"Echoes from the Thundermug": Married Life and Mining Camps, Part Four

Prospectors Were a Visionary Lot Who Built the West

I just read, for the second time, an illustrated history of mining in the United States. It is a well researched, well written story, but I was left with a bad taste in my mouth on first reading and had to read it the second time to pinpoint why I was offended.

The underlying theme from beginning to end is that prospectors were ignorant, greedy men and that mine developers were greedy, crooked men who reaped their fortunes at the expense of others, leaving in their wake shattered lives and garbage dumps from coast to coast.

I have a feeling the greatest adventure the author has known was digging to the bottom of a Crackerjack box for the mystery gift. I feel sorry for the man, sorry he couldn't have known, first hand, the prospectors who made the great strikes and the prospectors who just dreamed of striking it rich.

They weren't ignorant or greedy. They were dreamers, hardy men exciting to talk to or talk about, and what difference should it make to anyone that they may have sold a bonanza for a bottle of whiskey or a few dollars and moved on in search of another strike. The excitement is the chase, and those men set the foundation for settlement and industrialization of the West, not with ignorance and greed, but with dreams and a keen understanding of the geologic features that indicate presence of ore bodies. Someone had to first discover and recognize the worth of the lodes. I feel a debt of gratitude to such men whose foresight and determination provided, in some way, everything that we enjoy today.

Who could call our own Fred Gulzow ignorant or greedy? Fred prospected upper Red Mountain Creek, southwest of Creede, for years. He was a learned man with a good knowledge of geology, and while he never made a strike, he enriched the lives of all who knew him with exciting tales and the enthusiasm that is so contagious.

Before Mr. Gulzow, Mountain Man Lou Oppey searched the Piedra Peak/Red Mountain area and gave Creede miners a few weeks needed excitement and activity in the early days of the depression. Lou found rich float near creek level on Red Mountain, assayed and confirmed as high grade gold ore by our resident chemist, Jack Comstock, prompting a mad staking rush. Lou had staked several claims where he found the float and gave one of these to my Dad in friendship. The source of the float was never found, but the excitement and scrambling over the hills buoyed the sagging spirits of one small mining town when most needed.

Few will remember Billy Barnett, who once won a speed skating championship on Canadian ice and whose name appears on lode location certificates dating back to 1889. Billy once had claims in the Equity Mine area and over the divide in Spring and Cascade Creeks where Nicholas Creede and C.F. Nelson prospected before their discoveries on Campbell Mountain. Mr. Barnett never struck it rich, but his library and technical knowledge of mining were not the marks of an ignorant or greedy prospector.

Pete Weiss and Ed "The Barber" prospected fissure veins near Spar City for years on end, foul weather or fair. Pete extended his tunnel on one vein while Ed, for the most part, percolated sour mash in a small distillery by a fresh-water spring. Pete never reached his bonanza, but he achieved fame as a stone mason in Creede, and Ed "The Barber" earned the dubious distinction of having the last still destroyed by federal agents in Mineral County.

Art Leonard had a prospect in what we called Cottontail Gulch about a quarter mile up the draw behind Fred Seyfried's home. Art drove shallow tunnels on either side of the gulch in the Creede Formation in the late '30s and early '40s. He showed me his vein in the south tunnel when the face was barely 20 feet from sunshine. He explained the horizontal bedding and pointed out the enriched stratum where hydrothermal action deposited lead-silver ore atom by atom.

Art wasn't a man driven by greed, and he certainly was not ignorant. He enjoyed the chase and his visits with us at the end of his day's digging were always rewarding. He knew the next round would be better and the pay ore lay just five feet and three dollars worth of explosives ahead.

I have to believe the prospectors of the 19th century were no different than the prospectors of the 20th century. Fred Monkemeyer, who ran the North Creede power plant by night and worked his claim by day; Fred Ryden, our druggist; John Van Buskirk, our barber; Jack Fleming, the Irish tenor; Wallace Leary, accountant; and Tom Drysdale, band leader, would have all scratched the outcrops as well in Nevada and California in the 1800s as they did in Colorado in the 1900s.

Love of adventure drives prospectors, not greed.

Paul's Recipe

In late January of 1981, as we were getting settled in our new home near Montrose, Paul and Mary Schriver of Azusa, Calif., came to live with us. Mary, Inez's mother, suffers from Parkinson's disease and Paul, her father, has a spinal disorder leaving both in need of the care Inez can provide.

Paul is a jack of all trades but his first love is farming. When he first saw the fertile soil near the garage his only thought was gardening. He smelled and felt the earth in nostalgia for the rich bottomlands of Kansas where he had farmed as a youth, turned a spadeful or two and filled some containers to start a few seeds sprouting near the south windows of the porch. Later he arranged a former sandbox to accommodate a mixture of earth and compost in which he would transplant the sprouts from the initial containers after the last spring frost.

I had grown little but hair, fingernails and ear wax over the years and felt privileged to watch this operation, also contributing labor and various forms of hardware to the project as Paul directed me in each stage. We rigged up a small pump for irrigation, baskets to hold the tomato plants and placed a barrel to his specifications for his "recipe".

The recipe barrel held most of his attention as he stirred steer manure and other foul smelling ingredients into a broth that smelled like a three holer in a heat wave.

I had to leave for other states before the "recipe" came to full strength, however, I felt we were in trouble when a mouse tasted the brew and chased both our cats up a black walnut tree.

Inez kept me posted, during my travels, of the progress of the gardens, insect problems, water problems, the terrible smell emanating from the recipe barrel now continually enveloped in a green smog and the branching out of Paul's enterprise. He had planted some pumpkin and squash seeds along the ditch, liberally sprinkled the area with the "recipe" and the vines were now encroaching on her tomato plants.

She wrote me of the squash vines wrapping around her boots as she cleaned the ditch, she barely escaped with her life and without the boots. I believed her. She wrote of Paul's tomatoes, so thick the baskets I had fashioned couldn't contain them and several were as large as full grown cantaloupes. I believed her. She wrote of hearing barking in the midst of the vines but she was afraid to investigate and all this time Paul was still tottering around meting out his "recipe" to those plants he deemed safe to approach.

The next letter had tear stains on three pages as she wrote of the loss of our old cock pheasant that had strutted by the picture window each morning. It seems he was in low flight between meadows when he ran into the green smog from Paul's recipe. On emerging he did a series of loops, a barrel roll and knocked two chicken hawks from the sky in a cloud of feathers then tried to make love to a Lear jet circling for a landing at Montrose airport. All they saved were a few scorched tail feathers. I didn't believe her.

On my return home in autumn, we started harvesting the crops. Paul was fairly jigging and twirling his cane as he walked me to the squash patch where his giants were resting in the shade of the largest sunflowers I have ever seen. The squash and pumpkin vines looked like tentacles from a ship-dunking octopus and stretched for a half acre hiding a pile of wood, four large I-beams and a hundred feet of ditch. Now and then a rustling noise disturbed the twitter of birds feeding near the sunflowers and a bulge would appear at odd places in the jungle of leaves. He said this had been going on for several weeks and he figured it was the pumpkins and squash rolling around as they grew.

The first order of business was to dismember some vines and try to get near enough to the main plant to uproot it or bomb it without getting drug in and lost forever. As Paul dangled a can of his recipe near the end of the vines, I waded in with a double bitted ax alternately chopping and dragging vines away. I hadn't reached the second squash when something licked my hand, scaring seven years growth from me.

With the ax handle, I probed in the general area and there, amid a pile of singed pheasant feathers, held fast by two vines, was the source of the barking Inez had heard, the neighbor's blue heeler, missing for several weeks and sustained only by the remains of our old cock pheasant, a little overdone but welcome.

Birthday Party Comes on the Wrong Day

A miserable Sunday. I was in the depths of despair after a humiliating defeat at the hands of Chuck Fairchild the previous evening in arm wrestling. He nearly drove my arm through the picnic table at McClures' Cebolla retreat, then early Sunday morn I had to say farewell to a new love.

We had been invaded Friday and Saturday by a ragtag group of horsemen and ladies we will properly call equestrians. They had ridden over the Continental Divide at San Luis Pass, down Cascade and Spring Creeks to the Cadwell Ranch, thence on to McClures', which is in sight of our own fortress. We were invited to a rib barbecue supervised by Chuck.

The "Lite" riders of the sky, Randy McClure, Kim Wintz, Mike McClure, Leck Fuson, Jake McClure and Bob Kukuk, had rounded up a passel of females to set up tepees, fire rings and handle kitchen chores. There was a lanky gal from Monte Vista called Pokey, Gia, Laurie, Janelle, Maxine, Lisa and Jamie. All willing and able hands, though in awe of the bearded figure basting ribs and singing sentimental ballads of distant shores and lost loves.

My heart melted with a single glance from Jamie and I fell hopelessly in love. To make a short love story even shorter, I had neither time nor opportunity to ask for her hand. Leck and Lisa made it very plain that I am not in any future plans for Jamie. On a positive note, which lessened the pain considerably, we learned that Warden Bee would not parole the youngest Fuson to make the trip, so we were able to leave keys in vehicles and enjoy the event in reasonable safety.

Therein lay the reason for the gloomy Sunday and I was lower than the lowest tadpole in a Texas panhandle well when a caravan bearing treasure and food fit for a king found its way through our pasture gates. Toni Shaw, her son Doug and two beauties, wife Ginny and Tina, followed by old friends Allan and Clara Phipps. Faithfully bringing up the rear drove Lucky and Polly Bates, my sometimes sister and husband.

With greetings behind us, we settled in our living room where Toni made Inez and me stand while the rest gathered around and sang "Happy Birthday" to us. No matter it wasn't our birthdays. Toni had read the article written several months ago in which I begged sympathy because Mom Jo had not provided us with birthday parties. It wasn't that our mother didn't love us, it was just that she would rather have other mothers put up with little renegades tearing up the house and overloading the dish pan.

The article Toni had read is almost certainly "No Birthday Party for Him", published earlier in this same book.

And what a party it was; balloons on the ceiling, bunting strung from hell to breakfast, little paper hats, noise makers, a genuine Happy Birthday tablecloth, napkins and a beautiful cake blended, fashioned and decorated by the beautiful Tina. We played games: all kinds of games that birthday parties are famous for with prizes for the winners. We had gifts: a wooden rocking horse for me, first in my life; an all-day sucker; a snugly koala and equally snugly monkey for my bed; and a battery-powered foot and back massager. Inez received two dolls with dress kits and two videocassette movies, one of which I fear must be edited before viewing.

For a finale, Allan sang two songs in German followed by a rousing rendition of "And There is No Night in Creede". The tears started. Bob and Janelle Kukuk, who had stayed over after the McClure barbecue, readied the electronic equipment which would regress us some 50 years with videotapes of home movies taken by James French and Gene McClure. Several more tears joined those drying on my shirt as we watched those stalwarts who guided Creede through some lean years peer self-consciously from our television set.

I can never gripe again about not having a real birthday party and I will never again underestimate the power of a wonderful woman who is now restoring the Wagon Wheel Gap Depot.

Which Day Would You Relive?

If you could live one day of your lifetime over, which day would it be? There are some days when everything seems precisely in tune and we think maybe, just maybe, the human element is needed if only to bear witness to the beauty or events of that day. I promised myself to sort through pictures again this winter, knowing full well the project would die in memories as it has every previous year.

We have a couple slides of Alvie and Edith Wintz with a favorite small Spaniel taken near Beartown where we met on mutual camping trips. Al and Edith had a beautiful catch of Cutthroat trout. The day was one you dream about with a clear, blue sky, green fields and early blooms.

Al always had one eye cocked for quartz veins on these trips as he is a prospector at heart and knows the colors. We loved the Beartown area and talked of the last major mining development promoted by a lady known as "Beartown Maude". This was in the '30s and among her crew were two young fellows who became well-acquainted in the Creede area, Pete Kane, now of Alamosa, and Johnny Youngsavage.

Johnny Youngsavage owned the Model T Ford nearly rusted away in its final resting place on the side of Little Timber Hill just off the former road to Beartown. Johnny was on a return trip to the mine with a full load of liquid nourishment. He failed to negotiate one steep pitch, made a fast run backwards through rocks and trees, nearly demolishing the Ford. He had a long, sobering walk to face Maude, who cracked a mean whip.

A picnic on the very top of Fisher Mountain is recorded on film. We were with Charles and Dorothy Steele that day, one of the rare days when Dorothy wasn't nursing wounds or Charles wasn't restoring someone's automobile to running order. We sat by a shepherd's monument from which we could see, to the northwest, Santa Maria reservoir and seepage lakes. The groundwork for these natural depressions came from a tilting and collapse of a part of the earth's skin. To the southwest, the Piedra was dwarfed by Red Mountain. To the southeast, Wolf Creek Pass and the Summitville area and northeast Half Moon Pass provides a lower entry to Sky City and Wanamaker Creek on the east flank of La Garita Mountain.

Less than 30 million years ago, Vulcan, the fire god, blew his top here scattering ashes over thousands of square miles of peaceful landscape with intermittent belchings of lava to form a volcanic pile that would later collapse within itself forming fissures to be healed by percolating hydrothermal fluids, solutions carrying atoms of the minerals that in their final stage made this trip possible.

That was a wonderful day with wonderful friends and if Vulcan wanted to do his part over in another 30 million years or so, I would hope we could be right at that shepherd's monument to cheer him on, with umbrellas, of course.

A picture of Allan and Clara Phipps reminds us of pleasant times, of laughter and good cheer at the Creede Hotel, among other places. Allan had a ritual he performed at our gatherings at the Creede Hotel. He would clothe the mounted puma with his jacket, hat and sunglasses. We would then drink to this aristocrat of the cat family while Chet Brubaker stroked the scarred keys of the old piano to lift our spirits with tunes inspired by a well thumbed catalog. The ladies' lingerie section for fast fox trots, men's suits pages for the waltzes and suede shoes' pages for the nostalgic musical trips. We appreciated those visits, the humor, the camaraderie and we are deeply appreciative of all Allan and Clara have given, anonymously, to Creede and its children.

Sure, we know we will never recapture one of those days, but life is mainly a dream sprinkled with a few nightmares. Any of those days would be welcome to run through again, but, I guess, a day I would like most to live over would be one with my old sparring partner camped at the head of Sawmill Gulch in elk season long ago.

She was tired from the steep climb packing in so we elected to eat hot dogs the first evening meal. We were sitting on a bullpine log charring wieners in the edge of our campfire, snuggled close, and in her mind she felt secure that I would protect her from all evil and any danger when all the time the greatest evil or danger she faced was seated right there with one arm around her.

Anything's Better Than Being Alone

Glory hallelujah! I bought her one rose as a homecoming gift and arrived at the bus depot two hours early. The bus was late, but she was on it, all 136 pounds of her, plus the ten pounds the scale refused to record.

She was loaded down with 20 pounds of frozen fish from the Lake of the Cherokee, tour guide booklets, brochures and a smoking credit card. She looks good — very good after my facing the kitchen range, sink and dirty floors since she left in a snit two weeks ago. The dog hasn't left her side since she hit the front step and two cats that had been missing four days returned to greet her.

I have turned over a new leaf. I don't like bachelorhood or any of the trappings that go with it. Never again will I gripe about the food bill or the light bill or the clothing bill or the dozens of half-full soap and wax containers under the sink or the soap operas or the catalogues strung from hell to breakfast or the cold feet resting against me at night. I ate leftovers for the first week and anything a can opener would prepare after that.

I accomplished a lot during my days of penance, outside. Two warm days melted low snow and caused the creek to rise, washing the road to an unstable mire. The husky and I repaired the road, built a new road, installed culverts and even had time to watch a snipe circle the meadow in an evening songfest.

While in Nevada on exploration, I often spent evenings listening to the yodel of snipes in their courtship. One snipe may sound like a flock as it circles and dives to produce the sound of a Swiss yodeler stuck on a high note.

Arthritis pain has been a constant companion and I tried to beg off several tasks, but the little husky would have none of it. He reminded me of the time when he had an inch-long gash in one paw and a low opinion of hypochondriacs besides that. With the ditches on, the moles are actively seeking new homes. Skeeter's main job on the ranch is to keep the mole population in acceptable limits which he does very well with my help. He can uproot them in all but tough sod, then he expects a little help from my shovel.

Moles serve a useful purpose in areas where they bring fine soil to the surface, but along irrigation ditches they cause no end of problems, so the little bounty hunter provides the cats a change in diet and I reward him with a cut of an ox tail. Actually, it is a tough old bull's tail, but who's the wiser. We even took time to go fishing. I finally got to try out a hand-tied fly (gold-ribbed hare's ear) sent to me by Iris Birdsey and fabricated by her son, Shane. It works, Shane! I like to fish riffles when the water is slightly murky and the fish sense rising water will bring food to their mouths. I hadn't taken a jacket, as it was warm and only a hint of a breeze stirred ripples.

After catching and releasing three locks and a beautiful rainbow, I decided to keep the next two for the evening meal. So absorbed was I in my play, I had neglected to notice the increased velocity of the wind or the speckles of rain on shore rocks. The storm hit with a fury reserved for dumb fishermen in open meadows and by the time Skeeter and I reached shelter, we were soaked and had only one trout in the creel.

No food baskets found their way here from Shorty or Heinie, but Mr. Leonard did send his condolences and a couple of comic strips. Heinie developed a rash from sleeping in too many Indian blankets along the Navajo Trail and is trying to cure it from within. His letter was disjointed and smelled strongly of sour mash liniment.

He continues to confuse me with Jesse and suggests we trade our convention delegates for a weekend in Las Vegas. He has already forgotten what happened to our friend, Shorty Wheeler, when he tried to do a little trading in Las Vegas.

I like a clean house and the sound of a washing machine in action, plus the smells that go along with a chubby apron-carrier scurrying around cupboards and kitchen range. I tried to blame most of the mess on Skeeter, but he licked his pawprints clean from the bed, sink and bathroom.

Like all females, her tongue is running two laps ahead of her brain, but this old boy can stand a lot of prattle for a square meal.

Dog a Big Help on Prospecting Expedition

The day started off well. Inez had run out of wild tales of her visit to Creede and was able to concentrate on household chores, the sky was clear after several days of rain and Skeeter had mapped out our prospecting trip. All I had to do was dump a little gas in the Travelall, stow our grub in the back pack and go down the list of equipment necessary to discover lodes of gold, silver, platinum or speckled trout.

Skeeter traveled 40 miles between the back and front seats before we had even reached the end of the dirt road where we would load up and head off on foot. For a hyperactive husky, he is a great help on the job. He runs all the steep, rugged traverses, while I take the low control lines. He takes no samples but assures me he can smell ore from a mile away. So far his smeller has only been tuned to detect marmots.

We had made one creek fording following a well-used pack trail and had started up an east-trending branch when all hell broke loose. The canyon echoed with howls of pain. Two differing tones of yelps told me Skeeter was in deep trouble. I was over a hundred yards from the sounds of battle, pushing myself as fast as possible with a walking stick to help my friend, hoping with each step it was a bear and not a porcupine.

Black or brown bear usually head for the tall timber when they see or smell a human. But a porcupine, by this time, would have the dog looking like a furry pincushion.

I topped a small rise between us, too out of breath to yell, and found Skeeter trying to back over a windfall aspen with a fox drawing blood from front legs and his nose. One of his traverses had led him to a red fox den where the mother fox was letting him know in no uncertain terms that he wasn't welcome. I was several feet behind the fox when she turned and gave me the same message. With her attention diverted, Skeeter turned tail and left for higher country, not at all concerned that I might soon be shedding blood as I fended her off with my walking stick.

With the dog gone, she felt her young were secure but didn't bat an eye or retreat an inch. I back-stepped to a point where I was out of her sight and journeyed up the route the dog had taken to assess his wounds. Skeeter was lucky this time. Her sharp teeth had punctured the skin in several places and his nose looked like he had run through barbed wire, but his pride had suffered the worst wound.

We worked our way upward to a saddle where aerial photos showed a fault trending from the Divide. It was there and a little copper stain showed in breccia between a quartz latite and welded tuff. No gold nuggets or eye-catching quartz, so we angled through dead bullpine still showing the scars of the 1895 fire which devastated much of this country.

We heard human voices and Skeeter was off in a flash down the draw that opened into a meadow with a small creek. Skeeter likes people, especially traveling people, and he was mingling among a group of young hikers as I emerged from the trees.

This was the second day of a trip that would take them over the Divide to a point near Creede where vehicles would pick them up. They were tanned, well-muscled and starting to shoulder the high, heavy packs with all the essentials for several days in the field.

The camp counselor appeared wary of an old duffer with geological gear, and when I mentioned they were very near the site where a modified V-2 rocket nose impacted 20 years ago, his eyes widened and he ordered, "camp walk...camp walk" to his charges, meaning clean up all litter and get away from this loony old character. I was able to visit a few minutes with one girl and two boys of the group who were interested in geology and the tale of the errant missile. Skeeter had been well petted, coddled and told how beautiful he was in spite of the swelling from his nostrils to his eyes. He wanted to tell them about his adventure, but the camp counselor wanted no contact with either of us.

There is still evidence of the rocket skin and scattered internal parts where the missile struck and imbedded itself nearly 15 feet underground. It was found by Maurice Chaffee, a geologist, after military teams had searched the area for weeks in a futile effort. An interesting sidelight to the discovery — it landed right in the center of a mining claim Gene Wardell and I had staked the year before. We joked that it was all the mineral in the claim that made the missile swerve off course.

With the chance to show off all our lore lost, we moved along a creek bottom to a prospect Wallace Leary told me about in 1964 when he learned I was checking for mineral by these volcanic necks. He had prospected here 40 years ago with encouraging results and passed the information along.

We pushed through willows and onto the dump of the narrow cut where Wallace chipped one sample that ran 118 ounces in silver and nearly a half ounce in gold. Skeeter's nose elevated and from his actions I knew he wasn't kidding when he told me he could smell ore, but when I doffed the backpack, he went directly to the top pouch where Inez had packed the ziplock bag with Kibbles and Bits and meat scraps.

It is a long trip out, long enough to fashion many excuses for not finding the mother lode. But after so many years, we can rely on the old stand by, "The fun is in the chase."

Geologist Seeks Ore With Fly Rod and Reel

It had to happen. For over a year, I have sent monthly reports to the Denver office with finger paintings of mythical geologic wonders. Plutons, tertiary intrusives in pre-cambrian rocks, iron formations, ultra mafics, gold here, silver there, possibly a kimberlite diamond pipe somewhere else with multicolored illustrations, all described to confuse rather than enlighten.

During this period, we had a change in management. A new district manager, new administrative assistant and new geologists, all wondering who the bundle of energy was turning over rocks in the southwest portion of the state to supply them with exploration targets.

Calls came to Inez. She explained my absences with, "He said he would be in the Stewart Peak Quad today," or "the Elk Park Quad," or "the Finger Mesa Quad," and I was. They all have trout streams and it took little imagination to picture a proper precious metals setting as I cleaned my fish. Then all I had to do was color a map and describe the rock units to keep a check coming in the mail. As pressure mounted for a get-acquainted meeting, I knew fate would save my bacon and I would, one day, stumble over a real find, a wide, long, ore zone. I would be honored with a dinner, gold-plated prospectors pick and a generous pension.

I felt like a pickpocket with his cuff caught in a Velcro pocket fastener when a call came with a voice stating, "I will be in Montrose Monday at 2 p.m. We will go over maps and reports so that I can get a better handle on your activities." I wanted to say, "Bring your spinning rod and ice auger if you want to prospect or confer with me," but the voice belonged to Grover Reinbold, my supervisor, district manager, and the same Grover Reinbold who heretofore had signed my vouchers.

I remember a time in the mid 1930s when Lee Davis and I wasted a complete boxful of .25-20 shells shooting at rock rabbits in Sawmill Gulch off Moonshine Mesa. Uncle Frank (Lee's dad) had entrusted us with his rifle and skinning knife to go after venison for the dinner table in a special hard-times season. Rock rabbits were easier to hunt than deer. All it took was a little patience and one would come from hiding in slide rock to see if we were still there with the firestick and loud voices. We didn't kill any, but we had a whale of a lot of fun watching spurts of dust as slugs hit rock, listening to the whine of ricochets, each in turn on the rifle until the last round was fired and the folly of our ways began to register.

We made up a hellacious story on the long hike home that we unfolded, lie by lie, to Uncle Frank as he took off his work boots and rested with a cup of coffee from the rigors of a day in the Commodore Mine. We had stalked a deer just like he had taught us, caught it at a water hole, shot it in the lungs and trailed it for miles shooting at every sighting of the wounded animal until we were out of ammunition. We were sure we had hit it again.

Uncle Frank took it all in, questioning us at intervals to learn where we had first hit it, how much blood it was losing and the direction it was headed. With that out of the way, we were primed for supper but it wasn't to be the end of the day for us.

"Make us some sandwiches, Caroline," he said. "I'm going to get back into my boots and take the boys to find that deer. We can't let the meat go to waste."

Lee and I looked at each other, at Uncle Frank lacing up his boots and mentally pictured us trudging up Sawmill Gulch to the water hole in a small meadow where one or both of us had better make deer sign and scatter blood. It is much easier to lie into a situation than to lie out of it, we found. Before Aunt Caroline had the sandwiches made, we had changed our story so many times and ways that the only thing left was ten minutes with a leather belt in the woodshed.

And here I am again, entangled in a web of fabrications, facing dismissal from the best job I ever had. All it will take is a blizzard to grant a three-month reprieve: "Ground is all covered, Grover, not a chance to see outcrops but here are some samples from my last trip out...see that one...hit it right in the lungs...blood all over." Oops.

The Lower Roost for In-Laws

Having been mired in physical, marital and in-law problems for several weeks, I have lost contact with The Miner and Tines and my sanity, but many things have come to light in this period.

It is apparent that if I could solve the in-law problem the other problems would resolve themselves. I would like to tell you about my in-laws but it will have to wait 'til the car is out of gas or the road is blocked.

My old partner is back and it is an entirely different world around here. First thing she did was inspect the bathroom, then asked why I didn't finish painting it. For one thing, I was out of Z-bec vitamins and for another I couldn't splatter any higher. She was pleased with the kitchen range. For the last week I had lived off the scrapings around the burners.

The honorable "Heinie" Leonard provided me with one cure for in-laws and he added, "the larger the caliber the faster the cure." When I haven't heard from Heinie for a long time, such as now, I first check the police blotter, then run down the obituaries. I always worry about old friends who have become respectable (like Heinie and Shorty Wheeler). The transformation is extremely hard on every bodily function, not to mention the mental trauma of their wives and friends.

I used to look forward to Inie's periodic leaves of absence. While playing the role of bachelor, I daydreamed of having Guinevere in for libations and anything that followed. Guinevere never had headaches. She occasionally harbored something that aspirin wouldn't help so my lusting never went beyond daydreaming.

It is wonderful to have my bride back. I never realized how it lifts the spirits to have a clean bathroom. I had been almost afraid to step in the tub when I began to see movement in the growth around the drain. I locked the cats in the bathroom for a night hoping for removal of one or the other. It came on so gradually I wasn't aware of the problem until a plant on the water closet trans-rooted to the tub. Inez sprayed her way in with disinfectants, an ice pick and spatula while the cats pounced on the critters that came out of the fog.

In spite of my feeling that in-laws must rank somewhere near the scourge of herpes I still believe in family contact. I think in-laws should exchange post cards at least once yearly unless the price of stamps rises again.

There is a direct link between in-laws and relatives, as Inez pointed out to me during one of our knockdown dragouts. I wasn't aware of this genetic aberration but it sounds reasonable. Relatives can become in-laws but in-laws can never become relatives. It's a hybrid or lobred arrangement of some sort.

Winter Like That of Memories

"As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens," a proverb oft quoted by Mom Jo. Let it strengthen; we can stand it knowing we are moving at the rate of a few minutes each day toward old sol from whence cometh the warmth that lets us sit on the front porch for early morning coffee.

Fifty or so years ago, we would have been waiting for Sam Church to finish sharpening our ice skates for a hike up the canyon above Creede where ice would be safe enough and spread far enough for a few fast runs or a slam bang makeshift hockey game. Now we're sitting by the bay window waiting for the first burst of sunlight to warm the air enough to venture outside. The much publicized warming of the earth by the "greenhouse effect" apparently hasn't reached the boundaries of the Cebolla.

Fifty or more years ago we might have been easing up Slaughterhouse Gulch or Dry Gulch or Sawmill Gulch to bag cottontail rabbits with a single shot .22 rifle. Rabbits, skinned and dressed, without a bullet hole in a meaty portion brought a quarter a piece from many sources. John and Lena Slater and Mrs. Billy Barnett usually bought all I could bag on my hunting trips. Bobby Snow taught me how to retrieve those rabbits that managed to kick themselves back in burrows. Bobby carried a short length of barbed wire which he ran back in the holes, twisted into the rabbits' hide and then pulled them out.

Fifty or more years ago we might have been gathering on the corner by Alex Duncan's house for a sledding party. We looked forward to the cold of winter then and the early snows that could be packed down for whistling journeys around the tight corners slowing by the coal sheds to finally stop by Howard Barbers or Britt McCormick's home.

The most exciting Christmas I can remember was when I received $5.25 worth of a shiny new sled with a metal bumper. All the other kids had flexible flyers or patched-up homemade jobs. I was so proud of that sled, I stole a whole bar of paraffin wax from Mom Jo's pantry to keep the runners slick. Ivan Van Akin had the longest sled, a six-foot Flexible Flyer; Les Turnipseed had a shorter version but his sled held the records for speed and distance. I could hardly wait to lose them all in a cloud of powdered snow.

For the first few days, I handled that new sled like a rare piece of china, avoiding the ice jump by the mesa and taking the curves with one foot dragging to slow us down. I was constantly badgered by my little friends, "Please let me take it down the track. Just once, please?"

I turned a deaf ear to all. Scrappy, our Chesapeake retriever, even seemed to glory in pulling this Cadillac of sleds up the hill with the rope looped over his shoulders. I would let one or two of my closest friends sit on the sled with me as we warmed our feet by the large bonfire, sometimes pouring black smoke into the dark from old tires found in the numerous dumps within Creede. Sitting on the sled was one thing, but trusting one of them to drive this "faster than light" wonder was quite another thing.

Then came the night I left the sled in care of Jimmy while I took my turn in bringing in wood for the fire from a vacant house we were dismantling board by board. When I got back, Jimmy was crying and the sled was gone. Wayne, one of the older boys, had jerked the sled from under Jimmy and, in the flickering light given off from the flames of the fire, was "headin' straight for the ice jump sittin' up," Jimmy sobbed.

Wayne didn't return but we found my sled over the hill resting in a bush. We pulled it back to the warmth of the fire where we found the braces for the runners collapsed and the runners severely pigeon-toed. It would live to run the track for many more years, but the magic left in that one short run.

Where are the Duncans, Davises, Comstocks, Learys, Schillings, Matterns and others who made the mesa road so slick that Frank Bruns had to park his team and sleigh by the Davis house and deliver bottles of milk on foot?

Helicopter Pilot Got Even With Big-Shot Passengers

While I was employed by a minerals exploration firm, we used helicopters over a period of three years in mineralized areas.

We would be dropped off at high elevations and picked up at the end of our traverses. Our pilots were mainly Vietnam veterans. One of the most dependable was a large Irishman called Pat who had survived some harrowing experiences in the war but emerged relatively unscathed and with a healthy outlook on life.

Pat liked to drink and boogy. It was weeks before I learned that boogying to Pat was dancing to us. When he told us he was going to go to a nearby town, hoist a few and boogy I thought the worst until we joined him one night.

Shortly after the Vietnam War, Pat landed a job piloting "birds" for an exploration firm in Indonesia. He hauled both supplies and personnel to mineralized regions from a base where four-wheel drives could negotiate a jungle road to the coast.

On occasion, he would fly overstuffed, overbearing executives for onsite inspections.

Pat was punctual and preferred flying when conditions permitted safe runs. He was well capable of handling his bird in any adversity, but he didn't like taking undue risks. The executives expected him to be at their beck and call but were nearly always late for scheduled flights. This perturbed him to no end and on one appointment when three passengers were over an hour late, he retired to his hammock and drifted off to sleep. He was roughly awakened by a person of evident authority shaking his shoulder.

"Are you our pilot?" the man inquired.

Pat swung his legs off the hammock and told the gentleman the pilot wasn't around but he would take them wherever they wanted to go. After getting them seated and buckled in, two in the rear and the most vocal of the three in the seat beside him, he checked a map that showed flight path and site location with the perspiring individual.

As the three were engaged in small talk, Pat began fishing under his seat with both hands then ran his right hand under the seat of his nearest passenger.

"What are you looking for?" the executive asked.

"There's a manual somewhere under one of these seats that will show us how to get this bird started," he answered.

Seat belts clicked and the passengers started hurriedly unloading. It took Pat several minutes to calm them down and convince them he was really the pilot.

Inez Hooks the Big One

I had a brief reunion with job companions during the Siberian surge of cold air in Denver.

The Freeport office smells much better now with "Evening in Paris" fumes wafted about by the central heating system due to the addition of lovely young ladies to the staff. There was a decided change in the appearance of the male group, all for the better I might add. They were decked out in vogue sweaters, creased slacks, clip-on neckties and followed the fragrant smells from reception room to coffee maker like puppy dogs in search of the real meat bowl.

They were recovering from a combination Christmas-New Year's, farewell to Jeanne Downing party held at manager Dave Stevens' home. It was a fairly respectable party for this crew with the only blemish on the festivities being the arrival of Russ Allen totally nude. Russ worked in Creede in '76 and '77 during drilling of the Creede formation and acquired his bad habits there, he says.

Russ had decided to have a "brave the traffic drink", opted for three more and passed out while changing clothes. Wife Myrna went on without him to make excuses. When Russ awoke he looked at the clock, determined Myrna had left and burned rubber for several blocks to the Stevens' residence. Quick thinking Myrna, on noting his arrival and condition, pinned a bath towel on him and entered him as Master 1984.

Joe Kantor's wife had Joe immobilized in a straightjacket. No one noticed until they saw her tipping his head back and pouring drinks down his gullet. Joe is the geologist who can't leave his job at the office. He continues his explorations at office parties and pig roasts, mostly on blonde outcrops.

Dave and Cathy Stevens had instructed all to bring their favorite Mexican dish. Bob Hawkins and Dave Jones arrived with Tina Gonzales. The party was a roaring success. Neighbors did most of the roaring early the next morning.

The enthusiasm of the reunion was dampened by the absence of Jeanne Downing, administrative assistant, who retired on Jan. 15 to help her husband, George, smell the flowers and travel. Jeanne dried my tears, expedited my expense accounts and saved my job over the years. When called on the carpet for passing my numerous "food supplement" items on the expense account she explained that I take multiple vitamins, arthritis formula and memory enhancer, knowing full well the numbers exactly equalled the price of a liter of gin and two quarts of tonic water.

I once expensed ransom money on a four-wheel-drive pickup but even Jeanne couldn't shove that one through. Our gal Janice is now in Jeanne's position and I placed my bowl right by her desk where she can fill it with meat by-products or beef-flavored tripe. I'll eat it and roll over or sit up for another helping.

On my return home with a tear jerking tale of the bitter cold I was forced to work in, Inez suggested that since I was inured to such temperature extremes we go ice fishing on Blue Mesa Lake. She was all bundled up like a Russian plutocrat and looked like she could roll or walk with equal grace as we ventured out onto the ice.

After an hour of bone-chilling conditions she was unable to bait her hook so while she held her rod in the crook of her arm with both hands in her pockets I threaded a salmon egg on the barb and just started to follow it with another when a gust of wind hit, she whirled to have her back to the wind jerking the tip of the rod sideways with the tender end of my right forefinger now bleeding by the salmon egg.

We retired due to unsafe conditions when the ice melted for fifty feet around us.

Marriages Weather Storms With Love

The poem above, "The Empty Room," is by Alice Josephine "Jo" Davis Jackson (Mom Jo), reused verbatim here from its fuller treatment, with more on its history, on its own standalone page: "The Empty Room".

The above was composed by Mom Jo, born Alice Josephine Davis, after Dad Bill died of cancer in 1957. It was entitled "The Empty Room" and lay hidden among her keepsakes until her death in 1980.

I am writing this on her birthday and were she still with us, she would have been terribly embarrassed and would threaten to disown me if I mailed it for publication.

Well, old girl, it is on its way now and you can haunt me if you wish. But it is a beautiful work and deserves to be shared.

Finding the poem was a great relief to me because I was never sure you and Dad Bill were in love or had ever been in love. I never saw you hold hands or get mushy the way lovers are supposed to act and those little pecks of kisses would be hissed off the stage today where actors and actresses try to smother and swallow each other whole.

I remember the roaring battles where Dad was always going to pack up and get 20 states away from you and your kids. You countered by telling him he would have to walk because you were going to take the car and put 40 states between you, the old grouch, and his kids.

I especially remember those times when Inez and I are blasting the air with words we don't mean and making each other miserable until we finally see how foolish we are and laugh it away.

You and Dad Bill rarely laughed the storm away. As I recall, he usually went fishing or wood cutting, and you lost yourself in a novel until one of the kids, yours or his depending on the severity of the battle, created a minor catastrophe that brought you grudgingly together.

Do you remember when one of your daughters-in-law was berating one of your sons after a battle of their own? You chuckled, and she was so offended that she shouted, "Laugh. Go ahead and laugh. You don't know what it's like to live with a damned Jackson."

Happy birthday, Mom Jo, we love you and we miss you.

Lift Up Thine Eyes

Here and There

When we reach 70 years of age we can realistically assume that we have 93% of our journey in life completed. That leaves us little room or time to make something of ourselves if we have dallied along the way.

I dallied along the way. That isn't to say I wasted any time but I was caught up in pursuits that were exciting but not of the nature that would make my kinfolks proud to be related to me. Man is a pretty insignificant animal when you get right down to the nitty gritty. Even George Washington, the Father of our country, is remembered mainly for chopping down a cherry tree rather than for his wisdom, courage and leadership.

Having no clear goal in mind to achieve fame and recognition in the remaining 7% of my life I feel the next best thing is to write my own obituary and save my survivors or a friend the embarrassment.

To Whom It May Concern

John Richard Jackson, formerly of Creede Colorado and lately of Cedaredge, Colorado failed to awaken on (date)________________ and is presumed to have ceased living.

John was a hard rock miner in his early years who was often described by his friends as being "not all there". He was cremated by prior request and his ashes are here while his soul is there. His friends are now qualified to say that he is neither "all here" or "all there".

He was preceded in death by his parents, Wm. T. (Billy) and Alice J. (Jo) Jackson, two brothers, Joel T. and William C. (Scooter). He is survived by his wife, Inez M. of the family home and a sister, Pauline Roberta Bates of Gunnison, Colorado.

John requested no services until he is either "all here" or "all there". Since such disposition is highly unlikely at the present time and he failed to leave a forwarding address for either here or there no services are planned by his survivors and his ashes shall remain at the family home, for viewing, until next yard sale.

If anyone be so inclined John requested that any contributions in celebration of his departure be directed to "The Creede Historical Society", Creede, Colorado 81130.

May he rest.