Get into the truck, point it in no particular direction and drive.
It is how you end up here, in this dark yet friendly tavern, as Helen Jewsbury, the bartender, her face twisted with rage, fists pounding the air, declaims loudly and at points profanely that no one ever gave her anything.
“Don’t get my Irish up!” she finally shouts at Ken Vigil, 56, sitting chastened and astonished on his barstool. “It’s why I have red hair,” she says, half-apologizing and running her right hand through it, “or used to.”
The assignment, or maybe it was a challenge, was to pick a town, any town, drive in and find stories. There would be no agenda, no search for grand truths. Just talk to folks. See what is on their minds.
The only rule, one completely self-imposed, was that I would go where I had not been before. Erie is one of those places.
The “Old Town” sign beckoned along a county road deep in the middle of farm country.
You roll into it along Briggs Street, past gleaming new shopping centers that house day spas, investment brokerages and a gourmet cake decorating outfit.
Just after the railroad tracks, everything changes.
It is 1933 again.
Brightly colored houses from that era and older stand along the tree-lined street. Elderly women tend to their gardens. A dog or two bark.
In the middle of a block-long row of century-old shops, you notice the sign: “Miners Tavern. Since 1926.”
Helen Jewsbury has tended bar here for 15½ years. She is loud, opinionated and no-nonsense, simply a jewel of a woman. After her rant about welfare, she leads a discussion of whether Erie was, for one day, the state capital.
Everyone in here was born in Erie, save for Helen, who was born in South Dakota and moved here 33 years ago.
George Bachelder, 50, knows Erie was incorporated in 1874, two years before Colorado became a state, that a vote on where the Capitol building would be placed was taken here, that Erie finished second.
“Source of pride around here,” Helen says, nodding.
Growth, as it is most places, is a big issue in Erie. Much of the town looks as though they finished grouting the tiles and laying sod, well, yesterday.
“When I came here, there were probably 850 of us” Helen spits. “Fifteen years ago, maybe there was a thousand. Now, it’s over 18,000. There’s some good, there’s some bad.”
The last coal mine in town, historically the largest employer in the area and from which the tavern got its name, closed in 1972.
“It’s been downhill ever since,” Helen said.
The new folks, she says, rarely come to Old Town. Shops along Briggs are closing. Nothing new is coming in.
She used to compete against other bars along Briggs, places like the Star Bar, the Matador, Ruby’s Inn and the Bloody Bucket — “It’s real name was the Bar-None,” Helen said. “But that’s what everybody called it. Probably a lot of fights, would be my guess.”
They are all gone.
It’d be a shame, she said, if the city just lets this part of town wither away.
The regulars begin, right on time, to take their seats. Helen Jewsbury regales them all quite loudly, and sets to pouring what they want from memory.
This assignment could be fun.
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
