The announcement came out to all IBM managers; 30 years and out retirement package, no deduction for age. I had started working for the International Business Machines just four months after graduating from high school and I would be 50 years old the next year. It suddenly hit me, I could retire the next year with full pension and they even gave a bridge to retirement where they paid your society security until I reached age 62. On top of that, they gave one year’s pay to further sweeten the pot. I was a manger in Southlake Texas, with over 40 people on two shifts of a computer room and help desk with Hispanics, Asians, African American and whites. The stress level was off the charts, and I knew if I waited until I was 60 or 65, I would be a dead man.
The next day I put in the paper work to see exactly what my monthly check would be. Two days later it came back, $3000 per month. Hey, I can do this. Only problem was my wife at that time didn’t want me to do it. The more I talked about it, she keep saying no. I thought no, I’m going for it. I put in the paper work to retire at 50 years of age.
Next thing I know, my wife of 14 years says I’m moving out and I want a divorce.
I had a son in Colorado, who had just got out of college and had taken a job near Florence, CO. His girl friend’s father had land there. I decided to take a week’s vacation and check it out.
High altitude and clean clear air won me over around Canon City. I contacted a Realtor® and started looking at land for sale. After several dead ends, I decided on 40 acres about 20 miles from Canon City. When the agent and I walked the land we jumped two mule deer bucks. “I will take it” came out of my mouth. The agent said, “Now you understand, no running water and no electricity?” This was in 1991 and I made an offer for $20,000. About a week later the owner came back and said offer accepted.
My wife filed for divorce and I decided to delay the retirement until the following year in 1992.
After the divorce and my retirement in June 1992, I drove up to Florence, CO to stay with my son. The ponderosa pines on the 40 acres were beautiful and I watched mule deer ever day. Now I made plans for a cabin. After about a month, I became friends with the owner of the 40 acres next door. He had an A-Frame cabin and a barn about half finished. These 40 acres also had a nice lake stocked with rainbow trout.
After talking with him, it was clear, he was very unhappy with no electric and no running water and he had to go to work every day in Canon City about 20 miles though the mountains on dirt roads.
I returned to Texas to think it over. About two weeks later I called him and said I will give you my 40 acres and $20,000 cash. He said I will think it over and call you back. Another two weeks went by, which seemed like a month and he said “I will take your offer” I sent him a cashier’s check and the lawyer said “Done.”
They moved out and I moved in with what little I had left after the divorce. It was just me, a chocolate Lab and a sorrel quarter horse. This was a one room A-Frame cabin with no electric and no running water. It did have a telephone line but only dial with no electric. With 3 children and mom/dad, I had to have a message recorder, after a trip to Radio Shack and about an hour with their tech support boy, we got a recorder powered with a 12 volt battery. Now I could be out in the mountains all day and still get messages in the evening. A LP gas heater was in the corner of 
the A-frame but I wanted a wood burning stove and spent a week installing one with river rock on the wall behind. The cook stove was also gas and two lights on the wall. The wall lights had mantles like a Coleman lantern. They put out a good light about like a 100 watt bulb. I also bought two solar lights to put at the front and back door.
This cabin had a small room about like a closet. I decided to install a sink and a mirror. The grey water went out under the cabin into the gravel. I heated a large 2 gallon coffee pot full of water on the stove and took a stand up cowboy bath. Hardest part was shampooing my hair and rinse several times. You don’t realize how handy a shower is.
The previous owners went to the bathroom in a pot and dug a hole for it every two or three days. I decided to build an outhouse (pictured left). Took me a week but this outhouse was first class. The view was nice across a valley below. It was a two seat outhouse made out of pine boards and red metal roof. I dug a deep hole into hard sand stone earth, with 4×6 timbers as the base. A box of lime with a dipper was the flush.
A week later as I went for my morning relief, I watched three black bear cubs in the valley below. The wind was in my favor so they went their merry way (pictured below). How often do you go to the bathroom and see The Three Bears?
The barn was not finished and my quarter horse gilding had no place to stay. I decided to start working on the horse barn. A neighbor down the road about 3 miles had a pile of 20 foot corral poles and I made him an offer of $3 per pole. He quickly said “That’s a deal” and two weeks later “Socks” had a corral. It took me about a month to finish his stall and sliding door into the barn. There was a saw mill near Canon City and I used rough cut 1×8 pine boards. I finished the west end of the barn and put on a red metal roof.
I could not wait to go fishing in the 80 foot deep lake across from the cabin. This lake had been dug by a crew looking for uranium years before. Story was, they hit a large spring and it filled so fast they lost a truck and backhoe.
I waited until dark and cast a double night crawler out into the deep water. About an hour later, when I was about asleep, I had a hard run and landed a three pound rainbow trout, which became my breakfast the next morning. I decided the lake needed to be restocked. I found an ad in the local paper and ordered 100 rainbow trout. A few days later a truck pulled up with three Indians inside. We drove over to the lake and starting dipping them out. They were beautiful and larger than I expected, around 15/16 inches. I bought some fish pellets and started feeding them a coffee can full each morning. I tied a brown tan fly that looked about like a fish pellet. If I was real careful and cast into the floating pellets, I would catch one trout. The water was crystal clear and these trout could tell my fly was not a pellet but after three or four days they would grab it again in the excited feeding frenzy.
At the north end of the 2 acre lake was a shallow area and I noticed lots of crawfish and lots of holes along the bank. I built a crawfish trap with funnel openings on each end. Ground squirrels that looked like a small tan prairie dog were everywhere. I shot one and opened it up with my knife and placed it inside the trap. Later after dark, I walked over with a bright flashlight and shined into the water. I couldn’t believe my eyes; the trap could not hold anymore large crawfish and a hundred more were on the outside trying to get to the squirrel. I ate boiled crawfish for the next three days. Canon City had a French restaurant, and the menu showed crawfish entrees. I ask the owner where he got his crawfish. He said they come frozen from LA. He said he would buy all the live ones I could bring in and give me credit for meals at his restaurant. Later I started taking dates and family for fancy French meals. When they ask why I never got a tab, I just said the owner is a friend of mine.
I would sometimes go a week or more and never talk to anyone. You can’t believe how quiet it is without electricity and no little lights shining in the cabin after dark. The stars were so bright at 9000 foot altitude and the Milky Way looked like a white road. With no TV, books became very important and I read by the gas light every night. My nearest neighbor was two miles away on a 5000 acre ranch. The mom was in her 60s and the son with full black beard and beat up felt cowboy hat was around 40 years old. They ran a 1000 head of sheep with an Indian sheep herder. I became friends and would help them with the sheep, riding my horse over the mountain to get to their place. They had two milk cows and mom was bottle feeding around 10 orphaned lambs twice a day. Watching them work and looking around the modest house was like stepping back in time. Mom said some squatters are moving in about three miles up the valley, next thing you know they will be trying buy me out. Each morning when I came out on my front porch, I could see the Indian moving the flock up through the saddle in the mountain. They looked like white lava flowing along.
When I left IBM, I got a large sum of money and also my share of the home sale. My CPA said I needed some tax write offs that first year.
The son Dusty said he had a friend that would sell me 15 steers and buy them back come winter time. I ask Dusty if I could pasture them on the 5000 acres and split the profit come winter. He said yes and they also had access to 2000 acres of BLM land that had been in the family for 50 years. They paid $2 per acre to the federal government. So the cattle arrived in late June, no grass before that date at 9000 foot level. We got a weight ticket on the 15 yearling steers and turned them loose. They were part longhorn and had been born in the mountains and by afternoon they were grazing up high. I watched them with field glasses for two days, then saddled the horse and started looking for them on the third day. Never did find them on the fourth day. Dusty said they will be in bear hollow where the water hole is. Dusty explain to me how cattle will only graze a mile in all directions from a water hole. After all the grass is eaten up, you have to drive them to the next water hole. This was all new to me as I had raised cattle in Indiana on 50 fenced acres, not in remote mountains with no fence. Next day I found bear hollow and the small water hole, sure enough, fresh cattle tracks. While I was eating my sack lunch two hours later, here they come in to get water. All 15 head and they looked good and slick. The grass in the mountains is extremely high in protein and they gain weight fast. After about two weeks Dusty helped me drive them to the next water hole. While we were going through a thick stand of pine trees, a momma black bear went out with two cubs. The wind was in our face and when my horse got a nose full of bear he decided to go home. When he jumped a log, an overhead limb knocked me off. I didn’t break anything except my pride. Dusty rode up and said “Damned flatlander horse”. He said sit down; I’ll see if I can catch him. About an hour later he came back leading Socks. We finally got the cattle to the next water hole and they all got a drink. It was dark when we got back to the cabin.
After a month of only seeing Dusty and his mom Hazel, I decided to go into Canon City on Friday night. All my trips to town had been to purchase supplies; I needed a cold beer and someone to talk to. I parked on Main Street and ask the first man I saw about where to get a beer. “Oh that would be Kate’s, and they have a band tonight” Kate’s was about 2 blocks down on the corner in a beautiful old brick building. It was about 8 pm and the band started at nine, lots of people going in the door. Being from Texas, I had on wrangler jeans, long sleeve western shirt, George Strait cowboy hat and boots. When I walked through the door and up to the bar, all eyes were on me. I stood out like a sore thumb. All the local men looked the same. Full beards, T-shirts and caps with pig tail hanging out the back. About half way through my first beer, a young lady came up and said “Are you from Texas?” Yes Miss I am. “I thought so, you can always tell a Texan but you can’t tell him much” Colorado people don’t like Texans; they come to the mountains and buy land and hunt their elk and mule deer. After my second beer and the band started, a young lady invited me to sit with her and her girl friend. I had been married 13 years and I had not been around any young women. I was a little rusty to say the least. Both gals danced with me and couldn’t stop asking me questions. I later became known as the retired IBM executive from Texas. Kate’s soon become my Friday night hang out and the locals finally accepted me.
My chocolate Lab, Max, always slept on the back porch. One night about 3am, Max’s barking woke me up. I got up and found my flashlight and opened the door upstairs off the loft bedroom that had a small porch. The moon was bright and I could see something large and black. At first I thought it was a cow as this was open range and I had no fences. But when I turned on the flash light, there was the biggest black bear I had ever seen. He was after Max’s dog food. Max had backed up around the corner of the cabin but was still barking like crazy. The big black was making a huffing noise and snapping its teeth. I stepped back inside and pick up my 30-06 rifle; I wasn’t going to let this bear kill my dog, season or no season. When I jacked a round into the chamber, the bear took off up the mountain. I fired one into the air to hurry him along. Two weeks later I came home one evening to find my gas grill 50 yards down the mountain in a total wreck. Later on I heard of a wood cutter that had trouble with a big boar black bear. He lived in a small camping trailer while he was cutting wood and had told his friends about the bear and purchased a .357 revolver. When he didn’t show up in town for an important court date, his friends reported it to the local game warden. It was a grisly scene at the trailer. The front door was torn off and they found 4 bullet holes and the empty gun on the floor. The blood trail led them to what was left of the wood cutter. A large bear trap was set the next day and they soon had the killer.
Examination of the stomach showed the woodcutter’s ring and parts of his shoes. I decided to never be out in the mountains without a gun.
The fall turkey season was about to begin and my son’s girlfriend’s father had some good turkey land down the creek from me. Opening morning I was in some oak brush that was full of acorns. Everywhere I looked I saw bear scat, large black piles. A small flock of turkeys showed up and I shot a young Jake. On the way back to the truck, I came around a corner of the mountain and saw a black bear feeding in the creek below. He was about 50 yards away and turning over rocks in the water. The mountain on the right was a cliff and went straight up. I was on a narrow trail and the bear was about 6 feet below me. I could see my truck parked about 300 yards ahead. He had me cut off, with no other way around. My rifle was a .22 magnum, not what you would call a bear weapon. I took a few steps hoping I could pass him but he heard me and stood up on his hind legs. You can’t tell what a bear is going to do by his eyes; they are always the same beady black look. It was a face off for 15 minutes, neither of us made a move. All my other encounters with black bear had ended the same. They always ran off as soon as they saw or smelled me. Not this one, he just gave me that stare. All I could think about was the woodcutter. If he charged I would aim for the head. I finally decided to slowly try to pass him. Taking one step at a time and holding my hand over my head, I said “Hey bear” over and over. When I got even with him, he was just 15 yards away. He would turn to face me as I went by and never got down off his hind legs. I backed all the way to the truck and he was still standing there when I pulled out.
October finally came and federal law said you had to have cattle out of the BLM ground before hunting season started. Since Dusty and Hazel’s land had no fences between them, the cattle had to be rounded up and sold. Dusty and I found the herd and started to drive them back to the ranch. They kept breaking up and running off. I thought this is going to take forever. Dusty said to be patient, they will settle down soon. He was right; suddenly they lined out on the trail and went straight to the barn. Dusty had a large cattle scale and we soon had the new weight ticket. They had gained two and a half pounds per day. This was amazing since they were climbing mountains most of the time. Cattle prices were high and when Dusty got his half, he just stared at the check and said “Wow”. Dusty and Hazel were rich with land but poor with income.
Mule deer season was soon coming in but I’ll tell that story another day.
Article and photos contributed by Russell Porter.
