Leadville

I lived in Leadville Colorado from July 9th 2006 until April 13th 2007. It sits 10,200 feet up in the mountains, officially the highest incorporated town on the face of the North American continent. It is a creepy place in a way, an old silver mining town that somehow never died. Two songs by slipknot take me back there like nothing else. "Circle" and "Vermillion Pt.2," I can taste the cheap coffee I would buy from the Kum and Go on 4th and Harrison. Every morning I would rise and walk for coffee, and watch the moon over the eastern mountains turn into the coming sun. I went overtop of Hagerman's Pass in a 1988 Honda Accord with a bent antenna, 13,000 feet; this with friend Jeff who lived in a school bus. I remember Rex, the drunk who also lived in a school bus with his Sharpei Pokey. Rex woke each morning to Red Bull, Squirt and vodka. He wore a blue cat collar around his ankle and had a leather harness with the words "Colorado Association For The Blind" that he would put on Pokey; he would wear dark glasses and pretend to be blind when he flew so Pokey could come on board for free. I remember the dark winter nights, sitting at my window in the Tabor Grand Hotel-turned-low-income-apartments, watching the snowflakes that were pat as pillows and thicker than clotted cream. I would hear the howling wind, shrieking and thought of how terrified the miners and prostitutes must have felt living only in their shanty shacks. I remember Jan, the purple nosed drunk fry cook at the Golden Burro, driving me over the bridge at Redcliff, I-24 West. My God, what a place, and what a motley group of hard ass people who lived there. It draws you in, and you get stuck there, and by the time that town is through with you, you are drained of every good feeling you ever had. I'll go back though, that I do know. Times I feel like I have to...