A True Mountain Woman: Elsie Josephine Clayton

This was published in the Mountain Gazette in early 2006.

The deceased: A true mountain woman, Elsie J. Clayton.

Born: January 2, 1911 Died: November 13, 2005 Cause of death: Old-fashioned old age.

She entered this world during one of the coldest weeks of the year. Chimney smoke from the cabin by the railroad tracks rose straight into the frigid air, and a young couple gave thanks for the healthy birth of their firstborn child: Elsa Josephina Goranson.

A mountain childhood: churn the butter, stoke the perpetual fire in the woodstove, pile three on a horse and ride into the woods for a picnic, tend to your younger siblings while mother and father scratch a living out of this frozen valley.Watch through the window as Dad trudges through mud or drifting snow to the barn.Watch the mountains turn pink with alpenglow.Watch the gales blow banners of snow off Byers Peak. On Christmas, the house stunk of lutefisk and resounded with the songs and laughter of Swedes, some of them drunk, all of them misty eyed for the distant homeland they had left just a few years before.

Eleven years of school in a one-room schoolhouse, then graduation and a train ride over Rollins Pass to live the wild life of a bachelorette in the big city of Denver. 1927, sixteen years old, taking the streetcar down to Curtis Street for the bright lights of the theater district, even riding in the motorcar of a young man from Pine a time or two. Back home for a visit, and a date with a gambling, drinking, wild and handsome young Okie: a sleigh ride down valley to a dance in Tabernash, that riproaring roundhouse town.

Marriage soon makes them Chuck and Elsie Clayton. A season in Breckenridge where Chuck works in a mine, a season in Lyons working in a sawmill, then back up to the cold Fraser Valley for the rest of their lives.

1933: open up a café and bar on the new U.S. Highway 40. The next four decades are a blur of 16-hour workdays, rollicking New Year’s Eve parties, and a long medley of songs on the jukebox. Hunters stop in to celebrate the gutted elk strapped to the hood of their Plymouth. Truckers headed for Salt Lake City or San Francisco pause for ham and eggs and a cup of coffee. The valley’s first skiers order up burgers and beer. President Eisenhower even comes to town, and Elsie handdelivers two of her signature cherry pies to the leader of the free world.

Retired, 1971. Start a journal of the days’ events: A visitor from out of town, an illness in the family, 55 below zero on the morning thermometer, three feet of spring snow. Get a library card and read the first of thousands and thousands of books. Michener’s “Centennial” was her favorite. Take drives in the woods, pick raspberries, make jam. Road trips to visit friends and family scattered across the Western states. Coddle the grandkids. The great-grandkids. The great-great-grandkids. Watch the generations come and go.

Chuck dies, a tumble down the courthouse steps after securing one of those goddamn building permits to fix his roof. 71 years of marriage suddenly ends, and the kids wonder how she’ll handle it. Sadness. Grief. An empty place inside that nothing will ever fill. But she clears her closet of his clothes and moves on to the next chapter of life. Trips to the cemetery always bring tears, but back at home, a glass of whiskey soothes 90- year-old nerves, and Elsie says it’s time for a game of dominos.

Ninety-four winters in the “Icebox of the Nation,” much of it spent sitting at a kitchen table, sipping black coffee and peering out the window as waves of change came to the valley. She remembers when the paved highway was a muddy wagon road. She listened to static on the town’s first radio at Carlson’s pool hall. She marveled at the flip-of-the-switch electric lights, basked in the easy warmth of the first gas heat, and was glad when a fancy machine made the washboard obsolete. Her first phone number was 5. She watched from afar as the long clear cuts of ski runs appeared on the mountainside at Winter Park, heard carpenters hammering on the first condominiums and listened as loggers sat on barstools and grumbled about the slow decline of the sawmill. Boom and bust. Boom and bust. Boom and bust. Only the mountains stayed the same.

Despite these experiences, Elsie didn’t philosophize much. Why speculate about an afterlife when there are babies to hold and long conversations to be had? To Elsie, the Holy Grail was a pot of hot coffee, and the reason for our earthly existence was to eat a slice of peach pie right out of the oven. This life is enough.

On the night of November 12, 2005, Elsie said she was sleepy and retired early. She climbed into her own bed, in her own home, a half-mile from the spot where she had been born. Sometime after midnight, she passed on to whatever comes next. That night, a sideways blowing blizzard roared into the Fraser Valley, bringing whiteout conditions and enough snow to cause an early season avalanche that closed Berthoud Pass. On the morning of her funeral, the mercury dropped well below zero. A few hours later, a coal train whistled lonesome during the eulogy.

This town will never be the same.