Mesa Verde -- Abort in The Common Room

*** I’m working on things to help Husband remember. He doesn’t rremember most of our vacations. This is helping, at least for now. Thought I might share it with you . too as I don’t write much now. Took several days, but here it is. Please remember that I can’t see it so typos may exist. ****

Our first try at Mesa Verde was in the old Buick – well, actually, it was my second try– Dad’s old ’41 Plymouth couldn’t make it beyond the first turn around parking lot place. It didn’t have the power and kept boiling over.
In the Buick, we had been smelling gas since the day before, but Gran thought it was exhaust from other cars. It died, and would not start again, just at a steep place on a double S, blind, curve. The car was on the inside, but there was no shoulder, so Gran had to stand on the outside, with his posterior hanging over infinity to direct traffic so that no one hit us from behind or collided with someone else coming from the other direction as they went around.
It took several hours before a ranger came to help. He could not get anyone from Durango to come out. He did get a garage in Cortez to say they would come. About three hours later, a very young man, chewing tobacco and driving an old tow truck, arrived. He had to drag up the xcar the rest of the way up, to find a place to turn around and drag the car down. There were only two seats in the truck, with a built-in tool box between. I sat on the box. The ride was very bumpy and I was quite aware that I had not had a chance at rest facilities all day. Just in case I forgot about the fearful road and height, every once in a while there was a big bump, a screeching sound and a lot of flying sparks (to go with the gasoline fumes). The young man would exclaim,”Oops. Dropped one off then,” which meant a wheel of the car had gone slightly off the edge.
At last, we got to the bottom, just outside the park gate, when, BOOM. The truck had a flat on an inside dual. We stopped in a rather open area and I sprinted for any cover I could find, which turned out to be a kind of dip in the landscape with a little brush in front of it.
I assumed that the guys would be occupied with the tire and went to half-masted squat just in time. As a river flowed forth, I heard two male voices calling. They had missed me and couldn’t find me – and I couldn’t stop the business at hand. I called out and heard a very raucous car horn behind me at a little distance. Swiveling around, I discovered that, although there was brush in front of me, there was none behind me, and the road had made a big curve, putting a personal portion of my anatomy totally on view to the traffic.
It was dark when we got to Cortez. The grandfather of young man owned Southside Garage. (May it prosper forever.) What good, people they turned out to be. The grandson helped us take our things from the car and took us to a pleasant little motel near a small café where we could have dinner. We tried to buy his, but he said he had a wife and baby who were waiting dinner for him.
He picked us up the next day and he and his grandfather had already found and installed a rebuilt fuel pump. For all of this, they charged $100 parts and labor and $50 for the tow. We didn’t have to go straight home. We could finish our vacation.
We found out that the grandson had never been farther from Cortez than Mesa Verde but longed to travel. He collected key chains from other places – most from the dime store. Gran “traded” one of those for a commemorative George Eastman key chain that he had gotten from Kodak. We exchanged Christmas cards and toys for the baby for years. When the grandfather died, they moved away and didn’t leave an address. I hope they are well and happy.

The next year, we tried again. I wouldn’t have, but Gran was not about to be conquered by a road. The photos are from that trip.