![]() Our house, which I shared with my parents and sister, Trudy, was so close to Mesa College that the institution eventually bought the property as part of an expansion project. As a kindergartner, I walked the half a mile or so to school and back by myself - the kind of thing that might prompt a call to social services today - and when I was a bit older, I tossed copies of the Daily Sentinel newspaper onto neighborhood porches. I was born in 1961, a year before Grand Junction’s redesign of Main Street downtown into a pedestrian-friendly shopping park earned it the National Civic League’s All-America City designation, and growing up there during that period fit the contours of the prototypical small-town experience. I used to refer to her as Grand Junction’s cheerleader, and she was certainly qualified for the gig, since she jumped into the job straight from Grand Junction High School, where she’d been on the pom-pom squad. My dad was the principal at multiple Mesa County elementary schools, while my mom was a staffer at Grand Junction’s Chamber of Commerce on and off from the late 1950s until the 1980s. During high school, Deb worked the hospital switchboard. Mary’s Hospital, the largest medical facility in the entire region, for more than thirty years. My wife’s father was a second-generation doctor, and her mother served in the medical records department at St. Photos by Michael Roberts My family and my wife’s are deeply woven into Grand Junction’s fabric. But to those of us from Grand Junction, they make perfect sense. The deterioration of the situation since then prompts a simple question: “What the hell happened?” ![]() Indeed, Grand Junction once seemed like the city the virus forgot. This time last year, Mesa County had some of the lowest COVID-19 totals for cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the state. And as has been the case my entire life, the basic character of the place is widely misunderstood by folks in places like Denver - whom plenty of GJ residents take pride in despising. When I was a kid, Grand Junction had around a third of its current population, estimated in 2019 at more than 62,000.īut despite the many changes that have taken place since then in the city, and in Mesa County (now the home of more than 150,000 people), there’s plenty that remains the same, for good or ill. As a result, anyone born in the area is supposedly fated to return unless they take some sand to their new destination - and I didn’t. And throughout the decades that followed, I’ve come back often to visit family and friends - as was to be expected, given a rural legend known to generations of Junctionites.Īccording to the “ Grand Valley dirt curse,” the area was hexed by members of the Ute tribe when they were forced to relocate to a Utah reservation. I lived there until I was in my early twenties, remaining until I graduated from Mesa College, now rebranded as Colorado Mesa University. After all, Grand Junction is my hometown. I was the opposite of surprised by this reaction. His “ugh” was meant to be overheard: The rush of air he emitted sounded like a backfire from his chopper. Seconds after our arrival, a tall, sixty-something biker dude with long gray hair and a wife-beater shirt that afforded an unencumbered view of his heavily tattooed arms walked past and dramatically scoffed at us. ![]() Aside from us, only a single employee was masked, and we clearly stood out from other patrons. ![]() We were definitely in the minority when it came to mouth-and-nose exposure at PetSmart. And Mesa County, which has by far the most confirmed Delta variant cases in Colorado, as well as a distressingly low vaccination rate, certainly qualified. But with the rise of the more transmissible and dangerous Delta variant, the agency had just reversed this advice and was urging individuals to mask up in areas with substantial or high disease spread whether they’ve been immunized or not. Back in May, the CDC had announced that people fully vaccinated against COVID-19 no longer needed to don face coverings when at public indoor spots. Upon arriving at the parking lot of a PetSmart near the city’s Mesa Mall, we each put on masks, in accord with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In late July, my wife, Deb, and I drove down from her family’s cabin on the Grand Mesa to Grand Junction, the largest city in Mesa County and in Western Colorado, to pick up supplies we’d forgotten to bring for our planned four-day high-country stay, including a harness and leash for our goldendoodle, Lucy. ![]()
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