Old NFO has a Christmas Tree post which
sparked a sixty+ year old memory of how my parents found some lifelong friends
in a small town where we had just moved.
My dad was managing an ice house in
Rollinsville, CO. That was in the days before home refrigerators were common.
The Estes Ice Company had a dam on Coal Creek and a large four story warehouse.
Blocks of ice would be cut out of the frozen reservoir, stored in the
warehouse, and shipped by rail to Denver where ice was delivered to homes and
businesses.
My Dad and I climbed a steep hill looking
for the right Christmas tree. He cut one down and ‘we’ dragged it down to the
road. He left it there and we went back to the house for the truck. When we
came back the tree was gone!
The next night my parents went into town
to the Stage Stop. There, nicely decorated, was ‘our’ tree.
Seems Mike and Vera Neal were driving
down the road, saw the tree, picked it up and delivered it to the Stage Stop.
From that awkward start, the Neals became lifelong friends and godparents to my
sister who came along a few years later.
Mike and Vera were childless pensioners
who had spent most of their lives in Central City when it was still a rip
roaring mining town. Both had previous marriages. They were lifelong staunch
Republicans and had a framed picture of President Eisenhawer with signature
prominently displayed in their living room.
Both were walking history books about
Gilpin County and were fine raconteurs. They had a house off the upper Moon
Gulch road that was a challenge to reach in the winter. We had many a Sunday
dinner there.
Old NFO has a picture of an aluminum
Christmas tree. I heartily approve. Growing up in rural areas with little or no
fire protection we lived with a constant awareness of fire danger. I have an
early childhood memory from Rollinsville of watching a family in their night
clothes standing in snow and watching everything they owned going up in flames.
Raising my own family, we always had an artificial
tree for just that reason.
