This was in 1962, back before the tunnels. In the early 70s, as part of the ongoing Interstate Highway program, the Eisenhower tunnel was bored more than a mile through the Continental Divide. Before I-70 turned Central Colorado into a mountain playground, US 6 & 40 switchbacked over Loveland Pass, dropping down towards the old mining town of Dillon. That entire area would be unrecognizable to someone used to Summit County’s current sprawl. For one thing, the original townsite of Dillon was situated where the reservoir now is. When they dammed the Blue River to increase the Denver water supply, the entire population was moved a mile uphill to its current location. This apparently was old hat for Dillon; it had previously upped stakes and moved twice before to be closer to the incoming rail lines.
We spent our first night in the doomed village, and continued north on Highway 9 a ways, pulling off at a ranch tucked into the foothills rising towards the Gore Range. My father wanted to do some horseback riding, having discovered several dude ranches during his library research.
All right! I’d spent a lot of the ‘50s watching TV Westerns: Lone Ranger, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Rifleman, Cheyenne, Rawhide, Wagon Train, Roy Rogers, Sky King, and of course, Davy Crockett. Back then, there were more horses on TV than football players. I believed that riding a horse was an American birthright, more so than driving a car. It was something even a kid could do, or so it seemed. It looked so easy – just sit tall in the saddle, click your tongue, and lash the reins back and forth across the withers.
I was not unfamiliar with riding, having taken lessons for a few years. But that was in “English” saddles: posting, manners, and learning about the five gaits: walk, trot, canter, gallop, and run. Western saddles were a bit sturdier, and Western horses had never heard of the effete canter mode. They slouched, ambled, galloped, and bucked. And knew very well when they had a hapless child on board.
Luckily, my dad was wise to horses’ tricks, having grown up with them on a ranch in Montana. He made sure I had an old, tired wheezing geezer to sit on. Much to my dismay, I could never get that bag of bones to do much more than shuffle along the gravel and stir up dust with his tail. Which was probably for the best, considering how sore my backside was after an hour or so; I felt as if I’d been stuck in a “splits” pose the whole time. I knew why cowboys always seemed to walk around bowlegged.
That afternoon, we stopped along the Blue River to cool off the beer and soft drinks my father had bought. I asked my father why he got beer and I didn’t. He tried out this story on me:
“Once, my brother Jack and I were walking out along a dirt road, coming home from a friend’s house where we’d been playing ball [base-, basket-, or foot- was never made clear]. It was summer, real hot, and we didn’t have anything to drink. We were sweating, miles from nowhere, and just sat down by the side of the road. In a couple of minutes, this old rancher drove by, and asked us if we needed a ride. We got in the back of his Model A. [It probably looked something like this.]
“The rancher leaned back through the window, and asked us, ‘You boys thirsty?’ Well, Sure, we were! He said, ‘There’s some beer back there, you can have some if you like.’ We looked around and there was a box in the corner with some bottles in it. They were ice cold, all frosty on the outside. We opened up a couple, and drank ’em down. Boy, that’s the best tasting beer I can ever remember! We never could figure out how he had it all so cold, there in the blazing son, in the middle of nowhere – he had to have been driving for miles when he picked us up.”
I’ve always remembered that story, evoking perfectly the stark emptiness of the eastern Montana outback, and my father’s strange ability to deftly switch the subject ever so slightly when it came to getting a straight answer out of him.
We pulled our cans out of the river. These were the stiff, thick old style aluminum cans, the ones it took a real man to crush, and needed a can opener to pierce. I’m sure they were just as cold as that old rancher’s truck bed beer, and my Barq’s probably tasted just as good as my dad’s Coors.
I watched the river clatter over its cobbly bed. To my left was a remnant of some log cabin, now just a right angle of round logs holding up the riverbank. I climbed up and peered through the aspen to the opposite shore. A few fir trees lined the banks on that side, roots exposed where the spring run-off had ripped the soil from beneath the trunks. The hot mountain sun, filtered by the shivering leaves, warmed and coddled me. I fell asleep there, listening to the river roll on by, dreaming of horseshoes and long neck beer bottles.