My mother's youngest brother, Steven, was born when my mother was 20. Steven, as the youngest, was still living with his parents when they bought a large ranch in Colorado in the 1960's. This is a story that Steven wrote about his dad, my grandad Joe Clarkson.
Dad's Story, by Steven Clarkson
We burned coal for heat in the small frame house we called home on the ranch. The stove was like a fireplace set in the end of the living room, opposite the kitchen. The coal--that black, shiny magical rock that takes flame and burns so warmly--was kept in a little lean-to shed outside near the chimney, waiting to be shoveled into a small metal bucket and brought inside to be fed into the stove as needed.
It was unusually cold and the snow was remarkably deep that winter. Dad announced, "We are running out of coal!", as he kicked the snow from his boots and set the coal shuttle on the hearth. Since the county plowed the road only as far as the cattle guard, Dad had, some weeks earlier, between storms, driven the old, yellow, pop-eyed Dodge pickup and left it at the cattle guard. So the plan was laid. Dad would get up at the crack of dawn, and since it was the only vehicle that could negotiate the snow, crank up the D-4 caterpillar with an old pickup-bed trailer behind, and head for the cattle guard.
He would then hope the Dodge would start, switch the trailer and continue on his way through DeBeque (Colorado) and down the Colorado River to Palisades where there was a small coalmine. (During the summer, we passed the mine each Sunday on our way to church in Grand Junction.) Dad would then purchase as much coal as the old trailer could haul and beat it back up the river, through town, up Roan and Dry Fork Creeks to the cattle guard where he would hitch the coal laden trailer to the crawler and turn the tractor for home. With any luck it was possible, he thought, to be home before dark.
All went pretty much as planned except for the time estimation, Mother (Norma) was a worrier and as the afternoon sun went behind the Horse Mountain west of the house, casting its long shadow across the valley, she began to stew. She would walk to the big picture window and look down the valley toward the cattle guard, then cup her hand to her ear and try to hear the hum of the diesel engine. It always amazed us that the silence of the mountains enabled the sound of an approaching vehicle to be heard long before its dust could be seen. Of course, with this much snow on the ground, there was no sense in looking for any cloud of dust!
Afternoon dimmed to evening and the scene outside the window went from white to gray and then to pitch black. Mother's trips to the window were growing more frequent and tension was building. It was black dark now, not a star in the sky, and still no sign of Dad.
Mom got a lamp from the bedroom and set it on the kitchen table as close to the window as she could place it.
"What's that? Can you hear it? Steve, come see if you can hear something."
Cocking my head just a little I could barely hear the diesel engine off in the blacknesss. It was useless to look out the window because we had already discussed the fact that there were no lights whatsoever on the cat, but look we did---long and hard.
Finally, Mom pulled herself from the window and lit everything that would light on the little propane cook stove in the kitchen. The drone of the motor seemed to go on forever, but the fact that it grew steadily stronger gave us encouragement. Our excitement built as we could finally tell that he had crossed the creek and was climbing the hill, past the corrals and the trout ponds to the house.
He shut down the cat and Mom and I helped him down and into the house. He was so completely cold and stiff he could hardly walk. He grabbed a chair as he went by the table, sat down in front of the kitchen stove and stuck as much of his body as he could into the open oven door. He sat there for the longest time unable to say a word.
At last he spoke. "That light in the window is the only thing that kept me going. I was so cold and sleepy, if I could not have looked up and seen the light, I would have pulled over, gone to sleep, and frozen to death."
Quoted in "America the Beautiful: Joy in the Journey with Mother and Me" by Christine Clarkson Kelly, p. 99.
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