Letter from Eugene Lorig
Growth – July 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
I read somewhere that people were happier during the Great Depression than in subsequent prosperity. Things were rough, but most of us had enough to eat, and there was a community of feeling we don’t have any more, at least around here.
Perhaps there is that kind of feeling among the indentured servants who subsist, ten to a trailer, on six-dollar-an-hour jobs catering to the resort barons.
There is a lot of money here, but not much fun, except organized softball. I told a friend that I would like to play, but I couldn’t hit or throw, and wasn’t much of a fielder. He said, “Gene, you’d fit right in on our team.” But I didn’t go out, so I guess it’s my own fault.
Eagle County has more than a million acres, and at least two-thirds of that is open space of one kind or another. You get a quarter of a mile from a town or road, and you don’t see a sign of anybody. That’s nice, if you like solitude, which we do, but it makes you wonder why people live here.
I wish we were included in your magazine, but I can understand why not. We try to dissociate ourselves from Vail (Beaver Creek Quality is now the criterion for selling shanties here), but we’re being overwhelmed.
Our Spanish isn’t very good, but maybe we should move to Conejos County.
Keep giving them hell.
Eugene D. Lorig
Eagle
