Beyond the Lasater property line, the land is not faring so well. Smaller farms and ranches in the area have been disappearing for years. A population loss that began in the 1950s has recently slowed, but too late. Many small towns have become virtual ghost towns. In the little commercial district of Matheson, along a dirt road named Broadway, the feed store, the general store, and a repair shop have all been abandoned. The whitewashed buildings have quaint, fading signs, and stand empty. The large, brick elementary school that Dale Lasater attended — built at the turn of the century, its architecture full of American optimism — is now used by a local rancher to store grain.
Before taking over the family ranch, Dale Lasater spent a year in Argentina as a Fulbright scholar, ran a feedlot company in Kansas, and managed cattle ranches in Texas, Florida, and New Mexico. He has come to believe that our industrialized system of cattle production cannot be sustained. Rising grain prices may someday hit ranchers and feedlots hard. More importantly, Lasater finds it hard to justify feeding millions of tons of precious grain to American cattle while elsewhere in the world millions of people starve. He respects the decision to become a vegetarian, but has little tolerance for the air of moral superiority that often accompanies it. Growing up on the prairie gave him a view of Mother Nature that is somewhat different from the Disney version. Cattle that are not eaten by people, that are simply allowed to grow old and weak, still get eaten — by coyotes and turkey buzzards, and it’s not a pretty sight.
Dale Lasater recently set up a company to sell organic, free-range, grass-fed beef. None of the cattle used in Lasater Grasslands Beef spent any time at a feedlot. The meat is much lower in fat than grain-fed beef, and has a much stronger, more distinctive flavor. Lasater says that most Americans have forgotten what real beef tastes like. Argentine beef is considered a gourmet item, served at expensive restaurants, and almost all of the cattle in Argentina are grass-fed. Recent findings that grass-fed cattle may be less likely to spread E. coli 0157:H7 have strengthened Lasater’s determination to follow a different path. Along with a number of other innovative ranchers in Colorado, he is trying to raise cattle in a way that does not harm consumers or the land. Hank was a dear friend of his, in many ways a kindred spirit. Lasater doesn’t think that his little company will revolutionize the American beef industry; but it’s a start.
Sixty miles away, on South Nevada Avenue in Colorado Springs, Rich Conway helps run a family business that’s also bucking the tide. Conway’s Red Top Restaurant occupies a modest brick building on a street full of old western motels, the kind with animated neon Indian chiefs on their signs, the kind where the U in the 4-U Motel is a golden horseshoe. Rich Conway’s been through a lot. He’s had a motorcycle accident and a bad car accident, later slipped on some ice and broke his back. Now in his early fifties, Conway walks slowly with a cane, but has a handsome, weathered face, a Zen-like calm and a tough, independent streak that keeps him going, against the odds. He’s a survivor. When I asked why the Conway family provides health insurance to all the full-time workers at the restaurant, he smiled politely, as though the answer was pretty obvious, and said, “We want to have healthy employees.”
Rich Conway’s parents started working at the Red Top not long after it opened in 1944 and bought the restaurant in 1961. He grew up working there, along with his nine brothers and sisters. Conway’s Red Top — with a little spinning top on its yellow sign — became a local favorite, thanks to its large, oval hamburgers, homemade fries, and friendly atmosphere. The restaurant continued to thrive in the 1970s, despite an invasion by national fast food chains that landed up and down South Nevada. But Conway’s almost closed in the early 1980s, after the death of Rich’s father. The restaurant’s local suppliers helped keep it afloat until new financing could be arranged, a story whose details bring to mind It’s a Wonderful Life. Conway’s Red Top now has four locations in Colorado Springs. Rich Conway was president of the family business until 1999; his younger brother Jim now has that job. Their brother Dan is the finance director, their sister Mary Kaye is the marketing director; another brother, Mike, is the operations manager; another sister, Patty Jo, is an assistant manager — and many of the thirty-seven Conways in the next generation work at various Red Top restaurants. The family has an intense, personal commitment to their work, and it shows. According to food critics Jane and Michael Stern, Conway’s Red Top sells some of the best hamburgers in the United States.
At the Conway’s on South Nevada, hamburger patties are still formed every day by hand, using fresh, not frozen, ground beef. The meat is obtained from GNC Packing, a small, independent processor in Colorado Springs. The buns come from a bakery in Pueblo. Two hundred pounds of potatoes are peeled every morning in the kitchen and then sliced with an old crank-operated contraption. The burgers and fries are made to order by cooks who earn $10 an hour. They wear baseball caps that say “Conway’s Red Top: One’s a Meal.” The workers are not told what to do by fancy computer software, there’s take-out but no drive-through, and the food is only slightly more expensive than what’s served in the half-empty Wendy’s across the street. One day I met a customer at Conway’s who has regularly been having lunch there for fifty years.
The Conway family is now debating how to expand the business without compromising the values responsible for its success. Opening new restaurants could provide financial opportunities for the dozens of Conway offspring, but could also involve a good deal of risk. The timing may be right, however, for a few more Red Tops to open. As the rest of Colorado grows more bland and homogenous, Colorado Springs seems to be getting more independent and open-minded. The quirkiness of the downtown may indeed overcome the uniformity of the outlying sprawl.
In the 1999 Colorado Springs mayoral race, Mary Lou Makepeace — a single mother with a fine surname for consensus-building — was elected to a second term, soundly defeating a right-wing candidate backed by Focus on the Family. Mayor Makepeace had helped persuade the voters of Colorado Springs, perhaps the nation’s most Republican city, to vote for a tax increase. The additional revenue was used to protect open land from development. She has also spearheaded new investment in public parks. And she has helped launch the redevelopment of fifty-eight acres of land near the downtown business district, an area that was once a thriving neighborhood but has been largely abandoned for years. The project embraces the goals of the “new urbanism,” a movement opposed to mindless sprawl, combining residential buildings with commercial and retail space in a way that encourages walking and discourages driving. The aim of the Lowell Neighborhood is not to get rid of cars, says architect Morey Bean, but to put them in their proper place: preferably out of sight in underground parking lots.
It may be tempting to dismiss Conway’s Red Top as a holdover from an earlier era, a business whose low-tech methods are quaint but obsolete. And yet one of America’s most profitable fast food chains operates much like Conway’s. In 1948, the year that the McDonald brothers introduced the Speedee Service System, Harry and Esther Snyder opened their first In-N-Out Burger restaurant on the road between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. It was the nation’s first drive-through hamburger stand. Today there are about 150 In-N-Outs in California and Nevada, generating more than $150 million in annual revenues. Harry Snyder died in 1976 — but at the age of eighty, Esther still serves as president of the family-owned company. The Snyders have declined countless offers to sell the chain, refuse to franchise it, and have succeeded by rejecting just about everything the rest of the fast food industry has done.