Carol Cail

It was dark, stormy, and night, and if Maxey had but known, she never would have gone to Betty Allbright's house in northwestern Boulder to interview the candidate for city councilmember at large.

But here Maxey sat, on a none-too-clean, olive-colored couch in a poorly lighted living room that smelled like sour towels, her notepad open and waiting for some quote worth the ink.

"The present council isn't worth beans," Betty said, picking at a loose thread on the arm of her brown easy chair. "They don't do a damn thing and when they do it's the worst thing they could have done."

Maxey jotted this down, frowned at it, and decided to sort it out later.

". . . got to change. The little guy needs a voice," Betty was saying.

Betty herself was not little. She was tall, big-boned, with an alto voice which easily overrode the thunder building on the horizon. Her brown hair had been chopped short in the front and shaved in back, definitely more utilitarian than punk. She wore a housedress and an apron of two wildly clashing patterns, and open-toed canvas shoes that hadn't come that way. Her sixty-some years had apparently not been easy, for all the lines in her face were of the frown variety.

But it wasn't her appearance that made the worst impression. It was her intensity. While she talked, she glared at Maxey as if daring her to contradict. Betty obviously would not suffer a fool gladly and expected fools at every turn.