A Slice of American Pie: Part 5
Home of the Frozen Dead Guy

I am awake in the stillness of a Rocky Mountain night. It is a silence that lulls you and caresses you. A neighbour’s dog barks in the distance. A train whistles through the valley. And then the silence reigns again. There are not even any house sounds in this earth sheltered home outside Boulder, Colorado where Suzanne MacAulay and Allan Lazrus settled 25 years ago. I thought it was quiet on the ten acres we call home in New Zealand at the end of a country road. It does not compare to this quiet wilderness.

“ When it snows, the elk walk across the roof,” explained Suzanne.

What a difference a day makes. It began when Paul, a tower of wit and charm, dragged me from the bed as day broke, determined to ride before the desert blast furnace got fired up again. My sleepy eyes lingered on the barren hills standing like brown clad guards over a valley. The Colorado River snakes its way through the desert pumping life into the veins of the irrigation system.

We sped off in the coolness of the morning. Less than an hour and a half later, it’s as if someone pulled down a new backdrop painted with the greens of grass, pine trees on the slopes and a touch of a snow covered mountain in the background. I spun around in my seat (with limited mobility as one has on the back of a speeding motorcycle) to see when the transition occurred. I shivered.

It is not often I am glad to have goose bumps. The long, hot desert days had become a blistering routine. I snuggled down behind the hulk in front of me as the coolness of the snowline reached us.

The end of the day saw us sequestered here in Nederlands, a tiny cluster of log cabins and furry people in plaid flannel shirts. We had reached the Rocky Mountains, where dreams are as big as the peaks themselves and songs are sung in time with the mountain breezes. Time seems to have stood still in this little pocket of civilisation for its “rugged individuals.” And it has literally stopped for Grandpa Morstoel, better known as the Frozen Dead Guy that lies, well, frozen in a shed here in town. Bredo Morstoel was born in Norway in 1900. He stopped breathing in 1989 and has been hanging around in this shed waiting for re-animation at some undetermined time in the future. The shed sits next to a partially finished concrete structure that Bredo’s grandson (Trygve Bauge) had designed as the main building of his Life Extension Institute. This was to connect underground with the vault where he envisioned the cryogenic capsules would be stored. The concept of cryogenics has been around for years (freezing people to be revived in the future) though never convincingly proved. Being short in the budget department, Trygve decided to make do with a load of dry ice to keep things at a frosty -70 C.

Trygve had a lot of theories, another one being that you don’t really need a Green Card to stay in America. He eventually was escorted back to Norway, leaving a confused mum with Grandpa in the shed. She unleashed a media frenzy when she mentioned to a reporter that she just didn’t know how she was going to take care of the two bodies in the shed. (Al, from Chicago, had joined the ranks of hopeful at some stage.) Up until then, as this real life story goes, it had been pretty hush-hush with only a half dozen people privy to the whereabouts and condition of Grandpa.

That was seven years ago. The town shed its embarrassment, rallied its spirits, and passed a few laws outlawing the keeping of corpses on private property (though Grandpa Bredo was grandfathered in and remains on dry ice.

Al was shipped back to Chicago where his family gave up and stuck him in the ground.) Will Grandpa’s day in the sun ever come? While waiting for the answer and technology, Nederlands decided to capitalize on the situation and instituted an annual festival called The Frozen Dead Guy Days. This year’s festivities included a Grandpa Look-Alike contest, The Ice Queen Competition, Tuff Shed Coffin Races and the Frozen T-shirt Contest.

Seems like anything was possible up here in the hills. Night was falling in Nederlands and Suzanne was anxious to put the car into the garage. A neighbourhood bear has learned to open the door of Subaru’s, clamber into the back seat and sit as if waiting for his chauffeur. He destroys Toyota’s because he can’t operate the door latch. She doesn’t know where her Kia falls in the scale of bear proof latches.

I think of all this as I lay in bed surrounded by the stillness of this night. I walked one morning along the dirt roads that down play the high-end real estate nestled amongst the pines on generous sections. The colours were soft and new. A hawk rested on top of the telephone pole, with the moon paling behind it, ready to pass its sentry to the sun. Groves of aspen were tinged with the pastel of new green growth. A mist of blue wild flowers graced an open meadow. The valley lay below me.

Stunned, I saw what I realized was the remains of a covered wagon. The miles those old wheels must have travelled, laden with people and belongings, riding along on determination and hope.

And then I was rewarded. A large elk moved into the road, froze and gazed at me. I was awe struck at this beast. But no, not one, but two, three, four, yes, five elk appeared. They moved to the shelter of trees, but we continued to salute each other as I passed by quietly.

The train whistles in the valley again. I hear it as a signal that the day is beginning. I smile to myself knowing there are more than elk in these mountains. This, my friends, is still the Wild, Wild West.