Me and My Leper

(entry for 5/29/2024)

In 1950, just a few months after we moved to Montrose, Colorado, where I had just started the 5thgrade, we took a trip on highway 550, beyond our usual destination of Ouray, up onto what they then called the Million-Dollar Highway. (Because that was how much it had cost to build, back in the day. And to think that today a million bucks can barely pay for one MILE of highway!)

 

Our first stop after Ouray itself, where we of course visited Box Canyon (already one of our favorite places on earth), was at Bear Creek Falls, a short distance above Ouray, going south.

 

Now I have seen many waterfalls in my life, but Bear Creek is still one of my favorites. It’s not as beautiful as Multnomah or as powerful as Niagara, or even as breathtaking as Yosemite, but it has a lot going for it all the same. For one thing, for Colorado it’s BIG. (A lot more water than Multnomah in Oregon.) For another, it’s spectacular. It comes shooting out of a cliff face, where Bear Creek has carved an extremely narrow crevice, and it shoots out into space, falling to a much lower level where, after creating a small glacier-blue pool, it becomes a tributary of the march larger Uncompahgre River.




You can barely see it from your car, as you’re crossing over the top of it, but there is a large parking area where you can get out, stretch your legs, and take in the sights. And where you can (at least you could in 1950) meet a leper!

 

My mom, dad, and sister had all walked to the bridge over the creek to look down at the water as it zoomed beneath the roadway (on one side) and then soared out into space (on the other side). But I wanted to see the whole waterfall, all at once, and not by running from one side of the road to the other. So I trekked back in the direction of Ouray, to the far reaches of the parking lot, where I could look back and down and see everything at once. (See photo, above.)

 

There was another sightseer there too. He was young, probably below thirty. Certainly less than forty. He was short, probably five-two or so, and very slender, probably less than 120 pounds, and he was wearing a long-sleeved khaki shirt and full-length tan pants, and brown leather sandals without socks. He was grasping the railing and leaning out over emptiness so he could get the full benefit of the view. After a few moments he moved several feet to his left, still holding the railing. I moved to where he had been, convinced that it must be the best spot for watching the waterfall do its thing, since he had been there first. I ogled the cascade for what seemed like several minutes, though it was probably less than 60 seconds, and then, sensing my presence behind him, the man turned to face me. That’s when I saw it: a horizontal white cardboard placard, about five by seven inches, hanging by a leather thong around his neck. In bold, deep black, all-capital letters, it spelled out the word


LEPER



I froze. I had just been holding the railing at exactly the same spot where he had been holding it. He wasn’t wearing gloves. Neither was I! 

 

My only previous exposure to the word had been in reading the Bible, where the term somehow seemed to imply a sinful nature as well as a physical disease. Yes, Jesus had healed a leper. But then, the leper had needed healing! Just as the paralyzed man by the Pool of Bethesda had needed healing. Was it contagious? Was I infected? Short of some sort of medical miracle, was I doomed to disfigured death?

 

It turned out that a whole busload of people (mostly men, for some reason) from a leper colony in the south part of the state had come to visit Bear Creek Falls. I found out later that they had mostly clustered together, each with his own leather thong and placard, and that their leader was holding a sign up for all passers-by to see, just like my guy’s placard, except a lot bigger, and with an ‘s’ at the end of the word to indicate plural. But my guy had wandered off from the rest of the group, just as I had wandered off from my family, and here we were, facing each other, the leper and I. He didn’t say a word. Neither did I! Finally he turned and went back to his group, and, after a few moments, I followed him.

 

He was not disfigured at all, that I could see. If I had met him on the street, without the placard, I would not have given him a second glance. Yet I mentally and internally gave him many more glances than a mere second one, as my folks and I drove on south toward the distant Durango, where we had friends to visit.

 

Eventually I told my dad about it, and he assured me that the disease was not particularly contagious, and that my having held the handrail at the same exact spot was unlikely to have caused anything untoward to have happened.

 

But I will also admit that the next time I was in a restroom I washed my hands rather more vigorously and for a longer length of time than usual.


*

copyright ©2024 LegendKeepeer LLC


*


To see this blog post in proper formatting and with a nice looking header, or to see other posts in the Memory Blog series, you can click HERE.


To see posts in my other series, the Music Blog, which begins Friday, June 7, 2024, you can click HERE.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Cheesman Park (entry for 11/27/2024) Cheesman Park in Denver has always been one of my favorite places, from the first time I ever saw it, at age three or so, till the last time I saw it, about twelve years ago, now. If I saw it tomorrow I would still love it. And all this in spite of the fact that it was the setting for my first ever, and worst ever, nightmare. The Park, in real life and nightmare both, is long and narrow, running north to south. It’s two and half city blocks wide, and almost five blocks long. In other words, it’s almost a double square, but not quite. Its northeast corner is only five blocks away from the much more famous City Park, with its world-class zoo, duck pond, beautiful reflecting lake complete with band-shell and tour boat, Museum of National History, and semi-pro baseball field. But I prefer Cheesman. It has four claims to fame. The first is that it has a magnificent Greek-columned style pavilion near the half way point of its eastern edge. The pavilion ha...
Read more
Image
  Unscathed (entry for 11/13/2024) Sixty-nine years ago yesterday I escaped 'unscathed,' as they say, from a situation where everyone around me fell victim to a scourge of sorts. It happened in the beautiful Mount Baldy area of Washington County, Oregon, less than a mile above where I was attending boarding school at Laurelwood Academy, my first (and Junior) year there.  A photo of a nearby feature (at an earlier time of year) appears at the head of this post. It had been a warm fall, and winter still seemed a long ways away.  The leaves had started turning but were still on the trees. The underbrush was turning dry but hadn't died yet.  The number one song in the US was 'Autumn Leaves' by Roger Williams.  The number one recreational activity in Oregon was hiking, and would be for another few weeks. I guess that's why some idiot decided that our Saturday evening 'entertainment' that week would be to go for a hike in the woods.  At night.  In the woods....
Read more
Image
Pins (entry for 10/30/24) It was 1945. We still lived in Denver. The war was almost over, and they had stopped rationing gasoline and tires, so instead of taking the streetcar everywhere, we started driving a lot. That is, my dad started driving a lot, and the rest of us rode with him a lot. (He never allowed my mother to drive any car we owned, if he was in it too.) Now there were some things about life in 1945 that seem almost unbelievable now. One of those unbelievable things is that there was no such thing as a two-piece bathing suit, let alone a bikini. (The bikini wouldn’t be invented for another eleven years.) Another unbelievable thing was that women were not allowed to wear any skirt that showed their knees. Floor length was fine, mid-calf was fine, even something right below the knees was fine, provided she was careful. No bare shoulders, either. (There was no such thing as a sleeveless dress or blouse.) The only time that a woman, or a girl of nine or more years, was allowed...
Read more