continued...

And speaking of earning a living....our next stop was The Alfred Reagan Place, and the story of a real entrepreneur!
"Alfred Reagan was a farmer: he had cattle and crops, but also fruit trees and timber; and Mrs. Reagan had her flowers, which helped add to the beauty of their saddlebag house which was painted in all three colors that Sears Roebuck had to offer ."


But Alfred had others things too.


"He was well developed in manual skills and the business sense to do something with them. A jack of all trades, he practiced most of them close to home.
His carpentry tools left their mark all over the Roaring Fork community, and a death usually sent Reagan to his shop to make the coffin--free of charge.
The rocky mountainside was hard on farm equipment and wagons, so he saw a need and the way to make a little extra money: and a blacksmith shop soon appeared beside the creek.
Always looking for ways to support his growing family, by about 1900 the community was large enough to need a store...so he built one, and turned it over to his son to keep it stocked and open.
Either not content with his holdings, or still bursting with energy, Reagan capped his enterprises with a "tub mill"
As was customary, he charged one gallon per bushel for grinding. Alfred Reagan had learned one of the secrets of stability and success that many others did not--diversity.
Yet he was not greedy. In his more active years he was a lay preacher in the church that he helped build, on land that he donated."








http://www.spoom.org/pdf/lovett%20tub%20wheel.pdf

"To know people of the past is to know ourselves better. To know what has been done is to know what can be done if need be. (remember Dolly's philosophy?)

To realize how difficult life was for them is to see how easy it is for us.

People were limited to what the immediate world would give them.

Technology and transportation would not yet allow them to alinate themselves from natural conditions." Guide Book

more about this day on the mountain tomorrow...please come back