States of Snark: Flasback, Silverton CO, 2007

Alferd Packer, Silverton and an Ode to Winston

One of the stops we were planning on making while in Colorado was Lake City, home to Alferd Packer, a famous cannibal. You can find lots of info about him on the interwebs, but basically, Packer was trying his luck as a prospector, and genius-tastically decided to launch a winter expedition from Montrose to Gunnison, which is 65 miles. Packer and his 5 genius companions left on February 9th, and of course got lost in the snow. I’m going to hope that they ran out of provisions early, and that Alferd didn’t jump the gun and start eating his companions like, two weeks in (Hmmm…this subway’s been stuck between stations for twenty minutes now and I haven’t eaten in over an hour. Is it me, or does that dude look like a cartoon ham now…RARRRRWWW CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP) but in any case, Packer showed up near Gunnison on April 16th, alone, and when asked about his missing friends, claimed that he went scouting for food and came back to camp to discover one of his companions, Shannon Bell (who is a boy Shannon) roasting some human flesh, and shot Bell after he tried to eat him, too. Turns out that was sort of true except Alferd was the one eating his companions. Packer was tried and sentenced to death, but escaped. They found him and tried him again, this time reducing the charges to manslaughter, and he was given 40 years. He was paroled in 1901, and lived to the delicious, ripe old age of 65. In Lake city, there’s a museum dedicated to his trial, and of course there is also an Alferd Packer Grill.

But backing up a step. We were on our way to Lake city, but once again Tom Tom, the evil GPS tried to kill us. We drove through the lovely and adorable town, Silverton, pictured up top, which was terrifying in its quaint remoteness. After we passed through Silverton, Tom Tom decided that we needed to do some off-roading, and Lizzie wisely decided that perhaps we shouldn’t try traversing dirt roads in the mountains when it’d just been snowing. Whatevs. We turned around and decided to find a café in Silverton where we could use the bathroom, get a snack, and get directions (in that order). We found the Mobius Café, and Winston Churchill. For reals. We walked into the shop, and there was a huge dog, Townsend, flopped out on one of the couches. Surely against some sort of health code, but adorable, so we didn’t care. I started talking to the shop owner, Winston Churchill, about the Red Sox, because at this time the Sox were wiping the floor with the Colorado Rockies (ENEMY TERRITORY) but it turned out that Winston had done a stint in New Hampshire, so he understood the Red Sox fanaticism. As we were purchasing our smoothies (having already used the amazingly clean bathroom), Lizzie said “not that your town isn’t beautiful but…”

And Winston rejoined with “but how do you get out?”

And he once again provided us with what we needed, telling us we’d have to drive through the mountains to the nearest “big” town, which was, as Alferd Packer could’ve told you, Gunnison.

We were enamored of Winston, our bathroom-having, smoothie-making, directions-giving savior, and so a few months later Lizzie e-stalked him, and found out that he was off on a walk-about. We continued to follow him via the blog Lizzie found: http://insearchofwinston.blogspot.com as his friends and family began to worry about the turn his walk-about had taken. Sadly, Winston seemed to not want to be found, and his body was discovered in early July of this year in his beloved mountains. For those of you who, like me, were also worried about Townsend the dog, she’s fine and living with some friends in Lake City. Poor Winston. I hope he found whatever it was that he was looking for.