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“I started learning the guitar at about 18, 19 years old, I just liked the sound of it. I don’t read music, I just pick it up, use tablature and play it by ear. If you read music, you actually know what the notes are and with tablature, you just need to know the string and the fret. I just play stuff that I hear that I like. I just like the sound of it, but I’m not a great guitar player. It’s just something to do for fun.

“I like Neil Young and music from that time period. For newer stuff, I like Jack Johnson and that kind of style. There’s not a lot of really new stuff that I like. I’ve also decided that I’m old enough now that I like big band stuff and Frank Sinatra, stuff that I didn’t like when I was younger. Now I like it and I can appreciate it more.

“I used to work at the library, but I haven’t worked there for a couple years. Now I’m working at the hospital, doing IT and computer repair. There are four people in the department, and we mostly repair computers. At the library, people would have problems and need help troubleshooting on computers, and I helped them just because I could, I guess. I liked it, so I started taking classes a long time ago, and I did Cisco for networking and A+ for computer repair. I just kept working with it, and I ended up at the hospital. It’s a lot of fun. They’re really, really busy because they have a lot of computers and they’re moving more toward things being computerized everywhere. It’s working all the time and it’s challenging, but it’s a lot of fun because you’re learning new things all the time. Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about the clinical stuff, it’s mostly just dealing with people’s work spaces. We do a little bit with the clinical side, but I’m glad I don’t have to handle any serious equipment and get it up and running.

“We moved to Craig from Oklahoma in 1976 when I was a kid. I was in high school and I’ve been here ever since. It’s funny because I used to not like it in Craig, and I thought it was awful and miserable and boring. Now I really like it because the more you get and do around here the better, like in the winter, sledding or cross-country skiing. It’s turned from a small town that was booming to a nice family town. Back then it was kind of a Wild West town, and being a kid in high school there was a lot going on with oil workers and miners. It was kind of crazy, and then it got like a ghost town in the ’80s and then it finally started getting back to a community and people started moving here with their families.

“I’m working with Black Mountain Theatre group right now, they’re doing another play. I’m glad to see them doing it because we’ve done several, but we get really burnt out and it’s nice to have people be interested in it. I used to be the president of it, and when I was working at the library, a woman named Linda Putnam had always been involved in theater, and she directed our first play, “Something’s Afoot.” It was a mystery and a musical and we did it right out of the gate, and it was a lot of fun. She’s moved away since then. Randy Looper is our president now, and he’s talked with John Bolton at the high school about doing some children’s theater. As long as people are interested, we’ll keep it going. Every show we’ve done has been different.

“I don’t really like to get onstage, myself. I’d rather be working in the background. I like painting sets and things like that, using my own artistic tendencies. I also like helping with the advertising and the costumes. There are so many people here who want to work backstage, and it’s harder to get actors and much harder to get men than it is to get women. It’s hard to do big plays because people are always working and have busy schedules. It’s always a challenge to get enough people to do a play in a small town.”