Upper Moon Gulch is a road so formidable, the postman doesn’t even go there.
That’s exactly how Samantha Shane liked it all these years living at the toe of the narrow dirt road that winds precariously upward from tiny Rollinsville: quiet and inaccessible.
That is until age and a bad hip changed her mind last August.
Now, once each weekday, a white four-wheel- drive wagon – Gilpin County’s Meals On Wheels program – is a welcome sight as it plods between muddy potholes, sunken deeper by the spring thaw, toward the Shane house.
“At least I know someone will knock on the door and there’s a person who checks in at least once a day,” said the 64-year-old retired court reporter.
“Besides, it’s really the only balanced meal I get,” Shane said. “I just wouldn’t cook it myself.”
Meals On Wheels is a national program whose motto is “no senior goes hungry.” It’s funded by a variety of sources, including private donations and federal grants. Tens of thousands of elderly people are fed each day through a variety of sponsor agencies.
For now there are just six meal recipients in Gilpin County. Two of them – David Gruchy, 90, and his wife of 60 years, Florence, 92 – are a feisty, entertaining pair whose homestead overlooks the peaks of Golden Gate Canyon State Park.
Volunteers of America funds the county program with a federal grant that provides more than $40,000 a year for salaries, food and expenses such as gasoline for the wagon.
Menus are approved by a nutritionist and prepared in the same kitchen that feeds inmates at the county jail.
“But we don’t feed our seniors like our inmates,” said Mary Ellen Makosky, county director of senior services, who typically delivers the meals once a week. Volunteers take up the rest.
Shane takes a minute to sort through this day’s delivery – fried chicken and rice, green beans, two egg rolls, a pair of bread sticks, a dish of sweet pears, a bag of chips and a pint of milk – all of it dispensed by Makosky with a hug and a smile.
It wasn’t an easy task getting to Shane. Makosky heard about her from other county employees – mostly that the one-time Boulder resident was very thin.
With a three-hour daily route that winds up and down 60 scenic miles of Gilpin County – some of it through casino-laden Black Hawk and Central City – there was plenty of food to include Shane, Makosky said, just no easy way to get back to her place.
In the snowy months, Shane said, groceries could only be delivered by slogging a sled the extra mile from where county-owned snowplows stop. Snow drifts routinely stack higher than a car roof.
“I just didn’t think they could make it back here,” Shane said of the meals wagon.
A dedicated Makosky not only pressed county officials to ensure the isolated stretch of road was plowed, she got them to build a tight turnaround for the bulky machines necessary to do the job.
“The first time I saw that plow, I sat down and cried,” Shane said. “It meant I didn’t have to leave my home.”
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-820-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
