Cortez, CO

The silo is always out of the left side of the window in my memory. It wasn’t a very large silo but to my young eyes it was a thing of wonder. Old weathered gray with patches of rust along some of the seams it might be a water tower. I’m not sure anymore. But I would recognize it if I saw it again. When I would see it I would ask my dad, “How much longer to Cortez?” “We’ve still got a couple of more hours.” It was true but it didn’t seem true. To my young mind whenever I saw that tower it was only a little bit longer.
My grandmother lived in Cortez. It was eight hours from Salt Lake to Cortez and we would make the trek more than once a year. Probably more than twice. When we arrived in Cortez I always loved the great street art. Not sidewalk chalks. Not graffiti. No Cortez was renowned my world over for the most incredible fire hydrant art. I particularly remember the fire hydrant that was painted to look like Snoopy. He really looked like Snoopy.
Sometimes our family would arrive in Cortez very late at night. My dad had made a bed in the back of the Suburban and he let the kids all fall asleep in cozy comfort. Then, when we got to Cortez, he would expel us from our travel coma into the cold Colorado night. Half asleep still, we would all carry one of the sleeping bags from the Suburban into grandma’s house to jockey for position near the one metal heater in the middle of the floor. Not too close though. It put out enough heat to burn.
I can remember one very fast trip where we drove down in the night, my dad napped the morning in a bedroom and Perry and I played with Sammy her dog, or climbed up on the roof of her shed. I don’t remember much of the trip back. We stopped for hamburgers in Moab and I fell asleep in the back seat of the old red Subaru, tired after a long day of traveling. I woke up halfway down the canyon from Price to Provo. Something stank. It wasn’t that cold but I had been covered with my dad’s jacket. The smell and the wet told me all I needed to know. While I slept my brother had spewed his hamburger all over me. I began to complain and beg to stop and let me change. My dad said that it was only a short while longer back to Salt Lake. It was the same distance as the silo was from Cortez, but it took twice as long.
I Slept many a night in Cortez though I never lived there. My grandmother passed more than ten years ago. I’ve only been back once since and only in passing through. But in my heart Cortez will always be a little bit, my town.