Bluebirds
By Bailey Walker
We came for our health like so many at that time; just a few old ladies whose afflictions
surpassed the aid of modern medicine. And so I suppose it is true to say that we came for the air,
as well as for the peace of mind that was so broadly advertised by the state.
“Simplicity with substance.” That’s what the brochures promised- and a view of the
mountains. It was also to be, as President Roosevelt had said, “the most American thing in
America.”
They called us Bluebirds; though certainly not because we were songbirds of any sort.
The only explanation I can give would be the expressions we carried below our brows; blue,
after all, because we were weary travellers, haunted by the past.
My own journey was paid for by the University in New York where I taught Greek
Literature to the crème de la crème of the Upper East Side youths. The Chautauqua programs
were growing in popularity, which was no doubt a result of the ever-fraying mentality of the ‘city
rats’, as we called ourselves. We holed up in our tin skyscrapers and let the snow and
helplessness pile up around us. The Great War was over, but the grief of the nation hung on
every street corner like the tattered black veils of the lonely brides. Ghosts haunted the corners
of the bay, and the airstrips, and the old training grounds. My own life felt sterile to me- cold and
empty.
So when Chancellor Monroe found me one afternoon me behind the library gasping for
breath with my hands clutching at a heaving chest, I did not have the strength to tell him that the
weight on my lungs was not a medical infliction, but rather a symptom of my suffocating soul. I
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received a quick diagnosis, some asthma medication and a train ticket that would take me as far
as Denver. The only instructions were to relax and recharge.
I tell you all this, not to win your pity, but because I believe mine is a shared tale. I may
not know the detailed pasts of every companion who joined me along the foothills (because we
tried our best to pretend our lives were more than pieces of broken glass when in good
company), but I feel safe assuming we came from similar situations, for similar reasons. We
were, as I said, all Bluebirds in the truest sense.
Florence and Mabel were the closest thing to an exception we had. They were widows,
like so many of us, but the particular type of widows that you believe might actually be happy in
their new lives. They only carry a shadow of their grief, visible in the brief pauses between
laughter and smiling at the moment when the eyes look down and seem to lose themselves in
glass.
They moved to Boulder in 1916 as soon as their letters came. People said they stayed just
long enough to see the obituaries printed on the back page of the Times, then they were off.
Years later, at a spontaneous request, they graciously agreed to lend me a small collection of
diary entries from the time of their arrival. It was easier, they said, then talking through it all
again.
There were only three or four leather bound notebooks from each woman and the first
thing that struck me was the resemblance each book had to it’s respective owner. Mabel, whom
everyone knew as ‘Little’, was the most petite woman I had ever met. She stood no more than
five feet off the ground and kept her bubbly figure confined to a strikingly feminine frame. Her
notebooks were little childlike things- small and ornate with beading all around the edges. They
fit in one of my hands from fingertips to the base of my palm like a kitten curled up for a nap.
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Florence, on the other hand, was a most impressive and athletic woman. She towered
over all she met, including and especially little Mabel. Her own journals were roughly the size of
library atlases and had to be set carefully onto a table surface before pursuing.
In spite of their diverse exteriors, however, the friends were absolutely identical under
their respective leather-bound covers. At once I began to understand how these two opposites
became such close friends. Kindred spirits- that’s what they used to call themselves--two pedals
of a flower falling at the same time. It’s true they were remarkably alike. Both sets of journals
were filled with reverential language of longing for adventure. Unlike the Bluebirds of my own
migration, Mabel and Florence were not merely visitors to the great American west. They were
pioneers. They were trailblazers; the next intrepid Lewis and Clark (if Lewis and Clark wore
frocks and panty-hoes), in search of the new land where they would make a home.
I never found out why Boulder became that place for them, why they didn’t merely travel
on to the Oregon (as so many were doing at the time), or find a small apartment somewhere in
the Denver downtown where the smell of coffee and civilized talk wafted through open
windows. One of Mabel’s relations- a friend of a friend of a cousin- had studied at the University
in Boulder years before, but he was long gone by the time the duo made their pilgrimage, and
they never made any description of the town as anything but beautiful and foreign. I asked them
once, but they couldn’t tell me. It’s possible there were too many reasons to put to words, but
over the years, I’ve formulated what I consider a rather good guess.
The house that I often visited them at was a great old stone building on Spruce Street
with a garden and a little New York State flag hung over the porch stoop. Florence liked to tell
the story of how they bought the place off a relative of John Muir and that the framed
photographs of the Flatirons that rested over the hearth were left there by Muir himself. The
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photos though, however prestigious, paled in comparison to the views off the second floor
balcony, which faced westward towards the shrub stained sheets of red rock mountains that rise
over the town. In the summertime the smell of ponderosa and cedar would waft down from the
foothills and wash the air with a wild perfume. I suppose if I had to guess why the two decided to
settle in Boulder of all places, it would have something to do with that view.
My own bungalow was itself a reminder of why so many chose the place as an escape.
Nestled along the tree line that enclosed the Chautauqua cottages, I could feel the War ebbing
away. The air reached deep into my lungs and washed away the grief. Although I didn’t expect it
at the time of my first visit, I returned six more times to Boulder, four times with the Bluebirds,
and twice on my own. Each time I requested the same cottage and each time I was obliged most
graciously. From the front of my porch it was an equal distance to the trailhead and to the
auditorium, so on days when I felt particularly adrift, I let my feet pull me out the door and
choose whichever direction they desired. Almost without fail, I would end up along the cool and
wooded switchback up the mountains.
When I wasn’t attending lectures in big hall or in the open-air park, I would walk down
the long road to downtown, where things were always in motion. On the day of my last visit I
arranged to meet Florence and Mabel at one of the coffee shops behind the old school house on
Walnut. When I arrived they had already cornered a table and most the attention of a dozen
tourists who were listening to a story the two women were weaving. Mabel saw me at once and
waved me over.
“We were sitting outside the Harbeck house on our way up to the mountain, when we
heard a shriek like a dying crow coming from the back yard,” Florence was saying to a gathering
of interested tourists.
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“What was it?” asked a man with a face like a bulldog. I took an empty seat behind him.
“We couldn’t see behind the house,” Mabel explained, piping up with her singsong voice.
“But Miss Molloy came round the garden fence, holding her hand against her stomach like this-”
(Mabel stood up to imitate the gesture), “and laughing as hard as a person can without bursting at
the sides.”
“She told us we had to see what the Harbecks were up to. And when we pressed her for
more she shook her head with tears running down her cheeks, and walked away, laughing.”
“So naturally,” Florence began, chiming in behind Mabel like an old play actor, “We
walked round the back of the house to see what all the fuss was about.”
Here they broke off and passed each other sideways glances with eyes full of laughter.
The group of listeners leaned in, impatient.
“What was it?” the bulldog man asked again.
I smiled to myself and leaned back in my chair. I knew exactly the day they were talking
about. It was at the end of a long and particularly hot summer. A new ordinance in the city had
opened up several lots for development and at least a dozen new houses were in development
from May to July including the Harbeck family’s elegant colonial on the corner of 13th and
Euclid where Mabel and Florence’s story took place.
The Harbucks were an interesting bunch. It was just the two of them if you didn’t count
their dogs, but the Harbucks always counted their dogs. Kate, who I met only once at the concert
hall one evening, was an eccentric woman in every sense of the word. She reminded me of a
stubborn child who doesn’t care for playground games- serious and silly all at once. That was
also when I met Rex and Rutherford, their twin German Shepherds. Kate explained the four of
them (herself, Rex, Rutherford and Dr. Harbeck) had traveled west to get away from her
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husband’s Wall Street work for a season. They contracted a spectacular summer home with three
floors and view off the terrace.
The day that Florence and Mabel were fondly recounting to the crowd of absorbed
tourists was a day late August of the following year. I was returning from a rather long hike
along the royal arch trail. Several other Bluebirds were scattered along grass meadow by the
auditorium when Mr. Bradley, our program coordinator came over the crest of the hill with word
of a small gathering outside the Harbeck house.
“There’s a hearse,” he said, darkly, breathing heavy from his climb.
Like any good small town birdies, a group of us took off at once to catch the gossip.
Mr. Bradley was right. There was a small and quiet gathering of people mulling in the
garden behind the mansion and a shiny black hearse parked on the corner of the street. A small
man I’d never seen was leaning against the hood, reading a paper.
As we walked towards the back gate, I could make out a small table laid with flowers and
cups, several fruit plates and a starkly decorated cake with a number of white lace cards with soft
calligraphy across the front were set around the decor. If we did not stop in to say hello I would
have suspected nothing more than a somber garden party.
The first people I recognized were Florence and Mabel. They were set back against the
petunias with a plate of crackers each and doing their best to hold back raucous laughter. I
couldn’t get a word out of them, since they seemed incapable of any noise that was not a snort or
snicker. Shaking their heads and grinning, they pointed towards Mrs. Harbeck, who was across
the yard, surrounded by a group of what looked like family.
The guests were dressed in black ties or lace and upon walking closer, I saw Mrs.
Harbeck herself was decked out in a most elaborate dark gown with a small veil over her white
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face. She was crying softly into a handkerchief and leaning against the crowd for support.
Several pots of white lilies covered the ground around a large oak casket.
How horrible, I thought. Dr. Harbeck must have passed sometime during the night.
“Did you know he was ill?” I asked Florence and Mabel, keeping a respectful distance
from the grieving party.
To my alarm, they guffawed stupidly.
“I didn’t know she was ill,” Mabel whispered, and she put a twisting finger to her temple
and crossed her eyes absurdly.
This struck me as possibly the most inappropriate and inconsiderate thing to say at a dead
man’s wake. They, after all, should understand the pain of losing a husband, like the rest of us.
“You should have looked around more,” Florence said, grinning at my expression. She
handed me one of the small white lace cards from the cake table. I looked down at the carefully
drawn calligraphy that ran across the expensive paper and nearly dropped it the ground.
Thank you for joining the Harbeck family as they grieve the loss of Rex and Rutherford.
Parents cannot easily forget their children, who are a part of their eternal spirit in life as in
death.
“It was a dog funeral!”
The coffee shop filled with laughter.
“They had a funeral for their dead German Shepherds!” Florence’s eyes were filled with
merry tears. Several of the tourists slapped their knees appreciatively.
“And do you know what she said to us, later that day?” Mabel asked, wiping tears from
her own eyes as the laughter died down. “She said, ‘I finally understand the loss you widows
feel.’”
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There was a second chorus of snorts. The tourists stood up, satisfied by the tale and
moved along. Mabel and Florence clutched each other arms, still laughing and I sat with a
faraway smile and watched them fondly.
Kate Harbeck had said the same thing to me that afternoon. She’d broken away to tell me
with tear-filled eyes that she now knew the pain of a Bluebird. I didn’t know what to say, so I
held her hand and watched her cry. But in my head I was wondering if I had ever shown this
much grief in my own time of mourning. I thought about my reaction when I’d stepped outside
the New York City post office with a US Government issued letter trembling in my hands and
read the words, “We’re sorry to inform you…”. I’m sure I did. But I couldn’t remember.
Rex and Rutherford were buried in a special plot on the south side of town. We would
often see Kate Harbeck walking towards their graves, her cheeks red, her hands filled with white
lilies and tennis balls. And although we Bluebirds laughed softly every time she passed, I always
felt that it was less out of mirth and more of a way of expressing a piece of our own blocked and
troubled sorrow. Before long, several other members of town were using the land to bury their
own pets and within a decade we had watched over half the town lay to rest canine members of
their extended family. It was always funny to us, but on some level, I think we wished that we,
too, had something to bury in the cemetery where Kate Harbeck went to grieve.
Mabel and Florence and I finished our coffee within the hour and then my company
checked the clock and told me they had to be back at work in fifteen minutes. My train home was
leaving the next day at dawn, and so I asked if I might tag along for the rest of their afternoon
shift. Summer term was starting up at my University in New York and I was not sure how much
longer the administration would believe my diagnosis. I had not had an attack of ‘asthma’ for
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several years, and the dark veils that used to haunt the street corners for me were beginning to let
into the breeze and drift away.
Before I left I wanted to be sure I asked some final questions of my inseparable friends,
the two people whose company I found more intoxicating than the smell of the Flatirons in July.
I wanted to understand the source of their incessant cheer, which had become as helpful to me
during my visits as the mountain air itself.
They worked for the Hotel Boulderado on 13th and Spruce where visitors from all over
the country were always flowing in and out. That’s where I first saw them. The concierge told
me to wait with my bags by the front entrance and a taxi car would be around to pick me up and
whisk me away up the mountain to my new cottage hideaway. What appeared in the street before
me, full of pomp and energy, was a speedy little yellow wagon with two women in the front seat
waving with furious excitement.
Florence was driving- she usually always does- and Mabel hopped out onto the curb and
shake my hand. I had never had a female cab driver, let alone two, but I must say they did the job
better than any cabbies I had encountered in all my time in New York. Within a minute we were
off up the street with all my luggage safely stored away and Mabel talking airily about the
wonderful weather they were expecting that summer. She asked if I wouldn’t mind a tour up the
mountains before being dropped off at Chautauqua.
I later learned through their detailed journals, that the cab was the first thing they
purchased upon arriving in Boulder. To them it symbolized the freedom of their new home. They
were the only female taxi drivers in town, and by far the most preferred. When you were scooped
up by Mabel and Florence and their little yellow wagon you always got where you wanted to go,
but you were guaranteed to get the grand tour along the way. In the summertime, Florence would
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roll down her window and let her long neck lean out into the wind peacefully while Mable turned
around in her seat to face the passenger and pamper them with stories.
When we arrived at the hotel from the coffee shop, a young woman was waiting out front
with bags stacked around her knees. She was no more than twenty-five and she did not say much
when she slid into the back seat beside me. Her name was Tracey Russell and she was here with
the Chautauqua programs. It only took a moment of conversation for me to discover that she was
to take over my cabin for the remainder of the season.
“Do you mind if we take you on a tour, my dear?” Mabel asked in her singsong voice.
The question only had one answer, and in just a few moments we were on our way up the
winding road into the foothills of the mountains.
Miss Russell kept quiet as we rolled through the pines and juniper. Having seen the view
of the city a hundred times before, I preoccupied myself with this new companion. It might have
been my own sentimental disposition, seeing as this was to be my last day in Boulder, but I felt
at once as though I were looking at a vision of myself from a long time passed.
Once atop the mountain, Florence pulled over in a flurry of dust and we watched from the
cab as the sun threatened the horizon line like an egg balancing on the end of a spoon.
At Mabel’s suggestion we lined up; four ladies with our skirts pulled carefully over our
knees, perching on the hood of the cab and faced the East with our backs to the mountain.
Orange and pink pushed the blue sky into night slowly over our heads. The lights of the city
below specked the dark horizon like freckles on a child’s nose. Florence and Mabel exchanged
looks like successful bandits as Miss Russell gazed out across the land. Her eyes were wide with
marvel.
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Just as I thought we would sit there forever, a soft sound played up to our ears from all
the way down the mountain. It sounded like a small orchestra. There were strings and a flute and
several people clapping.
“The Mars sisters,” Florence said in answer to the unasked question.
In a flash we were back in the cab and on our way down the mountain.
The Chautauqua parking lot was nearly filled and the grounds around the gazebo were
patch-worked with picnic blankets and folding chairs. A number of children’s feet dangled from
the tree branches where they perched silently.
The Mars sisters were born in Boulder at the start of the new century. They travelled to
New York and become, as I understood it, quite successful. They had a concert at Madison
Square Garden just last year.
They always came back to Boulder, though. They would dance together for a crowd of
their hometown heroes. Their style was partially ballet, and a little vaudeville, with a grace that
left their entwining figures looped like a halo.
Settled down between Florence and Mabel on the fringes of that great breathless banquet,
I found myself struck by an acute nostalgia. These two great figures, hardly ever still, looked
entirely engulfed by peace in the warm bath of the light. It was, I though, as good a moment as
any to speak of great things- make a memory out of this moment. And yet, as we sat all together
in the shadow of the mountains, the fresh air engulfing our souls, I felt as though a spoken word
would ruin the splendor.
I left the next day on the earliest train towards Manhattan. I returned to my little flat and
my Socrates and my Plato and to the smallest lecture hall at the edge of the University campus.
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Cooped up against the bay, wrapped in memories and address books, I waited for the aching
sorrow to roll in from the east.
But it never did. Or- rather, it tried. Some nights I would wake in the usual cold sweat,
my arms splayed out in the sheets like bones in a bat’s wing, but from the back of my mind there
would play the distinct sound of flutes and harps rising over the tops of the pine trees. Like a
record, my mind would spin the fresh air of the Flatirons around my face and I could feel the sun
on my shoulders. Then, finally, after so many years and so many pilgrimages, I began to truly
understand. The essence of that place, the reason the bluebirds flocked, the reason Florence and
Mabel would never leave. It’s a peace you carry with you; something you lived and breathed. I
keep it tucked in my soul like a piece of my own heart.
One day I hope to return, and I’ll knock at the stone house on the corner of Spruce and
fall joyously into the arms of my two best friends. We’ll race around the town together and visit
the coffee shops and the hotels and the old dog cemetery. But until then I’ll sleep well at night,
feeling, for the first time, like the kind of bluebird who has a song to share.
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