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Pearl Pass Part Two

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Bill 2 comments

North Side to Summit

In Part 1 I discussed the history of Pearl Pass and my family connection. I also covered the four wheel drive experience travelers have on the pass. I have been rambling around the Rocky Mountains most of my life. There is a lot of good country here. I am fortunate to have spent time in some of the Rockies from New Mexico to Alberta.

Some of the best pieces of mountain country are the Elk Mountains. I have not spent much time there because of Aspen. A Western Colorado native, for many years I harbored a prejudice against ski area development. Aspen is the ski town that started the Twentieth Century Gold Rush, this time mining tourist pockets. The place is just too rich for a small town boy. Over time I lost my bias, but still tended to avoid the Aspen area. I have never been to the Maroon Bells.

Living along the Front Range influenced not visiting the Roaring Fork Valley as it is a four hour drive to Aspen from Denver. Rocky Mountain National Park and the Collegiate Peaks are a lot closer. Recapturing my interest in my family history has drawn me to Pearl Pass. If Grandmother Pearl could drive a wagon over the pass in 1887, I should do it as well.

Pearl Pass has seen no change in the last 130 years. Between Aspen and Ashcroft the road is paved and there is development, but once on the four wheel drive road it is as it was. It goes between the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness and the Maroon Bells Snowmass Wilderness. Together, they harbor the largest cluster of 14,000 foot high peaks in North America.

Sandstone

That huge area of high mountain wilderness means wild. Pearl Pass is one of the wildest places I have ever visited. Up high, what you see is almost all above timberline. To the east, the mountains are granite, what I am familiar with in Colorado. To the west is sandstone. Layered sandstone, capped with basalt.

To me, that layered rock seems wild, out of place. It is gray, with a hint of red. When I see sandstone I expect red or tan. The view is so striking and beautiful I am at a loss for words. I have been trying for days to come up with a description that matches what I saw. The pictures will give you an idea, but cannot portray the impact of so much wild space with little human influence.

One reason for the view is because the Elk Mountains are west of the central Colorado Mountains and get more moisture. The glacial cirques are huge, creating a series of basins surrounded by many high peaks 13,000- feet or higher. The pass itself is 12,700 feet high, surpassed by Mosquito Pass for example, but unsurpassed in sheer majesty.

I am now committed to more exploration of the Elk Mountains. There are Taylor and Schofield Passes that are four wheel drive accessible. A winter drive to the Maroon Bells is on my list. I may even break down and get out and walk. My backpacking days are over, but there are lots of day hikes. Lots of people on the trails, but most of them are nice people. The high passes are for solitude.

Posted in Colorado Mountains, Family History, Four Wheeling, My Story, Stories

Pearl Pass Part One

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

Road to Ashcroft

On Wednesday, September 3, I drove over Pearl Pass. Pearl is one of those four wheeling trips that have been on my list for a long time. My grandmother, Pearl Willits Shanks, drove a team and wagon over the pass when the Willits family moved from north Texas to Colorado in 1887. Pearl was 12 when she drove over the pass. She may have been a Texas girl before Pearl Pass, but she was a mountain girl after that.

The road was built as a toll road in the early 1880’s from the railhead in Crested Butte to the newly discovered silver mining area in Aspen. It was in use until the railroads came to Aspen in the late 1880’s. The main use was hauling coal from mines at Crested Butte to Aspen.

Today the road is much like it was in the nineteenth century. From the start of the four wheel drive portion until it drops into the valley on the Crested Butte side it has no dirt, just rock.

The Bad Ledge

Fist sized rocks, baby head sized rocks, rock ledges, big rocks in narrow places, and big rocks in the middle of the road. One can grow tired of rock.

It is also narrow, made for wagons a long time ago. There is no room for error. In reading about the pass, most of the reports involving trouble were where a vehicle got too far to the side. When that happens, there better be good help available, because it is a long way to the bottom if the vehicle rolls over.

I was able to drive over all those rocks with no real damage to my Toyota Tacoma other than losing a mudflap. The forest ranger had suggested a Jeep Rubicon. I find my Toyota does just fine, although I may add a limited slip differential someday.

The Road and a View

At the Summit

This is probably the most difficult road I have driven. Steep, narrow, and did I mention rocky? I will do it again. The history is important to me, the story of my family. I spent the afternoon on that road marveling that a 12 year old girl from flat Texas could marshal the courage to drive a wagon over that hill.

I don’t know how long the entire trip from Crested Butte to Ashcroft, 10 miles from Aspen, took the Willits family. I do know that they misjudged the time it would take to get over the highest part and did not get off the hill into Ashcroft until 11:00 PM.

That road is scary enough in daylight. At night? It is good that horses are better at seeing at night than we are. Once I got down into the timber on the Crested Butte side, the alternating sunlight and shadow made it hard to see any serious obstacles. I can just imagine what Pearl was feeling.

I have given you some history and road condition information about Pearl Pass. My next piece will be about the other big attractions. The Elk Mountains that the pass traverses are some of the most spectacular and geologically unique mountains in Colorado. Next time.

Posted in Colorado History, Colorado Mountains, Family History, Four Wheeling, Memoirs, My Story

Four Wheeling for 65 Years

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

Camping with my Nissan 4x4 in the Maze District

Camping with my Nissan 4×4 in the Maze District

My first four wheeling memory is from deer hunting season somewhere in the early 1950’s. We were staying at a neighbor’s ranch near Douglas Pass with a large party. We went up a creek in a WWII surplus Jeep. There must have been eight or ten people on and in that Jeep. We got up high on a rough road and a front axle broke. I was too young to know much of what was going on, but I did know the Jeep was broken and we were a long way from the ranch. A couple of the men were pretty handy and managed to pull the broken axle with a Crescent wrench and a screwdriver, all the tools they had. My father was impressed and we made it back to the ranch.

Other four wheeling trips were to what is now Canyonlands National Park. I don’t remember whose Jeep we were in, but we four wheeled over Elephant Hill into Chesler Park. The Elephant Hill road is still open, but Chesler Park was closed to vehicles many years ago. My father didn’t have a four wheel drive in those years, but we went places in our 1953 Chevrolet pickup that are considered four wheel drive only these days. Many of the roads were to fishing areas on Grand Mesa.

1953 Chevy

There just were not many four wheel drive vehicles in those days, so people made do. In the Bookcliffs area, famous for slick shale roads, there were many hills with a pile of rocks at the bottom of the grade. People stopped, loaded the rocks into the bed of the two wheel drive pickup for weight, and climbed the hill and went where they wanted to go, and unloaded the rocks on the way out.

WWII and Modern Jeeps

Army surplus Jeeps became fairly common in the 1950’s, but they were fairly primitive. 35 miles per hour was about what they would do on the highway unless the owner added a Warn overdrive. They also broke a lot. I remember walking home from across the river from Fruita when the steering linkage fell apart on a surplus Jeep.

Later, in the 1970’s, four wheel drive vehicles became more common. New and modernized Jeeps, International Scouts, Broncos, Blazers, and four wheel drive pickups became fairly common. My father had two Scouts, an early Jeep Cherokee; and his first four wheeler, a 50’s Jeep wagon with a Chevy small block V8.

The first Scout got us into trouble on Elephant Hill. We were coming out after dark and as we got to the top of the hill, bouncing over the slickrock, the engine quit. It would not start, so we walked the four miles or so to the Canyonlands Resort. At that time the owner flew tourists over the canyon country, ran the resort, and flew the occasional polygamist away from the law. We waited for him to finish an enormous plate of venison and biscuits, got into his big Ford ¾ ton pickup, and went to the Scout. He towed the Scout about 50 feet and it started. The carburetor float must have stuck and the bouncing knocked it loose.

When I started buying four wheelers I got Japanese pickups. They cost less, are reliable and capable, and after all, a feller needs a truck. I just don’t like buying lots of gas for a truck. My current ride is a 2009 Toyota Tacoma 4 cylinder standard cab. Toyotas have grown, it barely fits in our new 20 foot garage.

My Taco

There are two basic types of four wheelers. There are those who four wheel to go to interesting places that require four wheel drive, and those who enjoy the sport of going to difficult places. There is overlap, but those lifted and modified vehicles are for hard core wheeling and showing off. I have a four wheel drive pickup to go places. My Tacoma is stock.

Southeastern Utah is a favorite destination for both types of four wheelers. The Moab Rally every spring brings hardcore rock crawlers from all over the country. There is so much to explore that is accessible because the uranium boom of the 1950’s brought about much road building into areas that had been horseback only.

My favorite area is the Maze District in Canyonlands National Park. 70 miles of dirt road to the ranger station, then many more miles of four wheel drive to places like the Doll House, which has access to the Colorado River just below the confluence with the Green.

This summer seems to be devoted to going over passes. I won’t name them all, but the next one is Pearl Pass. My 12 year old grandmother drove a team and wagon over that pass in 1887. I am a bit older and my team is motorized.

Posted in Four Wheeling, Memoirs, My Story

Cancer

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

The Fault in Our Stars

Carol and I went to the movies! We don’t do that a lot; we usually watch them at home. This one, however, drew me to the theater and I drug Carol along. “The Fault in our Stars”‘ is a romance and story about cancer and dying young. I rate movies by how much I find myself thinking about them. I am still thinking about this one days later.

It has a fine story, good directing and photography, and a great cast. Shailene Woodley has the main role. A reviewer said she is as lovely as a June day, and the woman can act. The other cast members are good, but they are playing backup.

Two teens with cancer meet at a support group, and they fall in love. The power of the movie is in exploring how a terminal illness forces one to explore meaning, pain, death, and love in an intensely personal way. Gus and Hazel are bright and funny as they confront the tragedy in their young lives.

The movie is a tearjerker, a sick flick, sentimental, and somewhat too right. With that, it is honest, fun, sad, and lovely. If you can’t get to the theater, put it in your queue. I doubt if I will read the book.

The movie has more significance for me because I lost my mother to cancer when I was a junior in high school. She was stricken with ovarian cancer at menopause. Initially diagnosed as an ulcer because of her abdominal pain, our family doctor missed the cancer because he was dealing with a paranoid psychosis.

By the time my parents realized what was wrong and sought out the best cancer doctor in Grand Junction, it was too late. Given the state of cancer treatment in the 1950’s, it was probably too late anyway. The standard routine ensued, surgery, radiation, some primitive chemotherapy, and over a year of debility, pain, and wasting.

My family did not deal with cancer as well as Gus, Hazel, and their families. Our strategy was denial. Just act like nothing is wrong. The elephant is rotting in the corner of the room, but ignore it. I would come home from school, go into the bedroom where she lay wasting away, give a upbeat account of my day, and stay away.

It took well over a year for her to die. The day she died, my father called me out of an assembly at school. I had to walk from the front of the auditorium to the exit with everyone’s eyes on me. I went numb. I stayed numb. No conversations about anything. The only genuine expression of sympathetic came from the football coach. I am so grateful for what he said, more than fifty years later.

I floundered. I listened to jazz, Tchaikovsky’s Sixth, and read existentialists. I flunked trigonometry my senior year, explored religion (didn’t work), flunked out of the University of Colorado, tried Mesa College, drank a lot, and joined the Army. Time does heal, and the Army gave me some sense of purpose while I grew up.

I didn’t deal with the loss of my mother until I saw “Brian’s Song” in 1971. Watching that movie, about Brian Piccolo and his great friend Gayle Sayers, the floodgates opened up. I did not cry when my mother died, I was shut down emotionally. Years later, I cried. What a release. I mourned her loss for the first time. The lesson: deal with the feelings when it is happening. The more painful the feelings are the more important it is. Talk about it. That is what happened in “The Fault in our Stars”. It did not happen in my life and I paid for it for years.

Posted in Cancer, Movies and TV, My Story, Pain

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Bill 2 comments

I chose this title because Kermit and I are kindred spirits. I went through most of my life thinking I must be green or something because things just did not go as well for me as for others. An ADD diagnosis and treatment has made my life easier. Poor Kermit, however, is still green.

I do try to be green in the other sense of the word. I am something of an environmentalist. I give money, feel self-righteous about environmental issues, write about issues, and live a typical American consumer life.

Note: the American consumer life is not very green. Two people, two cars. We are so committed to two cars we are replacing our one car garage (with no room for a car) with a big two car garage with room for two cars, three bicycles, workbench, emergency generator, power lawn mower, and all the tools.

You know the formula for the number of bicycles: n+1. N being the number of bicycles you currently have. That is the American consumer way. Spend to the end. When I was growing up in Fruita, I thought we were pretty well off. Car (even if it was a Nash), travel trailer, two week vacation and several weekend jaunts every year, a good TV, a remodeled kitchen, and all our needs met. The closets were not jammed with clothes, we didn’t get ten catalogs in the mail every week, the furniture and carpets were worn, and the garage had a dirt floor.

The consumer society was in operation in the decades after the war, but it has drastically accelerated in the last thirty years or so. I am sitting in Starbucks with my $4.00 cup of coffee looking at the Mercedes SUV’s parked side by side. The customers are served by well-educated Millennials glad to have a job in the service sector so they can pay their rent.

Most current middle class families are two income families struggling to support lifestyles centered on spending. Cars, computers, smartphones, iPads (I’m writing this on one), Italian granite countertops, 30 cubic foot refrigerators, Viking ranges, 52″ TV’s in several rooms, It goes on and on. This debt-ridden opulence is in contrast with the debt-ridden Millenials in the service sector and the millions trapped in poverty.

There is too much income disparity and entirely too much wasteful consumption. The consumption, fueled by all the demand created by sophisticated marketing, is socially and environmentally harmful. I look around, and I am part of the problem. As the Buddhists say I am trapped on the wheel of desire. The gasoline I burn in my 4×4 comes from Alberta tar sands. The cheap natural gas heating my home is produced by fracking. Most of our food is produced hundreds or thousands of miles away.

We try. We recycle, compost, use drip irrigation, have a small lawn, and a small house by current standards. We just upgraded our attic insulation to R50. We are adding LED light bulbs regularly. We have to avoid fluorescent bulbs as Carol is sensitive to the UV light they emit.

We are buying more organic produce and dairy products. We buy meat from grass fed livestock raised using sustainable methods, and it’s local. We are cooking more at home and when we do go out, we are picky about the restaurants we visit.

Are we green? Not so much. We are working at it, and we may someday be as green as Kermit.

Posted in Energy Policy, Environment, Geology, Memoirs

Kodel’s Canyon

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

Kodel’s Canyon

In the late 1950’s, some friends and I liked to go to Kodel’s Canyon. The canyon is in the Colorado National Monument about five miles from Fruita. We would get a ride from a parent and with our .22 rifles, hike on the relatively flat desert area between the Colorado River and the National Monument, laying waste to any number of unsuspecting rocks with our .22’s.

Sometimes we would climb over the Park boundary fence and up into the canyon. It is the first canyon west of Fruita Canyon, where Rim Rock Drive climbs, and the scenery is as spectacular as the rest of the National Monument, but at the time was seldom visited. Carrying firearms into the National Park and firing them was illegal, but we never worried about getting caught. No one went there but the local kids.

The canyon has the sheer sandstone cliffs the Monument is famous for, but the lower end is black Precambrian granite, schist, and gneiss, black and weathered into narrow cracks and rounded humps. A demented miner who gave the canyon its name worked a mine in that rock for many years, never finding any gold. It should have been clear to him there was no gold; there is relatively little quartz in the rock, which is associated with gold, and Kodel’s canyon is far from the Colorado Mineral Belt, which runs from the Golden-Boulder area to Telluride. Most of the state’s minerals, including gold, are in that roughly 20 mile wide belt. The big exception is Cripple Creek, a volcanic neck with a rich gold deposit. Nevertheless, Kodel persisted for years, giving the local Fruita kids a place to risk their lives.

We would poke around in the mine, and its mystery. We didn’t go too far in, as we never had a flashlight. The big attraction was the climbing. In some places the 1.4 billion years old rock is broken and crumbling, but for the most part is so smooth and rounded as to look polished.

We had no climbing shoes, just our tennies. We had no helmets, ropes, or the hardware climbers use today. We got good at mostly unaided climbing and went up places that trained climbers attempt only with ropes and hardware. The only climbing aids we used were our .22 rifles, using them to help one another up especially steep pitches or as support. The climbing was somewhere between bouldering and free soloing. Not for those afraid of heights.

Years later, I climbed Long’s Peak with some friends. Lee had a bad knee, and Danny was helping him as we went up the Cable Route, which traverses the top of The Diamond, that sheer northeast face of the mountain with a 2,000 foot high cliff. Years ago the route had a fixed steel cable leading to the top that climbers could hold on to. When we climbed, there was no cable and some of the rock was wet. I just climbed up, doing what I learned in Kodel’s Canyon.

Danny would move up a pitch with the rope and belay Lee as he climbed on that bad knee. Danny remarked to Lee as they crept up with their rope that I was single-handing. It was steep, but I had good shoes and walked up, using one hand to occasionally support myself as I chose each foot placement. Proper safe climbing technique calls for having three support points on the rock, moving one hand or foot at a time. I was not ignoring the rule, I didn’t know it existed.

I only know of one serious injury in Kodel’s Canyon. Jerry badly sprained an ankle on the approach to the canyon and had to have help getting back to the road. He hobbled around for weeks, not getting much sympathy from us. In retrospect, we were serious risk-takers, but we just went where we wanted to without thinking about the danger. Those experiences in the hills and canyons south of Fruita made us all willing to accept challenges with little hesitation. We also gained confidence in our ability to overcome difficulty. We acquired life skills there. In our safety-oriented society, kids may be missing some important lessons. We need to test ourselves in the name of fun, and risk is part of the test. For me, it was a fun thing to do. I think I will go back, a bit more carefully this time.

Posted in Geology, Memoirs, Stories

Desert Surfboarding

Posted on March 25, 2014 by Bill 4 comments

The Grand Valley Canal Near Grand Junction, Mt. Garfield and Grand Mesa in the Background

I am a child of the desert. Fruita, Colorado has no more than eight inches of annual rainfall. Growing up in the late 1950’s, we were surfers before the Beach Boys made surfing famous.

The Grand Valley of Western Colorado is irrigated farm country. Two big canals bring Colorado River water to the valley farms. One of those canals had a place we called Karp’s Hole, after a nearby farm family. The hole was created by a concrete flume, narrower than the rest of the ditch, that created turbulence and eddy currents downstream that excavated a deep hole about 50 feet wide that was perfect for swimming. There was a diving board made from a 2″x12″ plank and an old car spring. That board was as good as any swimming pool diving board and was there for years.

With plenty of parking spaces, it was a popular summer party spot. The water, “too thick to drink and too thin to plow”, was good for tag games. A person could duck under and follow eddy currents to other points in the hole without being seen. The other side was lined with willows tall enough to provide hiding places. I had a scare when swimming in an underwater tunnel that surfaced behind the willows. I got stuck. My shoulders were a bit too wide, and my hands were in front. I wriggled and squirmed for what was probably only a few seconds, but it seemed like a long time to me before I was able to back out.

The road to Karp’s Hole ran alongside the canal for about 1 1/2 miles from the nearest county road. Built when the canal was dug, it was used for maintenance and by the ditch riders who patrolled the canal, adjusting the head gates that sent water to the farm fields.

For surfboarding, we made 4′ x 2′ plywood boards with two ropes with a handle coming back from the front of the board to the rider standing on a piece of carpet tacked to the back of the board. Another rope yoke led from to the bottom of the board to the tow rope which ran about 50′ to a post in the bed of a pickup truck. The driver and a spotter were in the cab and the rest of us rode in the bed. With the tow rope tied to a stake secured in the bed, the surfer shifted his weight from side to side and swung from one side of the canal to the other and back, sometimes bumping into the bank, and throwing a rooster tail of water onto the road.

We went about 20 miles per hour, any faster increasingly dangerous and less fun. The sport was illegal, we were trespassing, making it even more fun, but no one ever got arrested. After my first time at about 16, I came home and told my parents about our new sport. My father laughed, saying he surfboarded in the 1920’s behind Model T Fords. We were just keeping a Grand Valley tradition alive.

Our surfboarding parties were usually fueled by Coors 3.2 beer. There was no other beer for us. Given the muddy road, the beer, and adolescent hormones, accidents were rare. One time, the ditch company had mowed the willows lining the canal. Alan hit the bank with the bottom of his board a little too hard, and flew face down onto the willows. Bright red stripes.

The worst surfboarding accident was when a girl riding for the first time hit the bank and sort of flopped. She broke one of the bony processes on a spinal vertebra. No nerve damage, but she sure was sore for a while. The worst injury is when Don, my neighbor across the street dived into the shallow sand bar while drunk. He broke his neck. He was in a big cast from his chest to his chin and the back of his head. To drive, he put the top down of his 1955 Chevy convertible (the envy of every guy in town), parked his butt on the seat back, leaned forward, and drove. The cops never said a word.

More than 50 years later I can remember the sensation of speed, of spray in my face, the movement of the board under my feet as I dug one corner in to make a turn, zooming across the canal and digging in the other corner as the bottom of the board bounced on the bank. Spray flew 20 or more feet as I sped to the other bank and turned to make another run to douse the road. It was best when I could spray another car meeting us on the ditch road. It was usually some friends coming for their rides on the surfboard.

Water sports were big, but we had a mechanized winter sport as well. Two brothers had what we called a toboggan that had been around for years. It had steel runners at each corner and a deck that could hold four or five people. After a snow we would haul it out to the desert north of the farm area and tow it behind a pickup truck, preferably four wheel drive.

No going on the road or in a straight line, the driver’s goal was to turn sharp enough to throw everyone off. Speeds were a bit higher, close to 30 miles per hour. At night. There was lots of screaming and laughing as we rolled through the snow and mud.

I don’t remember anyone ever getting hurt, but we would get home tired, cold, wet, and muddy. Parents would just shake their heads. After all, they had done it themselves.

Posted in Memoirs, Stories

Teek’s Hot Rod

Posted on March 12, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

It’s 1958, and fast cars are what we wanted. Teek, my classmate with a funny nickname, found a Ford Model A roadster body and frame, but needed everything else and had little money. He heard about a wrecked 1954 Oldsmobile with a good engine at the bottom of a canyon.

We’re in Fruita, Colorado, a town of 1800 people a long way from most anywhere. South of town is the Colorado National Monument, an area of striking sandstone canyons traversed by roads bordering the canyon rims.

Someone had decided to get rid of his car by rolling it over the canyon rim just outside the Park boundary. Teek heard about it and decided to salvage the engine in the wreck at the bottom of a 200 foot high cliff. That called for creativity and a lot of help. He and some of his gearhead friends climbed into the canyon and disassembled the engine as much as they could.

They packed the smaller parts up out of the canyon with only Jerry smashing a finger falling while carrying a cylinder head. Next, how to get that big cast iron engine block out of the canyon. One Saturday, about ten of us assembled at the canyon rim. Teek had taken the rubber tire off a wheelbarrow wheel and bolted the wheel to a long 4″x4″ piece of lumber. We poked it over the sheer rim, weighted the back end with some big rocks, and ran a 1/4″ hemp rope through the pulley and into the canyon.

Thankfully, I was not involved in wrestling that big block from where the car had rolled to under the rim. With the rope tied to the engine block, all we had to do was pull. That block probably weighed 400 pounds. We pulled. And pulled. And complained. And pulled. The little rope slowly unwound as we pulled, and we worried it would break. It sure looked skinny.

It took most of an hour with hands and muscles complaining, but we got it to the rim and dragged it to level ground. Teek had a motor for his roadster!

A few months later we showed up at his house out in the farm country north of town. The car was running, sort of. The motor was in, transmission and running gear installed, and it was loud. No exhaust system, no gas pedal, just a wire coming back from the carburetor, and no starter. The cooling system was two hoses jammed together and filled with irrigation water. Oh, no seat, just a board laid on the frame rails for seating and to hold the battery. No fenders, of course.

Teek and another guy sat on the board, he had one hand on the wheel, the other on the throttle wire. Three of us laid on the trunk lid of the roadster body with our feet on the bumper of the pickup truck start vehicle behind us, and the pickup driver started us moving. The Olds engine fired up, and off we went.

I have had fast cars, motorcycles, and flown, but never had such a sensation of pure speed as roaring down those country roads lying on the back of a roadster trying to keep from being bounced off. We would go until the engine got hot (no radiator, remember?), stop, pull the hoses apart and fill it with ditch water, push start again, and fly!

Never again have terror, joy, excitement, and sheer speed come together like that day.

High school graduation came and I moved on. Teek finished his car and drove it for years, but I never got a ride in the finished model. We talked about those days at our 50th reunion, and the memory is still fresh as the day we broke lots of laws riding on Teek’s hot rod.

The pictures are not of Teek’s hot rod or of the canyon the motor came out of, but are good representations.

Posted in Memoirs, Stories

Elegy for Tedd Brumbaugh

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Bill 2 comments

My old friend Tedd died a couple of years ago. I wrote this after his death.

We went back a ways. I used to visit him on my tricycle. We would eat mulberries in the tree behind Jimmy’s house. We would fight on the way home for lunch and make up on the way back to school. His mother served both whole wheat and white bread at meals. My family didn’t have bread on the table for meals.

In high school, Tedd wanted only to District Attorney for a day. All the county elected jobs were available, and I didn’t care which job I got, I just wanted to go, so I ran for every job and lost. The last office to be chosen was District Attorney. I won, Tedd didn’t go.

I was best man at his wedding, traveling to McPherson, Kansas for the ceremony. I painted Help Me on the soles of his shoes. A woman gasped when they knelt at the altar.

Our class Valedictorian, Tedd, and I went to a Quaker youth camp in Palmer Lake between our junior and senior years. That week changed our lives. Liberals! They didn’t exist in Fruita. I went with Tedd and his family to my first classical music concert ever. We went with our high school science teacher to Paradox Valley and the Hanging Flume.

Tedd’s last couple of years have been pretty rough. He was having some health problems then was diagnosed with brain cancer. The oncologists killed the cancer, but he began having mini-strokes. The last few months, he hasn’t been around much. Now, he’s gone.

Tedd was pretty much unresponsive for a time before he died. After watching this more times than I like, I think the dying person is doing some work in our world before moving on. I don’t know what the work is and they aren’t saying. I am not entirely sure about this, but in watching, I can see that something is going on at some level. It is more subtle than a dog’s twitches while dreaming, but it is there.

Life is a mystery, filled with joy, sorrow, and all those other times. I like to think about the mystery, but don’t ask me for any answers. I do know I felt joy riding my tricycle over to Tedd’s house.

Posted in Memoirs

Wild Night

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Bill 5 comments

We graduated high school and spent the summer hanging around Fruita before starting our new lives. Most nights we met at the pool hall and went to Grand Junction for a movie, drove around drinking beer, or shot pool.

We saw Joe park his old Power Wagon and walk in. He said, “I twisted off from my roughnecking job down at Moab and have to pick up my gear. Lee, I’ll buy the gas and beer if we can go in your Mercury. My Wagon isn’t too happy over 35.”

“Sure.” Lee said. “We can run down there and be back before midnight. Ought to be fun.”

Joe said, “Do you guys want to come along?” to Ed and me. We headed for Lee’s nice ‘56 Mercury and piled in. Joe bought a case of Coors bottles for the trip. We threw the empties at road signs.

It was 100 miles to Moab then fifteen miles of dirt road to the drill rig with Joe’s stuff. After an hour and a half and most of the beer we turned onto the narrow dirt road. It followed the Colorado River downstream in a canyon with sheer sandstone walls on one side and the river on the other.

We made it to the rig, Joe got his gear, and we headed back to Moab. About half way there, Joe yelled, “Stop! There’s a Ring-tailed Cat.”

The Ringtail, as it is now called, is a member of the raccoon family, lean and leggy for nocturnal hunting in its desert habitat. He was between the car and the cliff wall, with a little scrub to hide behind.

“I’m going to get that sucker.” Joe said as he took some heavy work gloves and jumped out of the car. The cat tried to go up the sandstone wall and Joe lunged for it. He tied into a fury of teeth and claws. The cat left and Joe bled.

Ed cleaned Joe’s bites and scratches with the last of his beer and we headed home. After lots of laughs and very little sympathy for Joe’s wounds, we all settled into the ride.

Lee was fairly drunk, but no more than the rest of us, so he drove all the way, nodding a bit. We were about three miles from town and Ed said, “Well, I’ve had enough excitement for one night…look out!” He had seen two horses in the middle of the highway. Lee was in enough of a stupor to have not seen them, then jerked his head up and hit the brakes.

Too late. The Merc hit them both head on. The horses flew over the hood and struck the roof, peeling it back and spilling their insides into the car’s interior. Ed managed to get the car stopped and we dazedly looked around. No one was hurt, but we were all drenched in blood and the contents of the horse’s innards.

A passerby saw the accident, drove to the diner in town and called the cops. Everyone in the café drove out to see the carnage. As a friend from the diner walked up, Lee went over, covered in blood, stomach contents, and shit. He said, “Can you smell any beer on my breath?”

Note: The events in the story are true, but from two events. I have changed the names to protect the guilty.

Posted in Memoirs, Stories

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