase when I studied what we're called the Imagist Poets of the 1920s. It was a school of poetry, and um where where where there was a correlation between the human experience and what someone feels inside that reflects from what's outside and their actual true experience. So I try to approach my poetry in a way that gives words to parts of the human experience from grief to love to accomplishment to wonder and the emotions of joy through my words that when someone reads these things, it taps into just like I described at the carousel, it allows them to open up a part of themselves, and the realness of that experience that they have to me reveals a truth, a truth about the human condition, that there is a commonality that again, because of the fractured world we live in, it's often hard to see that. And so in the poetry, I try to connect with someone who I may never know, who reads my words. In my fiction, I tell stories. The carousel, we're all about stories at the carousel. Of course, as I just been saying to you, I tell the story of Scott, I tell the story of the two soldiers who are on the wall. And in my own stories, I have I would I like someone to read my work who may know nothing about what I'm writing about. Like my the the novel I had published last year is about a Jewish immigrant family that emigrates to this country in like 1908 from Hungary and settle in the Lower East Side and then Brooklyn, and their struggles of fitting in, learning a new language, having their names changed uh against their will very often, yeah, as happened when people came to this country through Ellis Island. And I've had people read my tales, and they've never experienced any of the things that I'm writing about. But what the characters go through on an emotional level, connecting with others in the stories, learning about love, learning how to survive grief, even though it's not the kind of situations they've ever experienced, there's a connection right away. It reaches them on this deep level, and to me, that deep level, which is beyond politics, it's beyond personal philosophies, it has to do with being human. And to me, when that gets revealed, it's a truth. I call it truth. And again, it's like I'm in awe that my connection with someone has achieved this. They just spent three bucks, I got a ticket, they wrote it, they wrote a zebra. And then we, you know, and and we have this connection. So the truth is the ability to have a real true connection on a human level that you get nowhere else. And and the fact that I could create this in my own work, and I could be as like an ambassador for Scott's work, and yet achieve the same end with strangers. Strangers. Yeah, and that's the thing. You when when you when you're a writer and you publish, I sell my poetry book at the carousel, I sign it for these folks, they're very happy. I never see these people again. So I don't know if it worked. And I I've sold over a thousand books there, and I think in all those books, three times people have come back and said, Oh, I read your book, it's on my nightstand, and every time I read it, I cry, you know, and but three out of a thousand, I mean, I don't know where these things end up, and but that's the mystery of being a writer as well. You you publish and you hope that what's out there makes that connection and reveals a deep truth of the human condition. Yeah, did that answer your question? It did.

The Impact We Never Get To See

Ron 34:22

Reminded of a movie. Oh, okay. I'm reminded of a movie. Go give me a minute here. Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Of course. Oh, let me think if, and you'll have to correct me if I'm if I'm off here a little bit, but I'm gonna try to tell the story briefly. So, goodbye, Mr. Chips is about a young man who wants to be a teacher, and he does become a teacher as a young man uh at an all-boy school, and he struggles. He can't get through to these kids. Uh, tries and tries and tries, he just can't get through to them until he meets a young lady, it's his first girlfriend, turns out to be the love of his life, and she teaches him about love. About it's more than providing information to these little boys, it's about putting the why behind it, putting your heart behind it, and so forth. Um, tragically, in the story, she's she dies um and at a very early age, before they had kids, and he decides to keep going. He decides to continue to teach, but he's a different teacher, and he has been ever since he met her. He teaches with love and compassion, and these boys not only pay attention and they learn, but they learn to love him, they learn to love other people, and it changes their lives. So the story fast forwards on through as he is aging and the school is changing here and there, and you know, the professors around him, the other professors are talking about, well, Mr. Chips, I don't know, he's getting older, everything, but he's still enthusiastic. We fast forward to the end of the movie, and Mr. Chips is in his on his deathbed. His doctor is there, but also his colleagues are there too, and his eyes are closed. But he hears the conversations that are going on around him. And one of the conversations from one of his colleagues, they say, you know, isn't it a shame that Mr. Chips never had children of his own? Isn't that a shame? Mr. Chips opens his eyes and he says, he heard that. He said, Oh, but sir, you're wrong. I had thousands of children, and they were all boys. And with that, he closes his eyes, and his eyes open again. And here's a tie-in to the carousel, to the somewhere else. He opens his eyes, and there is a line of boys and men and grandpas all coming through and saying, Thank you, Mr. Chips. Thank you. So I guess I relay that message because there are two things. For one thing, there is the section of the carousel that is called the somewhere else, which is a whole subject of its own, which is completely amazing. But it's my personal belief that, like as you mentioned, you or I or anybody else don't really know the impact that you have on other people, not necessarily. But I think someday we will, in the same way that Mr. Chips opened his eyes and saw that, yeah, I did make a difference. I did make a difference. I made a difference to him and to him and to her and so forth. And hopefully, too, we'll get to a place and I'll hope for Scott. He gets to a place, too, where he opens his eyes again, and there's his buddies. And they'll say, Isn't it great what you ended up doing here? Isn't it great? Thanks for that, Scott. You know, so I'll get off my preaching pedestal there, but that's what I think. I that that's that's where I'm at, I guess, spiritually, and that's where I see the future. But that being said, I think too, given the fact that again, we are in such a challenging time right now. We've been in challenging times in the past for sure, but we're definitely in it again now. We have there there has to be loud voices. Yours and mine, Melody's and Scott's have to be loud voices to help people understand that you know what, there's there's real stuff out there. This is real, there's real hope, there's real truth to all of this, and maybe you just need to sit on a little carousel and take a spin around, and maybe you'll get a glimpse of it. That's my hope. That's my hope, Bert. And that's what I have experienced personally from the carousel of happiness. That is just absolutely magical. And uh it serves a big, big purpose, and I think a whole lot of people need to be aware of it.

Burt Rashbaum 39:03

Yeah, you know, what you said and relating to Mr. Chip's story is that after he learns about love from his his girlfriend, and then she dies, and he's able to pass that on for to really generations of boys, and at the end he sees, you know, all the ages that they are, you know, up to ancient grandfathers. Um I believe that once people ride the carousel, and again, I don't speak to everyone. I can't, we get too many people, I can't speak to everyone, but I do believe that the carousel changes. You are changed when you aren't walking off that ride. And we've already had over a million riders there, and so these people are changed, and they go back to where they came from, whether it's another city in this country, whether it's another country on this planet, and they remain changed, and that affects the people they interact with. And to me, it's almost like a wave of energy and love that that we start and they take it with them. And so that to me is part of the the hope that I see that this this little carousel down my street, you know, that's part of the work that it does. That these these animals made out of wood uh transform the way people understand who they are and and how they interact with others. And it's it's so it's so beyond what I ever thought it was when I started working there. And and because I've been doing it so long, my understanding of what it is has only deepened. And and I see, like Scott has said, in the beginning, he was doing this for himself. He was carving these animals for his own healing, and he finally got to a place where it dawned on him that he might be doing something that will have an effect like on the world. Yeah, and it's it's true. I mean, you and I, we never knew each other. You came into the carousel, you met Scott, and now it, you know, part of its magic is part of who you are as well, you know, and it just it just keeps going. It's it's so gigantic in it in its beauty and its mission that it that again I'm just this kid from New York City, and I just feel so privileged to be able to go in there three days a week and and and do my thing.

How To Visit And Final Takeaway

Ron 41:56

Well, as a destination, like I think I mentioned at the very beginning, it's a wonderful motorcycling destination right on the peak to peak highway. If you can visualize what peak to peak actually means, you're on you're right. It is a wonderful, wonderful route, especially on a motorcycle. And I gotta tell you, Bert, there's a part of me that wants to keep Netherland a secret. I want to keep it small, exactly as it is today. I hear you. But here it is, I discovered it nearly 30 years ago. And I'm so glad I did. And I do believe a whole lot of people need to discover it too. They need to discover the town, and most importantly, they need to meet people like you, uh, like Scott and others. I need to get on a um get on a uh carousel and see what changes. Maybe you need a change, and I think a lot of people do. Well, Bert, before we close, man, I again I thank you very, very much for your friendship, our new friendship, and for meeting you and for what you do. Is there anything you'd like to close with for our listeners around the world who happen to be motorcycles looking for hope?

Burt Rashbaum 43:12

Well, uh, I'll say if you come through Netherland, um you'll have a great day because of the beauty of the place and the people you'll encounter. Come into the carousel. Uh if you want it, get a guy that puts a clown nose on. Come on, Monday afternoon, Friday afternoon, and Saturday morning. I'm the only one that does that. And I have a great time with it. Um, and I always say, if you buy my book, I'll sign it for you. I got my poetry book called Of the Carousel, which took me a year to write. And it's about me being the guy in the middle who sees the magic going around him. And we're all about stories, and I have another book there that that I have to, I can't I I have to shamelessly plug that again I referred to earlier. It's based on folklore in my family, but it's about real things. And we have a big plaque in the gift shop that says we're all about stories. And it's sort of my story, but it's been reinvented as a fiction. And if I spend enough time with you, I'll bring you to tears. I'll make you laugh and I'll make you cry. And you won't be able to help it because of where you are, and you will leave there. Again, like Ron, you were just saying, you want to kind of keep Netherland a secret in one sense, but we want to share the secret. And we want to send people away. Get back on your on your motorcycle. And as you drive back into the peak to peak region, you will be transformed. Whether you want it to happen or not, it will happen to you, you know.

Ron 44:57

John Denver was right. You know, the whole Rocky Mountain high, absolutely true.

Burt Rashbaum 45:03

I mean, Scott came from Dallas, I came from Brooklyn. We're all from somewhere else, but we wouldn't live anywhere else, like you were just saying before, you know.

Ron 45:18

It's hard to leave a place like the carousel of happiness and not feel a little bit lighter. Not to leave with a smile on your face. And Bert, I can't thank you enough for sharing your stories, your poetry, and for reminding us that joy isn't something you should ever delay. In the show notes, you'll find ways to learn more about Bert and his novels and his poems. He's a wonderful writer. What a great guy. And whether you're a motorcycle rider who loves the sweeping curves of the Peak to Peak Highway or someone just looking for a little bit of magic in the mountains, Netherland and the carousel of happiness should be your next destination. So, my friends, until next time, go for a ride. Go have fun. And as they say in Netherland, don't delay joy. Peace, my friends. I'll see you out there.