The Rememberer
The Ault grain elevator just after a storm
The checkerboard windows of a crumbling grain elevator wink and stare like spider eyes, wearily watching over the town center’s huddle of low frontier buildings. Yesterday’s storm is still heavy on the breeze well after the Colorado sun has burnt off the last puddles from the sidewalk. Main Street offers a dearth of restaurants open on a Sunday morning. But its saturation of antique shops puts urban Starbucks densities to shame. The city limit sign boasts elevation instead of population, trying simply to display the largest number from the census report. Towns like this cram deep memory into small, well-rooted residents. Towns like this are perhaps best equipped to help us remember what we forget. True to form, Ault is a town of rememberers, perhaps none so committed to that memory as Jen.
Jen, behind her desk at the front
“I was two when I came to Ault and 4 when I first set foot in this antique store. It was Burman’s Mercantile back then. Was Burman’s for over 100 years and it was my favorite store in town. I was here till 18 when I got married and moved out of town to go farm out in the Prospect Valley area. Those of us that were here in the 1950s aren’t really here anymore. My graduating class was 22. Of those, 6 have died, most of the rest of them left. It’s always been that small though, the average class size was 20 kids. They’ve been tearing down those old schools though. They just tore down the old elementary school that was built in the 1950s. Apparently, it’s being replaced with a parking lot. They just tore it down. It was a perfectly good school but they just tore it down for a parking lot. That’s what they did in the 70’s, they tore everything down and built parking lots in their place.”
Her lament for history lost traces the spiritual grain of the antique shop she spends her days in. The smell of hay-dust and old iron sits in her shop like the musk of an old aunt who just walked through the room. This time is Jen’s home. Sepia toned memories of what the town, the state, her world, used to be, slowly stored away in the attic.
Trinkets and antiques fill the shelves of Jen's store
“This is a bit of a mecca for antiques in the area but it’s been a bit slower recently. Customers are getting older. This generation of kids don’t appreciate good wood, they don’t appreciate fine china, they don’t set a table. Not all of them, but very few. We’ve got people coming into town but it’s mostly older people. Or people that don’t want this type of history.
People are coming by droves into Colorado. Because the cost of housing and land is so much cheaper. You could get a house in Ault for 149,000 probably 3 years ago. Now you can’t get anything for less than 290,000 that’s standing. The new ones that are put together by staple gun are going for no less than 290,000 or 300,000 here in a town of population 1,500. They want the small town. This is one of the only small towns left because we don’t have any growth policies. If you want to live in town a realtor has to come in and buy water from outside of town for your house. But they’re coming anyway. The people that come here are the kinds that want to get away from Walmart and that feel, which is getting harder to avoid so they’re flooding little towns like ours. ”
The memories aren’t always rose-colored. Thorns run up and down her recollection but don’t seem to dull her commitment to remembering. But Jen is a rememberer. Her world percolates up from the cauldron of the past.
Jen leafs through her book
“I wrote a book, and it’s a horrible book as far as feel-good stories go. But I wrote it for my boys, so they could know why it took me 11 years to get out of an abusive marriage. The real reason why. Because I had nowhere to go. There was no way out. I wrote it for my boys but I had to make so many copies, a hundred or so, in order to pay for the binding of the book. There are still probably a couple copies in the Ault library. I got some flack from some people saying it wasn’t accurate, especially from the older people in town because it was the story of my time here in this town. And people don’t always like to remember parts about their town or their stories that aren’t pleasant. They couldn’t believe that really happened. And I always felt, that’s fine, just don’t read it. It’s not for you. But I didn’t talk bad about anyone, I just said how it was and how it is. Back in those days, you got pregnant, your parent’s said you get married you settle down, you don’t give this baby up, you raise it. That’s just how things were, but that meant I had no way out for a long time. In all that, I’ve had a blessed life to have all of this. Every one of those memories is just a lesson learned. I’ve owned a shop, I’ve lived on a farm, had three wonderful boys, I had an unlucky 11 years, it’s all just a part of my life. Everything is a lesson learned.”
For centuries, the Japanese have been repairing pottery by filling the cracks with gold. Each shard has its edges gilt so the pieces fit together but with every broken line traced and highlighted. It rejects a repair that hides the history of breaks we often want to cover up. Instead, it preserves the memory of the pottery and makes it stronger, more beautiful with a map of its past shatter. This is the purpose of memory when we allow it to be. It is the unique privilege of being a rememberer.
Worn boxing gloves hang as antiques from the cabinet
