rockie's Weblog Site • NuTang.com

...the Wild West... could it be the air ?...after all..we are at about 8,000 feet...give or take a few hundred feet one way or another, depending on where it is you stand...but the air is thin...for hundreds of years folks have been drawn to this place..what has been referred to by the Ute Indian tribe, and other Native American tribes that used this place as a summer playground as "the Island in the Rockies". Well, now it will, for awhile,anyway, be remembered as the home of the "Armageddon 'Dozer" as some folks are calling it... It happens that the few dealings that I had with Marv, (the 'Dozer Driver) were memorable because they seem to show two sides of the man.... More than a year ago, we had an appointment with Marv at his muffler shop. because my wife had several other appointments that day, we were not going to be able to get the family van in to have the muffler repaired. It just so happened that it was going to be Marv's last day in business. He was boarding up the shop and going on an "adventure" as he put it. But since we could not make our appointment, he told us to come in the next day, and he would take care of us. He did. I guess we were his last formal customers, but I could tell by the kind of guy he seemed to be that he would "take care"- or help people at a drop of a hat. The last time I saw Marv, I didn't know it was him at first, but it was a "hairaising" experience. I was coming home friday from a doctor's appointment in Vail, about 2 1/2 hours from our home. I was driving on Highway 40 and was just going through Parshall when a white pick-up pulled out of the bar parking lot (about the only business in Parshall) onto the highway in front of me. I had to slow down a bit for the truck, and, as many locals in the area tend to do, he took his time to get up to just below the speed limit.I considered passing him several times, but I was not feeling well (my usual grumpy self!) so I just shined it on and nestled myself in a short distance behind him. I followed him through Gore Canyon, through Hot Sulphur Springs (the county seat), through the pasture lands between there and Granby, and I was amazed at the fact that he was able to go exactly 1 mile an hour below the speed limit! We ( the truck driver and I) finally got to Granby at about 2:45 p.m., where the highway doubles into two lanes for both east and west traffic through town. The driver of the pick-up had stayed in the left (fast) lane but had slowed down to 40 in a 50 zone. I decided to bend the law a bit and pass this "farmer" on the right. But I had this nagging feeling...it brought the hair up on the back of my neck as I passed him...I avoided looking at him because I had this feeling that if I looked at him the wrong way he would yank his wheel to the right and sideswipe me...I just had a sense of foreboding...and as I got past him on the right and started to get a sense of relief, I glanced over and, oh, the "farmer" was Marv, and he was slowing down to turn off the highway, and then he would take a quick left onto the dirt road that would lead to his shop and a irrevocable place in Colorado history...http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E2195491,00.html

. This place has always attracted independant, free-thinking folks, folks that don't mind sacrificing all but the basics for the freedom that seems to come so naturally here, the wide, open spaces, going toe to toe with Mother Nature...and sometimes getting smacked down. I spent a day at the Fraser graveyard just reading the gravestones and learning a little more about Grand County (Grand is what the native Americans called the Colorado River, whose headwaters are here in Grand County, just at the foot of Rocky Mtn. National Park) I was amazed at the number of "unknowns" -folks who blithely challenged Mother Nature, went up into the mountains looking for gold or other bounty, went unprepared, and then got caught in an early or late season snowstorm, met thier demise, and were not found 'till the next spring thaw...or maybe the one after... I think Marv was a lot like that, but his demise was rules and regulations-just the sort of thing that people come here to get away from-or get away with stretching...