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What was your favorite holiday or other family tradition growing up? I don't know if I have a favorite holiday. Oh you're gonna say Christmas because there were only 800 presents under the tree. Well that's true but you still be honest be honest be honest Christmas is your thing it's absolutely your thing was growing up though. Growing up growing up. I would say my favorite holiday was Christmas when I was with my grandparents so they'd come out here every other Christmas and I loved it when they came out here it was so much fun because my grandmother would bake cookies with me and just because my mom my mom made cookies she made fudge as we all know my mom made fudge which was really her my dad's mom's recipe which is the irony of it is that my mom was really good at it and we think it came from her side but it really came from my dad's mom's side but I loved it when my grandparents came out for Christmas so

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that that made it fun. Holidays were were either at Cherry Hills Country Club or the Denver Athletic Club or rarely at our house let's just say this they were rarely with the family it was either at my grandmother Gladys Hills which was a blast or CC Govins my dad's sister's house in Denver so those were our options and they were you know yeah but yeah I did love Christmas. I have to tell you my dad did a funny thing at Christmas time so the boys my brothers Brad and Dave you know they're like teenagers don't you they don't want anything so he had a friend oh golly I know them just as well as John Russell John Russell worked for Hershield Press in Denver big big publication company and so he my dad would go get 25 crisp $1 bills many of these $20 bills $1 bills I have them still $1 bills okay and he said 25 25 25 ones and he'd have him what do you put that the glue yeah like tablets he had to make tablets out

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of with these $1 bills and that's what he would give us for Christmas is these tablets and I still have one of $1 bills so my dad was always thinking of these crazy he and John Russell John Russell was equally as silly as my dad so they could come up with well they were both Shriners things and you know so it was it wasn't just like well here's a checker they made it unique and different and yeah that was really fun he also one time gave him rules a toilet paper with single ones in it yeah yeah yeah going going to the Hills House I'm gonna jump in a little bit okay so our first Christmas together was probably one of our sophomores in college maybe okay keep going and let me think and so you know somewhere in there anyway you know my family Christmases were always fun but they were underwear yeah you get underwear you got toothbrushes usually got some new clothes you might get a toy or two the best one I ever remember was

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we lived in Houghton I had pretty good new skis Tim's really needed new skis and so we go downstairs much like you guys did and we go in the big room with the tree and lo and behold there's two pairs of skis same brand same colors everything but different sizes and I was just like oh dad got two pairs of skis at Weber Sports just to see which fit Tim's better and so we go over there and we look at the the tags and ones for me and ones for Tim's and I was like over the moon huh you know and then I got a camera right after I when I graduated from college on Christmas and my dad wrapped it up in a box like a sander so I thought it was a sander so we had we did sort of fun or fun sort of stuff but first time at the Hill household the boys were either getting the toilet paper dollar bills or the pads and they're being silly as brothers are brothers are very silly together and so I'm looking around the room and there's all these

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clothing boxes that were like 12 by 14 or 15 or something these long boxes you don't even see anymore and there's like 15 of them stacked tall all wrapped individually you know and the boys got their thing and so there's only one person left that's gonna go through the stack of clothing boxes so this was where the large s that the you girls enjoy to this day and the grandkids enjoy to this day is all because of Nana Hill wasn't because of will and a and it was Nana Hills doing and that led to your mother going absolutely ballistic on Christmas I want to add to that and it's not a holiday but I just want to say something that kind of shows the spirit of my mom and my dad that they would do in college because I was in a store that we had nice events that required you having a long dress well I was tall long dresses hit me you know not very long but there was a place called Lane Bryant had just opened and

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it was for tall people but it was in downtown Denver I wasn't there so my mom and dad would go down to Lane Bryant downtown they would get two or three dresses that they thought I would like they'd put them on the bus to get to Boulder because there was a bus that ran back and forth all the time and so that I could try on one of the dresses and see if there were any that would fit me and frequently if there was more than one they would let me keep more than one you know they weren't wealthy people but they cared and they wanted to make sure we you know we had what we needed and and they wanted to give me something nice so that was I think as funny as putting a dress they did a similar thing with my brother Dave he was at Northwestern and he needed a suit coat and so they bought him a suit coat this is really going to tell you something that's changed is they took it out to dim DIA the airport which back then was called Stapleton they

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could go to the a flight that was going to Chicago because Dave was at Northwestern at the time and they found someone and they gave them the hanging bag with the suit coat and he took it on the plane took it to Chicago Dave met him at the airport and he got a suit coat that way that's how things were done back then as you could do something like that and so that was kind of what my parents but you have to tell because the question was favorite holiday if you don't tell about 4th of July's okay 4th of July's so 4th of July in Boulder we would go down to Folsom Field and they had awesome fireworks and then Fluentgym had a cabin up in Breckenridge and they called it Shelley Blue and so it became this big thing that Fluentgym would have this monster party on 4th of July and we would go by this time I think we were in college and so your mom and I would go up there and Tim's and Craig and Bitsy everybody that was around would show up

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and then Uncle Jim Karris you know a Christmas time he made daqueries and then 4th of July it was Mint Juleps and so we would all drink Mint Juleps regardless of how old you were and then eventually and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and eventually Uncle Jim would put on the stars and stripes pass out little flags and we would all march around a couple times well eventually he and my dad would get so drunk they couldn't even eat dinner so they would remember food they would suddenly develop terrible problems and they would have to head to bed and then we would have hamburgers or something but yeah we were all pretty much wasted right even dead it was a lot of fun it was a lot of fun yeah because he can make some serious mint juleps yeah so that's kind of a lost art now I think Craig still does it once in a while I think so too yeah I loved it when we got to go to Cherry Hills Country Club and

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lay on the grass and watch the fireworks that was so much fun that was a great opportunity we always had sparklers at our house yeah and black no black cats but the snakes no we did snakes bombs those called M80s M80s we were not allowed to have anyone boom we blew up a lot of things in the incinerator oh yeah the incinerators we'll talk about that too we'll hold on to this incinerator but okay yep what were Christmases like for you as a child yes we are talked about that I added that one to the we've already gone there what were your siblings like growing up were you close to them I had the benefit of being very close in age Brad just barely two years older than I am or not even that and Dave three years so yes we were close I was closer to Brad than Dave Dave was kind of in his own world imagine that but yeah I mean we

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were close we we hung out together really fun when our first neighborhood on East Virginia you know we just we played outside we just did things together it was just a natural thing to you know your playmate was your sibling and played army men with them built snow forts that was always so much fun and the winners to build snow forts in the yard so yeah I would say I was close I have a good memory of Dave when he's in high school and he's wanting to go to a party and he needs his shirts ironed and so he would pay me ten cents a shirt to iron his shirt before actually it wasn't a party would be a date to iron his shirt before he'd go out on a date but yeah Brad and I I think we're closer than Dave but we were we were pretty close-knit family we had a lot of fun together on our road trips with our parents and yeah and I went to I was lugged to every Boy Scout event you know I could have probably recited all the

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things you need to do for a Boy Scout and the oath and yeah it was a lot of fun growing up I'm glad we were close in age we were pretty close in age 53 and 55 and so we did yeah we played a lot together as little kids and like little boys there was constantly battles and fights to some degree and Timbs was an instigator and I was much physically bigger so as always Jeff don't pick on your little brother you're so much bigger well he just enjoyed tormenting me but a funny sidelight to this is my mom insisted on dressing as alike and I've told some of my friends this and they thought I was not telling a true story and I start showing them all these pictures of us dressed identically and I was like so I cannot match anybody and yet you do who do I match me and Charlie I match Charlie occasionally we have two coats that are the same and you and I have one thing that's the same and we never wear them

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together so it's interesting my mom even though my brothers were pretty close yes you never match a matchy 1952 1953 and they never were matching clothes yeah my mom had this thing about matching shirts well all these back-to-school pictures we match match match match match I think my brother hates it as much as I did so we're pretty close the only time we weren't so close is after my parents died and I was the personal rep and my mother sort of set the stage for anarchy a little bit about not assigning things so we went through kind of a rough patch went through a rough patch - when my mom really got on his case and being a little hothead he rejected her for what 10 or 12 years yep I was lucky Jeff my brothers and we did a lot of things with them in some stuff with your brothers went to Yellowstone together we did a number of ski trips together so we had a lot of fun activities with them and that was really

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nice it was nice that yeah I enjoyed your brothers is there you know they kind of like me was still yeah kind of front very friendly yeah yeah but my brother is a little bit of a he's always a tiger as a little kid the next-door neighbor Mexican lady called him she called him the little blonde bowl in Spanish he had the nickname not you not me no he was to soro blanco or something like that right El Toro Blanco well to soro Blanco was what they call yeah Italian yeah that's what they called him when he was like one so yep so we're pretty close now we're pretty close again I would say that's nice because we're we didn't get close to any of our my cousins the Fowler cousins we're not close with there's three of my never met Sam the youngest brother he had a slug of them there's a couple of them I never met a couple of them are dead my older uncles three kids I never met them the only two I know were Chris Fowler and

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Drew Fowler and somehow my mom didn't like any of the Fowlers really that much other than Chris and Drew and Susanna Knox so kind of missed the boat so we try not to have you guys miss the boat with your cousins [BLANK_AUDIO]