from 9-16-2015 - Redacted from a longer blog
My First Job
Yesterday was the 41st anniversary of the death of John Lennon. Guests on Morning Joe were citing their recollections of the man, the band and its impact on our lives. The blog follows.
I went back to Denver at the end of July to attend my 50th high
school reunion. I drove by the places of my youth which included this
group of buildings located at the corner of 44th and Yates Street. I
started working there in 1960 at age 14 and stayed until 1965. Back
then this was known as LOOK FURNITURE STORE. This was my first job.
This area is located at the northwest corner of Denver near the famous
Lakeside Amusement Park and former Lakeside Speedway. The old Denver
Tramway crossed over Cherry Creek and made its way eventually heading
north on Yates Street where it jogged two blocks west and ended at
Lakeside Park at 46th and Sheridan. This was the end of the line and
also the end of Denver until just after World War II when the western
suburbs began to emerge just west of Sheridan Boulevard. Before the War
and even afterward to some extent, many people did not have cars. They
relied on their feet and public transportation like the Denver Tramway.
Little neighborhood convenience stores and theaters were the forerunners
of shopping centers that popped up in the 1950s. The
corner building (top photo) was originally a drug store. The gray
monster to the
right used to be the Coronet Theater. The buildings that front onto
Yates Street were small stores.
 |
| Denver Tramway car at 40th and Yates C. 1910 |
Danny Ferguson was the owner of Look Furniture. He made doorway openings between the separate spaces to create one very large
retail space. The main entry was in the middle on Yates Street. It looks
like a subsequent owner removed the doorway passages and turned the
spaces and buildings into separate entities. The former main entry
(below) is now an abandoned showroom of some sort. Most of the other
store fronts appeared abandoned.
One of the buildings on the Yates Street was where we sold
new and used appliances. In addition to helping load and unload
furniture, I would dust the furniture, mop the floors, and clean used
appliances so that they would look clean for resale. I got pretty good
at it. When I turned 16 I got to help deliver furniture. My pay went
from fifty cents and hour to a dollar an hour. I saved my earnings and
used them to pay for my trip to Europe in the summer of 1963 where I got
to see President Kennedy in Berlin and to run through the cobblestone
streets of Salzburg Austria on a rainy Saturday night. I worked for
below minimum wage. But I worked and I learned the value of money and of
saving. I paid my way through college and law school. I did not do a
lot of the things other kids my age did. There is a trade-off for that.
Looking back I don't know if I made the right choices. But I can't
change the choices I made.
In August 1964 I had to drive a big truck to downtown Denver to deliver
furniture. I had to
go past the corner of Colfax at Broadway. That was a mistake. The
BEATLES were staying at the Brown Palace Hotel about two blocks away. I
got caught up in
traffic hell. There streets were flooded with girls. Traffic was stopped
in all directions. I found one photo that shows the chaos around the
hotel and another that shows the crowd at Red Rocks Amphitheater located
about 12 miles away at the foot of the Rockies. These photos show the
way girls wore their hair back in the mid 1960s. They all looked alike.
This July when I walked into the registration at my reunion, the women
all had gray hair or white hair. One woman was in a walker. You have no
idea how depressed that made me feel. No way whatsoever - unless, like
me, you are over 65.
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