{"id":2451993,"date":"2019-12-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=317294"},"modified":"2019-12-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T07:00:00","slug":"hippie-chick-jill-sheeley-looks-back-in-new-aspen-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/hippie-chick-jill-sheeley-looks-back-in-new-aspen-memoir\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hippie Chick\u2019 Jill Sheeley looks back in new Aspen memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Jill and Don Sheeley outside the Agate Lodge, circa 1975. Jill Sheeley’s new memoir “Those Were the Days” recounts her experiences in Aspen in the ’70s.<\/strong>
Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Jill Sheeley had dreamed of coming to live in Aspen since her childhood in Illinois, when she saw the Aspen-filmed movie \u201cLittle Skier\u2019s Big Day.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

She made it here for a visit as a high school senior in 1968, then entered the University of Denver that fall, soon to be hitchhiking up to Aspen for ski trips. When she finished school, she settled here and found herself in the midst of the town\u2019s ski bum heyday.<\/p>\n

Sheeley has been in Aspen ever since, best known these days as a children\u2019s book author<\/a>, writing instructor and as the force behind the Fraser Writing Contest for local elementary school kids. But her latest release is for grown-ups. \u201cThose Were the Days: Memories of a Hippie Chick\u201d is a fond and episodic memoir of her charmed days during the ski town\u2019s freewheeling 1970s.<\/p>\n

She calls it \u201ca story about the town of Aspen and how she wooed me, then charmed me and then wove me into her fabric.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book joyfully recounts the ski bum life, juggling service industry jobs at iconic local spots like Gretl\u2019s, Gwyn\u2019s and the Wienerstube, living in the far reaches of Lenado when it was a drop-out Shangri-La, crashing in the hippie haven of the Agate Lodge, the colorful on-mountain scene of the era and its ski gangs (Sheeley was a member of the \u201cPowder Sluts\u201d).<\/p>\n

She also has chapters devoted to her experiences of defining Aspen moments, from the anxiety during the Vietnam War draft and the terror after Ted Bundy\u2019s courthouse escape, to the rich local music scene and crossing paths with John Denver, to Spider Sabich being shot and killed by the singer and actress Claudine Longet (Sheeley was a nanny for Longet\u2019s children).<\/p>\n

Sheeley is releasing \u201cThose Were the Days\u201d with a book launch party Tuesday evening at the Mountain Chalet, where she\u2019s planning more than the standard signing and talk. Sheeley will be inviting people who lived through the \u201970s in Aspen to tell their own stories, and expects some who\u2019ve moved away to come back for the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it would be fun to throw a big party,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sheeley has been writing books in Aspen for 40 years now, going back to the now-classic children\u2019s book \u201cChristmas in Aspen\u201d in 1980 and continuing with the popular \u201cFraser the Yellow Dog\u201d series.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose Were the Days\u201d is a departure for the author, who along with children\u2019s titles has published cookbooks and the young adult novel \u201cThe Blue Bottle,\u201d though she renders Aspen\u2019s notorious sex, drugs and skiing era in mostly PG-13 fashion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do have a daughter and grandson and son-in-law,\u201d Sheeley said with a laugh of the lightly sanitized tales in the book. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to tell all and I didn\u2019t want to make anybody angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her inspiration for the book came during a trip to Gulf Island, near Vancouver, when she came across a light-hearted memoir by a local about settling there in the \u201970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lightbulb went off and I said, \u2018I need to do something like this,\u2019\u201d Sheeley recalled.<\/p>\n

She started taking notes, conjuring the old days and favorite stories, including her courtship with the charming Snowmass ski patroller and Ruedi sailor Don Sheeley<\/a>, which began a 48-year partnership and and a long marriage.<\/p>\n

When Don died in 2017, at 68, the manuscript became a joyful refuge from her grief.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt brought back all these fun memories,\u201d she said. \u201cIt helped with my sadness. It was cathartic when I thought about the hippie days, his long hair and how we evolved together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don had read and loved the first few chapters before he died, Sheeley recalled.<\/p>\n

As she attempted to piece together her early days in Aspen, Sheeley made charts of the years to keep her memories straight and called many old friends she hadn\u2019t seen and talked to in years to jog her memories and reminisce.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was amazing to connect with all these people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Sheeley is also remarkably uninfected by the bitterness so common among longtime Aspenites who\u2019ve seen the town evolve and commercialize since those days.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe can deal with change,\u201d said Marjorie DeLuca, Sheeley\u2019s longtime editor and publisher at Carbondale-based AGS Publishing. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t like it any better than anybody else, but she\u2019s not someone who is going to spend her life grousing about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The grousing in the book is limited to a tongue-in-cheek two-page section listing some of the trappings of contemporary Aspen that Sheeley and her former hippie cohort didn\u2019t have to contend with (paid parking, facelifts, leash laws and ski helmets make the list).<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jill and Don Sheeley outside the Agate Lodge, circa 1975. Jill Sheeley’s new memoir “Those Were the Days” recounts her experiences in Aspen in the ’70s.Courtesy photo Jill Sheeley had dreamed of coming to live in Aspen since her childhood in Illinois, when she saw the Aspen-filmed movie \u201cLittle Skier\u2019s Big Day.\u201d She made it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2451993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 03:23:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2451993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2451993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2451993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2451993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}