STARTLED IN COLORADO


Out of nowhere the words: "Ludlow Massacre 
Site," which we weren't even looking for, Exit 
27, off I-25, heading down to New Mexico, and 
suddenly we're rattling down a dirt road driving 
toward the mountains when we saw the battered 
sign, and then, beyond the spot where the tent
colony stood, before it was burned to the ground 
by Rockefeller and his National Guard, appeared, 
oh-so-ghostly, the monument itself, beautiful, 
serene, incongruous in this barren spot,
imprisoned by a fence, then surrounded by 
another, and, chiselled into granite, terrible facts 
I already knew: April 20, 1914....18 dead...of 
whom 11 were children...," along with the statues 
of the miner, and mother holding her child, and in 
my heart the thunderstorms that had been
threatening all day began to rumble, and 
I turned to Sandy and said, "What do they 
need all these fences for, they kind of ruin 
things, don't you think?" and that was 
almost a year before the statues were 
beheaded.


"The bloodiest conflict in American labor history"
The monument was vandalized
the year after our visit.

Ludlow, Colorado
2004
    

All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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