A Door on North Colorado Street

Walsh, Colorado    •     June 4, 2009
Photo by Beau Bosko

Old things tend to fascinate old people. The young ones have the world ever before them.  Vast and unspeakable numbers of the race are caught in the middle, looking both ways at once.  But graybeards like me are prone to looking back.  With the road trip mostly done now, memories become more invigorating than anticipations.

Meditation doesn't reveal why old doors intrigue me.  Behind them is mostly emptiness and abandonment, dust and debris, a smattering of relics too valueless for the auction or the attic.  The facade that these neglected entryways present to a disinterested world becomes an unintended mural of decay, dissipation — some forgotten thing, long gone asunder.

Some towns are more ruined than growing, more evocative of loss than of gain.  A dispassionate wayfarer, steering a path off the highway to ramble along unhurried streets and quiet lanes, sees fading expressions of the time ago, the once was, an olden era when the paint was fresh, the panes of glass clear, and the doors open to the vital moment.

Were change and circumstance to force my hand and make me flee, I'd rather retreat to the ruined place, not the place vitally becoming.  So it is today, cold and sunny at the tail end of a brutal winter, when the idea of being alone and isolated appears more desirable than participation in the fray.  Other days, caught up in the dreaming, I pine for the bustling city, constantly moving and filled with ephemeral delights.

An old door facing west onto the street of North Colorado, town of Walsh, speaks to a bittersweetness of perspective running through me like malt vinegar on spice cake, like a swift and nameless creek beneath a sturdy bridge on the lane oft traveled.  Never able to make good sense of my past, I return to it again and again in search of causes, justifications, the reasons why and why not.  The old things I encounter in the physical realm inform and kindle acts of reflection.  I fall, willingly, into The Dissolution. 

Walsh is located on U.S. Route 160 in southeast Colorado.  A sign on the highway indicates a population of 723.

  L I N K S :

'Once the dollars leave, they don't come back.'
A feature about Walsh written and recorded by National Public Radio

Door 144
Las Vegas, New Mexico
 

Fri 03/05/2010 12:25
Karen Steele of Dodge City, Kansas, writes:
I work at Boothill Museum in the Longbranch Saloon on the weekends. The two-piece bar in the saloon is said to have come out of a hotel in Walsh, Colorado. It's an 1881 Brunswick, handcarved cherry wood, except for the top, which is formica to preserve the wood. I will be starting my fifth year bartending. The website for the museum and saloon is www.boothill.org. Thank you for the interesting articles.

Mon 03/08/2010 13:41
Jeremiah Estes of Combs, Arkansas, writes:
Was the "Gem" open for business? The line, "Were change and circumstance to force my hand and make me flee, I'd rather retreat to the ruined place, not the place vitally becoming," seems illustrated by the storefront reflections in the window of the ticket office. The image reflected is the "place of vital becoming," but if you walked through the glass to the other side, you would enter "the ruined place."

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Wednesday, March 3, 2010