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Show THE ZEPHYR/DECEMBER 2003-JANUARY 2004 “I was in Cortez once and this girl came over to pick me up to start dancing. Pretty quick, to happen the next year to the premium and they said $16,000. So the premiums went up and the snow went down. Finally in the early 80s, we shut it down and that was the end of it. Now, there’s just a few of the cables up there. “There’ve been some stories about the ski area—they did a show on KUED and it made the Tribune. I was even ‘Citizen of the Year’ in ‘68. But we never did get enough snow to start it up again. Some guy asked me what we could do to start it up again and I said nothing. He said, “You've got a negative attitude Gene,’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t...we just I said, “Why don’t you come over and sit at my table?’ and she said, ‘No...my husband is sitting over there,’ and then she says, ‘Why don’t you come over and sit at our table?’ And so I did. I ended up getting invited to their house and I taught him how to dance. But ifa guy’s got two left legs and they’re both on the right side, well hell, you can’t teach him how to dance. “When my kids were in high school, up in Price, I used to.go to the college dances, and pretty quick I’d be dancing. And then another girl would come up to dance and they’d meet me on Finally time?’ flat do don’t have any snow!’ I think the last year was ‘82.” Even though the ski area was gone, Schafer managed to stay as busy as ever. He was legendary for pulling stranded, stuck or broken down vehicles out of the backcountry with his trusty tow truck. Again, he does the impossible... the dance floor. One girl came up to me and said, ‘Hey wild man, can I sit here?’ my son, Stan, came up to me and he said, ‘My hell, Dad, has it been like this all the And I said, ‘Hey all you gotta do is dance good, son. If you’re a good dancer you can anything.’ “Lused to drag cars out of Canyonlands—Beef Basin, Bobby’s Hole. I pulled a lot of them out of there. But nobody can go where I go. I used to tell them, ‘I can go places you can’t even walk.’ I remember one guy I pulled out of Bobby’s Hole. It was a five or six hour haul out of there and so there was a lot of time to talk. But every time I asked him what he did Gene left Monticello twice, first in the late 50s, to work as a Diesel mechanic in Fresno, and then again, in the mid-60s. He came back from Fresno in the early 60s and ran the tractor on the family farm when his dad became ill. Gene returned to California in 1965 for for a living, the guy would change the subject. Finally when we were almost back, I asked him flat out and he looked at me sort of funny and said, ‘Well...to tell you the truth, I work a few years and worked in Balboa, Van Nuys and a few other places, working on condos, for the Internal Revenue Service. I’m a tax auditor.’ I kind of laughed and said, ‘I guess it is a good thing you didn’t tell me ‘til now. If you had I would have left your ass back there in the canyons.”” but never could really take to the place. “Too many people. I tried to think of something I liked about it, but I can’t...it was just different. Too many people. Hell, people have more respect for each other on a stock car track than they do on a freeway.” When Gene came back to Monticello, he worked at the Chevrolet garage for a decade and he also did the stock car circuit in towns around the Four Corners and he ran the farm and he started his own shop and towing service and he got married-it’s always hard to trace Schafer’s chronology because he was always doing seven things at the same time... Gene still wakes up before dawn, still heats his home and shop with wood that he cuts and hauls to town from his ranch. “I got about 20 cords but I guess I better get some more, just in case.” Still munches on whole garlic cloves as if they were peanuts. Still works on cars almost every day of the week and never gets tired of it either. “I look at every broken down car as a challenge...I love figuring it all out.” And he still speaks his mind to just about anyone he feels like speaking his mind to. “Some of them aren’t worth talking to at all,” he explains. And in a part of the West where religion plays a major role in daily life, Schafer hasn’t much use for any religion. “I never thought about joining any church. You can take a Bible and put your own words into it. And that isn’t right. You can quote it, but just quote the words. Don’t go trying to change it. One day back in the ‘40s, a lady here came up to me from the Baptists and asked if I’d get up and lead the service. They didn’t have a preacher for that day. And I said. ‘Ok, but I’ve got an idea..1 want to ask the congregation some questions about how to solve some people’s problems.’ And so that’s what we did. We all tried to figure out how to help each other. But then the preacher from Dove Creek came over and said, ‘I hear you're saying all kinds of things to the congregation and we don’t do it like that in this church.’ So that was my last preaching job...I figured I could just have Gene’s Church from then on. “JT never could stand two-faced people...if you tell somebody something one way, and then you go up the street and tell it some other way...well, that isn’t right. You got to treat people like you want to see them the next day. If they're two-faced, I like matching wits with them. People know | tell it straight...1 got 27 votes for mayor once and I wasn’t even | aX a io running.” . Gene Schafer, at 74, doesn’t plan to retire—ever. He’s still as tough as a ten penny nail. He once told a man who seemed to be thinking of popping Gene in the nose, “I never seen you fight anybody unless they was twice your age and drunk..and I sure as hell ain’t drunk.” He was a kid and Gene let him have it without ever throwing a punch. “You kids think you're something but you're not...hell, you probably can’t piss hard enough on the ground to make foam yet.” POW! If he gets sick of working on a car he'll walk away from it for a while, but he always 'T never could stand two-faced people...if you tell somebody something one way, and then you go up the street and tell it some other way......well, that isn't right." “and I had a couple of brats. Two kids...most people say they had kids, but I always say I had Superstars, you know. They’re good workers but they thought they were playin’. When I went ona wrecker call in the middle of the night, they’d come with me. Id take out 30% and I'd give them half of what was left. They’d come along and sweep the glass off the roads an everything. Rigby Wright, the sheriff, would say, ‘Gene, you're breaking your crew in early,’ and | did. They had little brooms and they worked hard. “When I decided to start my own business, I bought that land on Third East and tore down the old cabin and built my home. Owen Severance helped me build the shop. He said he didn’t want anything for helping me build it, except to be able to use the shop to work on his own car. So here it is, all these years later and he’s still coming comes back. “Every broken down car is a challenge, but then again, people are a challenge too. My brother Victor pointed out to me once that when these people who are 2000 miles from home, when they break down and you’re working on their car, you bring them in and give them a beer and pretty soon, they're having more fun than if their cars had kept going. People from all over the country come back to see me...just to see if I’m still alive.” Last week I stopped by to see Gene. He was in the shop, under a Ford 150. He slid out from under the chassis and stood up to say hello. But I had to back off a bit. “Damn Gene...you’ve been eating your pickled garlic cloves again!” in...I figured somebody’d have killed him by now, but he still stops by a couple times a week. He’s college-educated but I can’t hold that against him.” “Damn right,” he said. “Nobody may want to come near me, but Ill outlive all you sons of bitches.” It was also during the ‘70s that Schafer got involved with the Blue Mountain ski area. Of He probably will. course, he’d always been a skier, and he had really honed his skills while he was in the army in Europe. But in the late ‘50s, a group of Monticello citizens developed a ski area in the Blues. “Grant Bunson put up $27,000 to get it started. Then the townspeople got up there and cleared the land with a front end loader. It was kind of a cliquey thing for a while. HIGH DESERT GARDENS , Sort of a private ski area. They didn’t even want tourists to use it. “Anyway I'd been working on the towers and been involved in the maintenance, and finally they came to me and wanted me to be on their board of directors. I had all this other feel that in your legs. And all the guys from Moab, the river rats, I called them, I’d let ‘em in for nothing. Of course, the kids were up there working with me all the time. Hell, they’d go up the towers to fix shorts. “] hired a girlfriend of mine to collect the tickets and she also sold hot dogs and made some extra money. And a guy from Slavens came over to rent skis. We did ok.” But in the late 70s, two factors conspired area—rising insurance premiums and no snow... to shut down the Blue Mountain | natives flowers grasses 2971 §. Hwy 191 (next to the Branding Iron) 435.259.4531 ski “We were paying $5600 a year for insurance and then we had a bad snow year. The next year the premiums went to $9000 and the snow wasn’t much better. | asked what was going PAGE21 non-natives frees TREES | & BUSHES SVOONA we had the moguls...those moguls made a man out of you. You talk about neat. You could Xeric Gardening is not just a trend... It's the way to BE! PENSTEMONS finally they just came to me and said, ‘Here, it’s all yours.’ and I ended up with my name in all the ski magazines.’ | made some changes...we started staying open Friday through Sunday, and we’d get people from Grand Junction and Cortez. The Indians used to come in from Shiprock by the busload. But they all liked this hill because it wasn’t groomed and dau stuff going on with the farm and the shop and didn’t really want to be on the board, and |