Nov. 29, 2001 - 19:25 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Three Acts

Being born and brought up in the sight of the Rocky Mountains, so tempting in the near distance, this propinquity has given me many joyous times in these mountains.

I was in my teens when I worked in this big furniture store here in Denver. My first real attempt to work a job and survive the whims of supervisors.

Three friendly boys who worked close to each other were in store and I was one of them. Lunch times would find us in the alley throwing a ball back and forth, summer time, a soft ball and fall, a midget football. We would go to shows and stuff like that and an occasional bash in the park, sack lunches and pop.

We all began to pine for the mountains, especially going to the mountains on our own instead of with the dreaded adults was an almost irresistable lure. We began to make plans, figured out everything but transportation. One of our group did have a car but fuel and oil for a trip to the mountains was beyond his means. So on the if and maybe can basis we decided we would chip in on the necessary vehicular transportation. Then came the hooha of shelter. We were not accomplished campers nor did we have the gear for it. No way could we afford to pay for a couple of nights shelter in the mountains.

A friendly lady who worked near us took pity one day when she heard us trying to figure out how to accomplish a trek to the hills. She knew us pretty well and liked us. She offered us the keys to a cabin she and her husband owned up in Apex, Colorado (an old mining town about ten miles north of Central City, just over the big hill from the Moffat Tunnel). She told us it was a cabin from the gold rush days and was pretty Spartan in its accomodations but had wood and water available, a stove, rough and ready dishes, pots and pans and mattresses with sheets and blankets. We were overjoyed and happily accepted the keys from her and proceeded to finalize our plans for a certain soon to come weekend.

So Thursday after work we bought the groceries and pop we figured we would need and stashed them in his car along with two cases of beer obtained shadily.

Our friend gassed his car on the way home that night and after work Friday we left from the store headed for adventure in the mountains by three boys, almost men. Jocularity reigned in the car on the way up but did not flood the floorboards. Our last stop was at Blackhawk at the grocery store just off the highway for milk and ice and then on to Apex. After leaving the highway there were some miles of narrow,twisty gravel road, on past an abandoned gold mine to the little cluster of cabins of Apex. Most of them were owned by Denver folk who used them for weekend recreation. That weekend we were the only people there and no one passed through.

We readily found the cabin from the description furnished us. It was built of logs, with a corrugated iron roof, two rooms an outhouse and path, primitive sink and stove, a pot or two, mismatched table ware. We scrounged wood from the pile outside to heat the cabin in the cold of the night and drew water from its source.

We were ravenous and hurriedly built a fire and forged a few hamburgers which went nicely with bermuda onion slices and mustard, washed down with a bottle of beer. We spent two wonderful, cool, clean nights up there and when it got dark, it was really dark with no city lights to cast a glow on the underside of the clouds, the silence was deafening yet somehow very comforting.

As city boys who had only been in the mountains on infrequent picnics for the day we enjoyed to the max the open freedom available to us. It was not crowded and cluttered like our town of Denver. We played in the stream nearby, climbed around the steep hill behind the cabin, ate frequently, had a few beers and a lot of coffee, relaxed and explored an empty country where we were the only people around. We marveled at the mountain scenery. We reveled in disturbing the peace of the nature around us, but the echoes harmed no one. What a blast we had.

Late Sunday night found us back on the road to town and the approaching monotony of day to day work.

ACT TWO

I reached my majority while at the store and moved on to work at a wholesale liquor distributor at a higher wage, one of us kept working at the store and the third member fell out of sight - moved and no forwarding address.

I had registered for the draft by then and was invited to go to work by a super at the freight house who knew me through my Mom who had a Western Union office nearby. There I spent World War Two.

This and tomorrow's entry makes a tale in Three Acts . . . . . . . .

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