Idaho Springs

Post-Wedding Trauma

Miner Street in Idaho Springs

Idaho Springs

It was a beautiful Sunday night in mid-July. I had driven up from Denver early in the evening to do a wedding for a lovely couple — the bride was the daughter of long time Temple members, and the groom was a doctor who had taken care of our daughter. The bride’s family owned a house right on the shore of the magnificent Grand Lake, which is not far from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. The bride’s father raced his four man E-class sailing boat most days during the summer and then vied against some very stiff competition from others around the lake once each summer for the coveted Sir Thomas J. Lipton (of tea fame) Racing Cup. I had had the pleasure of being part of his crew on his trial sailing run – bringing sails about as the wind changed and then snagging a line with both feet and throwing oneself backwards out over the side to counterbalance a heeling hull, a.k.a., a leaning boat. Known as hiking out, it is at first quite terrifying, but then when you can do it with a sort of reckless abandon, it becomes quite exhilarating. One long afternoon’s sailing, however, seemed to be reckless abandon enough.

The wedding was a simple affair – a few dozen friends and family in a grove of tall trees not far from the lake home. The attire was informal; only the wedding couple’s attire stood out. There were no chairs in the grove, so everyone stood. The chupah was formed by draping a tallit over the lower branches of two very tall, intersecting trees. But the scene was quite special. Sunset with the Rocky Mountain range decked out in its covering of tremulous aspen intertwined with the deep green of spreading fir and sky seeking pine. The mountains are quite special all summer in Colorado. The air is crisp and invigorating – refreshing, clearing the lungs and lifting the spirit. Dense forests subtly perfume that air, while song birds lend it winged splashes of color and lilting, atonal notes. Rikki often says that a day in the high mountains is as rejuvenating as a week long vacation and sometimes even more so.

After the ceremony, we walked back to the house deck overlooking the lake. Good food, much laughter, and great conversation made the time pass much too quickly. No one else was in a hurry to leave, but I did need to get home. It was a two hour drive back to Denver, and it was already 11:30pm. I bid farewell, got into my Chevy, and began an unexpected adventure.

Grand Lake is the largest and the deepest such in the state. The entire area is over 3,000 feet higher than Denver’s 5,280 foot, mile-high altitude, and so the drive back is for the most part downhill. On a late Sunday night, there was absolutely no other car on the road. There was also no moon light to speak of, and not a single street light for miles. The road out of Grand Lake goes past Granby (with its incredibly long, massive lake), then straight down Berthoud Pass to Fraser, then past a small town of wooden shacks called Tabernash. On this dark night, my headlights were having much fun catching the numerous yellow road signs warning of the next hairpin turn, or of a deer crossing, or a beware of falling rocks. The road was smooth but rolling with many turns, brief rises, and long dips. It was in coming over one of those rises that I missed seeing a small rock that had fallen from the mountain side. My car passed over it and when it did, I heard a small ‘clink.’ Paused, no smoke. Nothing. The car didn’t miss a beat. I rolled on past the ski resort of Winter Park, and it was straight downhill from there to Elizabeth ... when I noticed that when I downshifted the car wasn’t slowing down. The brakes were okay, but I had no transmission. That clink must have taken off the transmission fluid cap. I think they call what I was now doing, freewheeling.

It’s years before cell phones were to come along, and nothing would be open on a Sunday night in these one-horse mountain towns. I couldn’t just pull over and spend the night around here. I had to get to a phone booth because in another two hours Rikki would be frantic. Then so would the state patrol and the FBI/CBI and who knows how many agencies one frantic lady could activate.

How many police were there in this entire area? Probably two, no doubt both asleep until their next shift. So I had no choice. I must not slow down. I would have to take the sharp turn at the end of the pass, then coast through Empire with enough speed to cross over the long Interstate-70 overpass so as to take the sharp left turn down the ramp and onto I-70/US-40 heading east. Without gears, I had no way to speed up. Ironically, the solution to the gravity of the situation was ... gravity.

Fortunately, it was a long downhill 10-12 mile drive to Idaho Springs, the next nearby city with a hotel and phones. Fortunately also, I knew that city very well. One has to go through it or by it on the way up Mt. Evans, which is where Temple Emanuel’s Shwayder Camp for Jewish boys and girls was located. I had spent many a summer day and evening there while a rabbi at Emanuel, and now still visited several times each summer since many of our Temple Sinai youngsters spent their “summers to build a winter on” there too. On many a trip back to Denver, especially when Rikki and the kids went along, a stop off in Idaho Springs at Beau Jo’s pizza or at the well visited gifts and ice cream parlor was a frequent occurrence.

There was an occasional car going west on the Interstate, but no one going in my direction. However, the highway was steep enough and I was coasting at over 80 mph. There was one very tricky maneuver still to negotiate. I would need to take the Mt. Evans off-ramp with every bit of this speed, and then when I get to the top of the ramp, I’d need to slow down enough to make the sharp left turn toward the town, while also maintaining enough speed to drive a long slightly uphill two blocks to the gas station, where I could park for the night and walk to the nearest hotel and a phone. I was holding my breath for much longer than it took to read that run-on sentence.

I negotiated the off-ramp, but slowed a bit too much at the turn. Creeping to the station was a nail biter, but not only did I get there, I had enough momentum to get right up to the front door. I parked, grabbed a pen and paper pad from the glove compartment, and began to write a note for the station manager telling him that I would return in the morning to get the car. But as I got out to tuck the note under a wiper blade, I saw movement in the gas station. There was just a dim light in the office, but there was definitely someone inside. Was it an employee . . . at midnight on a Sunday night . . . or, was it someone robbing the place? What the heck, I knocked on the door.

The guy inside looked a bit puzzled. Who would knock at midnight? Was it someone who ran out of gas . . . or, was it someone wanting to rob the place? Mutual confusion . . . a great title for a novel. He came to the door, looked me over, and unlocked it.

“What are you doing here this late at night?” he asked.

“I have the same question for you,” I responded.

“I’m writing some notes for the store manager. I won’t be in tomorrow. What’s your story?”

I told him. Wedding at Grand Lake, transmission out on the pass, coasted to the off-ramp, and barely made it to this front door.

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“Well, I need to get to Denver, but failing that I’ll have to wait for a tow truck tomorrow. Tonight, I’ll see if I can get into a hotel here and call my wife.”

“Well, maybe I can help you after all. It just so happens that I’m driving the tow truck down to Denver right now. I live in Englewood and if you live anywhere near there I’ll drop you and your car off at your house on the way.”

“I live a block from Englewood, just south of Hampden.”

“Man, we’re neighbors. You can call your wife on my phone over there by the counter. I’ll load on your car while you call. Then we’ll have to get a move on.”

The truism of all truisms is, “Better lucky than smart.” What are the odds that at midnight on a Sunday in a small mountain town like Idaho Springs (population less than 1,800), a person 45 miles from home would find a gas station whose owner is not only still in the store, but has a tow truck, and is leaving immediately for the very place that said person and said person’s car needed to be? I’d say the national lottery has shorter odds.

As it turned out, he towed my car to my car dealership and dropped it off in their front lot. The owner of the dealership was a Temple member and he knew my car very well. I left a note to tell him I’d call in the morning. And then on the way from the dealership to my house, a five mile trip, I thanked him many times over and told him that he had done a great favor. Some would call it a real mitzvah – not the commandment, but an exceptionally good deed. He looked at me kind of funny and asked my name. I told him.

“Oh, wow, you’re Rabbi Zwerin? We belong to Rabbi Goldberger’s shul, Beth Joseph. Wait till I tell my wife. She’ll plotz.

You know, it’s happenings like this that are truly Beyond Belief.