Letter from Eugene Lorig
American politics – May 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors,
Am a little slow this morning. When I first read Larae Essman’s letter in the April issue, I thought by “Bush men” she meant a tribe of bloodthirsty savages living in a disease-infested swamp on a polluted river in a dark and forbidding jungle belt, their leader a superstitious ignoramus appointed by five witch doctors. My friends at the 666 Club enlightened me.
Have been searching for the proper word. “Plutocracy” is not strong or descriptive enough. I was going with “fascistic theocracy” but that is two words. But it does include the military.
Haven’t felt much like sitting at the old Selectric the past year. Got to hurting pretty bad, on account of having broken my neck fifty years ago, so had a cervical diskectomy and fusion in July. Pretty much recovered from that, but it’s much more difficult to recover from depression caused by the state of the Union and the world, and the realization that there isn’t much I can do about it. Ah, well, x-country skiing and snowshoeing on Grand Mesa have been undescribably good, and now it is spring in the low country.
Some months back [August 2002], Steve Voynick wrote on the history of Independence Pass. It has been an article of faith in the family that Grandpa F.J. Ebler and his partners built it. In fact, Progressive Men of Western Colorado, 1905, says that “In April, 1883, he met with an accident (in the Robert E. Lee mine at Leadville) which disabled him for a year, and when he was able to work again, he, in company with George Gilmore and George O. Rise, conducted a toll road in Pitkin County, remaining connected with this enterprise until the spring of 1885, when he disposed of his interest, and during the next two years worked for the parties he sold it to.” I remember him telling me that he had been the gate keeper at the top of the pass for two years. Perhaps Steve can enlighten me further.
Eugene D. Lorig
Paonia
