A photographer friend, Tico Herrera, with roots in West Virginia, a deep love of their traditional music, as well as a good source for corn whisky, traveled to Cripple Creek where he took some stunning photos of the graveyard there. I think that was another reason I had decided to go there.

Luckily, it was in the years before Cripple Creek had been turned into a neon-trimmed adult amusement park. The history of Cripple Creek still felt close at hand. There were still real businesses on Main Street, hardware stores, a shoe store, all the homely businesses that make a town live. They had yet to be displaced by the Gold Strike Frozen Yogurts and the Cripple Creek T-Shirts.

While I was looking around town, I met another motorcyclist. He told me about Zeke's. He was certainly an enthusiastic booster, "They've got the best hamburgers in the world there!" Even though I am not a hamburger enthusiast, I couldn't pass up "the best in the world", could I?

Cripple Creek is high in the Rockies but Zeke's was in Victor, a town considerably further up the mountain. Zeke's which turned out to be a drugstore, rather than the cafe I expected. Because of, or perhaps in spite of that, the hamburgers were almost as good as my new friend had said they would be. It was late in the afternoon and the Victorian houses looked so comfortable as the lights came on but I knew I had to get down to the big town of Cripple Creek because there was no place to stay in Victor. I decided that I would come back the next day to explore this gem of a town. I already knew of two of its claims to fame, Zeke's hamburgers and the fact that Victor was the birthplace of Lowell Thomas. I wondered what else I would find if I looked.

It was mid-morning when I drove up the mountain to Victor. One of those old Victorian houses had a small sign outside, hanging demurely from a slender gibbet announcing that this was the Victor Museum. Clearly this had to be my first stop.

Other than the vague memory that there were memorabilia from the life of explorer, journalist and broadcaster, Lowell Thomas, I can't remember anything about the exhibits in the Victor Historical Museum. What I do remember is May Wing.

Of course I didn't know her name when I dropped a couple of dollars into the clear jar marked "Donations". She probably wasn't impressed with me, a big, somewhat hulking motorcyclist with boot heels that sounded loud against the hardwood floor inside that quiet old house. I walked as softly as I could around the exhibits but I must admit I was curious about the woman who turned out to be May Wing.

She looked fragile but that was no odd thing. She was in her mid-eighties. It turned out that she had lived in Victor and in Cripple Creek ever since she was four. She had a good memory and she was a natural story-teller. When I realized that, I sat down with her and we began a conversation that went on several hours. After about fifteen minutes, I realized that this woman was a treasure trove of stories and I asked her if she would mind if I went out to the motorcycle and brought in a tape recorder. "Your stories are so wonderful, I'll never be able to remember them all and I don't want to forget them!" She said she had no objection. I think that was because she was really into her memories now. I don't think she even noticed that I had gone outside to the bike. She just kept talking. As I put the microphone on the desk stand, she kept talking. As I peeled the shrink wrap off the cassette box, she kept talking. As I put the tape in and adjusted the recording levels, she kept talking. I was working as fast as I could realizing that every moment I was losing something of her stories When I was sure I had everything working, that the tape was recording, I was able to listen to what she was saying and even ask questions.

Stories tumbled from her. She talked about the day the first steam train made its way to Cripple Creek, she described the electric trolleys that had run every half hour connecting the gold camps of Victor, Cripple Creek, Goldfield and some others. She told of the miners' strike that closed the mines down in this area, and of the gunfight in the cafe next door to where she and her mother were living and how her father had gone in and rolled a big round table in front of the door to stop bullets from leaving the barroom and flying into his home. She described her life as the daughter of a miner and then as the wife of a miner. She talked of going to dances; of being a homemaker in a place where booms and crashes were commonplace as the price of gold soared and plummeted; of raising a family of her own - it was the story of "the richest gold camp in the world" told from a woman's perspective.

I'm going to jump ahead now about a half dozen years, to San Francisco. I was leaving that city to head home to Boston. For the first five hundred miles or so, I would have company, a friend from San Francisco named Mark, who also rode motorcycles. Mark was so anxious for me to meet his business partner that he had offered to ride with me to the friend's Nevada ranch in where we would spend a couple of days together before I headed more or less directly home.

Mark turned out to be a good riding partner and by the time we hit the Sierra, we had settled on a comfortable speed. We drove, appreciatively through Yosemite, stopping occasionally to sit and talk beside a stream or to enjoy a particularly stunning overlook.

In the town of Lee Vining, we stopped for gasoline. In the garage was a striking looking automobile from the thirties a black and sleek automobile even four or five decades later was still an eye-catcher. The four supercharger tubes on each side of the hood helped me to identify this car. It was a Cord. Mark had a surprise for me. He said that the ranch where we were heading had once been owned by Mr. Cord. This was shaping up to be quite a trip.

Ir was well after dark when we rolled across Fish Lake Valley at the foot of the White Mountains and onto the ranch. Or warm welcome contrasted with the cold night air and we were happy to get inside. Don opened a welcome bottle of bourbon and Mark and I settled in. The talk in the ranch house kitchen that night ranged from our trip from San Francisco to the history of the valley and its early Mormon settlers, about Mr. Cord (who it turned out had also been the president of both Lionel Trains and of American Airlines) and lots of other things. There was a great deal of laughter and stories of ranching and motorcycling.

Don had a lot of different business interests beside the ranch. To help him remain organized, he had a personal assistant, an older woman who was clearly very efficient. Although she was in the kitchen with us, she was rather reserved and didn't join in the conversation. After a while, I felt that we were being rude so I started a conversation with her. It was based on my having overheard her mention Cripple Creek a few minutes earlier. I asked her about it.

"I grew up in Cripple Creek. Have you ever heard of it?"

"Heard of it? I've been there. I've even been to Victor."

Julie was surprised. "Actually, I'm from Cripple Creek and Victor. I never mention Victor because no one's ever heard of it."

I told her about my experiences in Victor, about Zeke's and especially about the woman I met at the museum. At first I wasn't able to remember her name but by association ("It sounds like a Chinese name but it isn't" - BINGO! May Wing!)I found her name tucked away in my memory warehouse.

I told her about May Wing's stories about the trolley cars, the gunfights, the dances and more. Julie was very interested in these stories of old Victor. When I was through, she told me that May Wing was her grandmother. Julie was clearly mved. Mrs Wing had died two years before and now I was telling her family stories that she had never heard before.

By this time, the others in the room had caught the drift of the conversation and were quiet.

"I made a tape of our conversation."

The sentence just hung there in the kitchen.

Julie was quiet. She was trying to comprehend the coincidence that brought this wandering motorcyclist to a remote ranch in Nevada with news of her dead grandmother in Colorado.

Within a couple of weeks, Julie had copies of the tape for each of May Wing's grandchildren and I had a feeling that I had somehow had been given the privilege of closing a circle in the sky.