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Sleighrides and Hayrides

A Shire approximately the same color as I remember Sarge

Ever in search of a sustainable home-based business, Dad thought that providing hayrides during the summer and sleigh rides during the winter would be a good moneymaker. So Dad bartered something (I don’t remember what) for two draft horses.

Ace and Sarge were very large Shires, a particular breed of draft horse that actually exceeded the size of the better known Clydesdale (of Budweiser fame). These horses were so large that we couldn’t get saddles for them, so we rode them bareback. This was rather like riding an elephant. Even adults walked bowlegged after a short ride.

Once we had the horses, we also acquired a wagon and a bobsled. Then, it was time to go to “the city fathers” and discuss the business idea and get their blessing.  As it turns out they weren’t too keen about having horses clop-clop through town and leave their business behind in the street. Of course Dad had a solution to that!  I would walk behind carrying a large shovel and scoop up the “road apples”. You can imagine how anxious I was to perform that duty. Thankfully, the city still didn’t go for the idea and I never had to suffer the humiliation of my school mates seeing me scooping up horse droppings throughout town.

We kept the horses and they came in very handy later when we built the log cabin. We also kept the sleigh and wagon for a while. We used them to carry friends and family around the rural area outside of town near the Buck House where we lived before building the cabin. The wagon and the bobsled were very fun to ride in, but it was the bobsled that I have the fondest memories of. Wrapped up in wool blankets, drinking hot apple cider, dashing through the snow and singing Jingle Bells (of course) will be something I never forget.

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The Buck House

View from Bald Mountain & The Buck House

In the spring of 1978, we moved from The Sauer House in Central City out into an even more rural area of the already rural town. Dad built a house for someone by the last name of “Buck” and in keeping with Central City tradition we dubbed this house The Buck House. As it was so far from civilization the owners were worried about vandalism and my family stayed in the house while it was finished up and before it sold. Dad called it a “spec house” which just meant that the owner built the house on the speculation that it would one day sell. Well, it didn’t sell right away and we lived there in the mean time.

The Buck House was a much larger house than we had ever lived in. In fact, it was so large that to conserve on the electric bill Mom and Dad closed off the entire basement and turned off most of the heat down there in the winter. The upstairs already had enough room with a master bed & bath, a main bath, three additional bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and dining room. Downstairs was a huge rec room, two additional rooms and the laundry. So, in the winter, they stuffed a door-sized piece of foam in the doorway.

This house was located on Bald Mountain in an area called Kings Flats. Mom and Dad bought a 5 acre mining claim not too far from where the Buck House was built and they prepared to build their own house. But… the bank wouldn’t loan money to build a house on an unimproved road. Unimproved?? What was that supposed to mean? It turns out that the property sellers didn’t fully disclose that the road wasn’t plowed in the winter time on a regular basis (only when the county got around to it). That meant to the bank that it was unimproved road and they weren’t going to loan money for building.

So, mom and dad decided that if the bank thought we were too rural and they had to build without a loan, then we were just going to get even more rural. They set about finding out what other properties were owned by the same real estate agency and traded a five acre mining claim on the outskirts of a very small town for a five acre claim way the hell out in the woods.

That summer dad and I moved into a tent on the property while we started building the cabin.

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The Sauer House

In the fall of 1976 my family moved from Lakewood, Colorado to Central City, Colorado. Central City is a very small tourist town almost due west and 3,600 feet up. These days it is a gambling town which is much different from the tourist town it was. Back then the Central City Opera Company provided houses to the opera performers during the summer months and in the winter they rented them out. These houses were Victorian in architecture and fully furnished with antiques. They were perfect for a family to move into into in the fall, but only if they would be ready to move back out six months later.

We moved into a two story house at 218 Eureka Street called “The Sauer House” just up the street from the elementary school I would attend for 4th grade. Many of the homes in Central City were named after the original owners of the homes. This one was no different, but I have no idea who “Sauer” was and what he meant to the community… just that at one time the family owned the home.

This house was very exciting to move into when you are nine years old. After all, I had never lived in a house with a parlour – and didn’t even know what one was until I did. Ours had an upright piano, something that my mom was really excited about too even though she didn’t actually play. Baby Charlie slept in the master bedroom with mom and dad, Jen and I had separate rooms upstairs. The rooms were up a very steep staircase on the left and right side of the upper landing for the stairs. We thought it was very cool that each of us had a little door on the east side of the room. The door was short because this was where the roof of the house came down and space became unusable. So the owners of the house built in closets… but not just any closet… this was “wardrobe” that I could walk into, turn left and end up in my sister’s wardrobe. It connected our two rooms and for a young boy who had just found Narnia the year before this was seriously cool stuff.

As much as Jennifer and I were very happy to have our own rooms, before the six months were up we had moved back in with each other and made the unused room a playroom. The house was old, mom and dad were an awful long way away and Jen and I were very close siblings who had spent the previous year sharing a room in an apartment. So it just made sense to us to share a room again. Funny now when I think about it, Jen was the same age as my youngest daughter is now and I can see her wanting to share a room… and long as she didn’t have to and it was her choice.

The Sauer House was very unique and something I will always remember, but the six months were up very quickly and my family moved into a house that my dad built with his boss Greg. We called it The Buck House.