Hearse Story

Since I have had so much time on my hands lately, and there are only so many Netflix series to watch, I returned to Google search and sought to find a picture of a place that gave me might mares since I was a child. The above building is identified as The Monarch Crest Cafe & Curios located atop Monarch Pass, Colorado. It burned to the ground in 1988 because the Salida Fire Department's newest truck blew its engine heading up the Pass.

That place does not look menacing now, but I vividly recall it at night decades ago when my parents would stop their for something to eat after crossing Monarch Pass on our way to Gunnison, Colorado for a fishing trip. There is nothing about the building to scare a little boy. But in the dark of  night when we pulled in or left the restaurant, my dad would forever take me over and lift me up to look inside the old hearse parked in front. 

I found the above photo in a the Salida historic photos. It shows a buggy that looked much like the old hearse in front of the Monarch Crest except there were no side doors. Instead there were windows through which you could see the casket of the dearly departed.  I seem to recall a fake body in the casket - perhaps it was stuffed with straw.  I know there was something there that terrified wee me. He also delighted driving on the side of mountain passes pointing his right hand at the vistas and then narrowly avoided falling down the side of the mountain. I thank my father for these forever fears.

In this time when almost everyone is terrified about the future, look back with me to a little boy being terrified of a thing in box atop a huge mountain pass in the dead of night.  That is scary.  It is something you do not get over. What we are going through will end.  There will be a new normal. The thing that is the worse right now is me looking with suspicion at someone in the grocery store. And that person looking back at me in the same way.