Brief by Reggie Morton
Local lore – December 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
While no real rival to Lynda La Rocca’s address in the “Stupid Zone,” we on U.S. 50, a.k.a. Th’ Backbone o’ ‘Murica, see our share of interesting droppers-by. My Dear Wife, the urbanite, tells me that this is nothing special, but as someone who has never before lived on a thoroughfare big enough to have painted lines, I’m continually amazed by our drop-in guests.
One of our first door-knockers was a nice fellow who made no long issue of flashing his NTSB badge. Turns out he was on his way down from old Monarch Pass where a light plane had crashed, when his truck had broken down outside of cell phone range. He refused the proffered cheap beer, which was OK with me since it was my last. We did what we could, and he was soon rescued from a scary night outside of Denver by a co-worker driving by and recognizing the rig, which seemed pretty hard to mistake for your usual truck due to the smashed airplane on back.
Just yesterday the dawgs howled the arrival of another broken-down truck. Seems this one was hauling fingerlings from Gunnison to the Shavano fish hatchery, and the driver noticed an idjit light glaring when he arrived at Maysville. This phenomenon is not at all uncommon. Often, heavily laden vehicles, usually SUVs towing ATVs on the way to an ATM, throw a worn belt while revving the bejeezus out of the motor climbing Monarch Pass, then the driver finally notices the overheat warning once he’s out of the downhill curves.
This fellow was nice enough too, and refused my offer of sizzling, oily coffee (it was still morning, a good hour before time to switch to beer). He used the hard-wired phone to call up a rescue, and they spent about an hour dipping little fishies from one truck to the other. Later that day I realized that he’d left his address book, replete with credit card codes, lying on my desk. I took this as an excuse to try firing up the old Jeep, success at which led to a trip down to the hatchery and of course a stop at the Victoria bar to catch up on gossip.
Most of the knocks on my door have been rapped by folks in a genuine jam, and haven’t involved much in the way of inane questions. Oh there are some who have watched this old house for a long time (like I did for forty-some years) and just want to stop in to see what brand of fool is trying to make a go of it this time. To them I say welcome, and grab a load of firewood on your way in. But then we haven’t yet lived here through ski season.
Reggie Morton properly resides with his wife Denise Brown down at the Yellow House in Maysville, but could more reasonably be said to “live” in his old cabin with a sketchy roof above Billings Lake.
A previous owner of the Yellow House, Eric Moore, wrote about his adentures in the October, 1997, edition of this magazine.
