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Saturday, August 30, 2014

The Strange Travelling of Time.

So here I sit on a moist Wisconsin evening, face into a nice grass of wine, thinking about some of the interesting things that have passed my way through what is now a rather long life. Somehow I got off on thoughts about covered wagons of the type used by early settlers moving into the west, the west we used to live in. In a way, it was along time ago, I would suppose, but in thinking, I recalled Art Miller who moved to Elizabeth Colorado in the early part of the 20th century. I knew Art and that seems in a way strange because that means I knew someone who came west in a covered wagon. This was ours---but it just moved in the yard---or was used for a camp for a few hippies.



Yes, it was 1970 and that was some 45 years ago, but I still find it strange that I would know someone who so many years ago was a part of that history. He came on the Smoky Hill Trail that came into Colorado from what I suspect was the Oregon Trail to the north. He told me the trails were still being used in the twenties which was hard to grasp. But in truth, in 1970,  that was only 45 years earlier, the same amount of time that has now passed since knowing Art. History is so recent it is almost impossible to comprehend.

In Art's early time there was no airplanes, no autos, no phone, no sound systems, just horses and wagons, telegraph. I knew this guy and I knew George McClellan who was born even earlier. He was a man who remembered a gun fight in front of the salon in Elizabeth where the local superintendent blasted some other bar room occupant over a disagreement. We drank beers in the same bar but had no gun fights, even though on one evening during the rodeo, I did get out my lever gun and scared the shit out of some drunken cowboy---that is a story in itself.

How can it be that we have come so far in so little time. I know that I am getting up there but to realize I knew folks who saw the wild west is almost hard to fathom. Still, I do remember in my early childhood reading how the last Civil War veteran had died---a drummer boy. Then, there was the death of the last slave. That was in my life time.

I talked many times with Art and George and they told of those times. We sat on the bench in front of our shop on Main Street, the same bench that sits in my backyard today here in Wisconsin. The street in Elizabeth was still dirt and some 200 ft wide to allow the cattle to be driven to the rail head behind our shop. What a memory. How can it be so close? Throw in a little wine and the brain has a way of remembering things once told. I guess I like that.


But here we are so many years removed. Tonight old songs of the west are adding to the memories and sitting on the bench, maybe with our covered wagon out front, bringing back Art's stories. Damn, it has happened fast. I can still see the dust of the streets in Elizabeth kicking up much as they did in George's time. We too had horses running through the town. I would seem age has an advantage of having memories from other times. I will rest well.

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