Nov. 30, 2001 - 20:51 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Act Three

Over time I made friends with the clerk at the railroad yard office and through him I met his baby sitter. After our first date I knew it was for real. Our courtship wasn't long and we started planning our wedding.

It was 1943, wartime, rationing. At our meeting we were both working, seeing as our folks were not flush enough to fancy up a wedding Heather and I planned and financed the whole thing, church, pastor and flowers.

A problem for us was how to get somewhere away for a week's honeymoon as all our cash was going to be sunk in our wedding. Heather's brother offered to take us somewhere he could manage in a one day round trip as he was working a job.

I remembered Apex, talked to Heather about it, she was enthused. I checked and found that my friend was still working the furniture store and that the generous lady still worked there too. He told me how to reach her by phone. I made a quick call was and the lady graciously offered us the use of their cabin for a week. I got the key and Heather and I made our final plans, we accumulated a weeks worth of groceries ahead of time, her brother managed to scrounge enough gas ration stamps to fuel the trip up and back twice.

We got married by the pastor of her church in a pretty wedding ceremony, bridesmaids in appropriate dress, with singer and all. We made a quick rush to her house and changed into "roughing it" clothes, got into her brother's car and headed up to Apex to spend a wonderful week alone.

Both of us loved the mountains and had spent a good deal of time when younger scrambling around the Colorado hills. She had been on many overnight fishing expeditions with her dad and family and wasn't expecting a week at a Taj Mahal. She had never been to Apex before but was entranced at the whole layout, cabin and all.

A curtain is drawn over our first night, it was enjoyed though.

So we had a whole week to learn to live with each other in a beautiful setting that had no other people around. No one passed through then, just like it was when we boys had been there before the war. We saw only one person while there. We hiked down to Central City and Blackhawk and at the grocery store just off the highway a lady waited on us there. On our walk into and out of Central City, looking into the store fronts we saw an occasional almost ghostly figure moving around in the back, but saw no one on the street. Back then it was truly a ghost town.

Usually there would be a brief rain in the afternoon while we were there, we would lay on the bed and listen to the raindrops pounding on the corrugated iron roof and feel so secure with each other, sheltered from the elements, close to each other. The days quickly passed, hiking, we went into that old store building and found some old bottles and cocoa tins, took labels from old cans, many wore the ancient Morey Mercantile, Solitaire brand labels. Morey Mercantile and Hendrie and Bolthoff, one in groceries and the other in hardware, blasting stuff and tools were in business during the gold rush up there. We found a nice spot and waded in the stream several times in the heat of the day. At night we would lay and with city ears listen to the deafening silence. There was no interference from city lights and the stars could be plucked from the sky it seemed.

Like all good things our honeymoon came to an end, Heather's brother came up and took us back to town and our wee apartment in the upper story of a house on the south side of town where we settled in to live a great life. It was a wonderful Act Three . . . . . . . . . .

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