The Almost Stairway to Heaven

This is a true story. The above photo shows a cast iron staircase similar to the one discussed in today's blog but it is not the actual one.


Twenty-six years ago I owned a group of four historic Victorian buildings in the Capitol Hill area of Denver which included a massive two story carriage house. The prior owner attached a two story cast iron staircase to the front side of the carriage house. Our German Shepard Gertie would regularly sit on the second floor rear landing observing what was going on in the world outside of her yard. While the gate kept her inside the yard, she knew her job was to sit as sentry.

Every spring we would fill wood boxes with trailing flowers which would cascade over the rails. Each morning before going to work I would drag the garden hose up the stairs to water the flowers and the water the other bushes and flowers. Gertie would spend her day on the second floor and occasionally go the garden to patrol - that's what German Shepard's do.

A light was affixed atop the iron newel post at the bottom of the stairs. The rails, balusters and steps were either rescued or purloined from the Brown Palace Hotel when the hotel lobby was renovated. The prior owner of the my properties had been a bellman at the hotel during the renovation. Multiple sections were removed. It is hard to imagine they could have been stolen, but one never knows.

I noticed that Gertie would always jump from or to the second or third step each time she went up or came down the stairs. I thought is was some game she invented to amuse herself. I remember the one day I was heading up the stairs after watering the flowers while me feet were still wet. I think I hit the second step when I felt an electric shock and leaped up to the next step. I called my partner who came out and then we both tested the stairs. Yep - they were electrified.

I called an electrician who came over and fixed the problem. The lamp at the top of the newel post had developed a slight shock which then electrified the cast iron staircase. Had the current been higher both Gertie and me may have taken our last steps on the stairway to heaven.

Don't Do Stupid Things!

Today's blog has nothing to do with real estate except, perhaps, to have a burglar alarm and a warning to homeowners not to do something stupid.  Stupid people often end up on America's Funniest Home Videos or dead.

On  a cold gray day in early December 1981 I returned to my Capitol Hill home in Denver about an hour or so before normal.  I normally rode the bus to work and left my Mercedes 450 SL in the garage. I owned the Denver four square house pictured above. I friend who had sold his house and was in the process of moving to New York shared a room for a couple of months. Otherwise, I lived alone.

I entered the front door and noticed things were displaced in the living room. The stereo was moved out from the front wall. Odd, I thought. I called out "Steve!".  No answer. I walked into the dining room, turned, and passed through the breakfast room where my Old English Sheepdog and Steve's tiny toy dog huddled under the breakfast table. I shouted "Steve!" as I moved toward the kitchen door when I saw glass all over the floor.

It took perhaps all of two or three seconds to walk past my dog and into the kitchen where I found a tall black kid standing against the far kitchen wall next to the refrigerator. He was startled as much as I was. He darted past me and through the glass door which he had smashed to gain entry into my house.

He through the back yard and leapt the six foot tall stockade gate. I chased after him and lost some time as I clumsily managed to unlock the gate. He was far ahead of me as I chased him down the alley where he hopped another fence. I still pursued him as he fled through a neighbor's yard and headed down the street. I stopped, exhausted. I couldn't catch him, and if I did, what would I do to a guy much taller and younger than I?

I returned home and looked at the glass on the floor. Winnie, my dog, and Manchi, Steve's dog, stood there looking at me wondering WTF was going on and what I was going to do about it. Then I thought someone else might still be in the house. I had a wall phone in the kitchen and called the police. I told the operator I had been burglarized and thought someone else might be in my house.  I went to the front porch to wait for the police who showed up within two or three minutes with shotguns in their hands.

I told then what happened. They asked if anyone else known to me was in the house. No, I said. They told me to stay back as they went into the house to search. A few minutes passed when they called me inside. We moved into the kitchen where I described what happened. I told them about the chase when they spotted my garage where we then went. My Mercedes was crammed with things from inside my house including the stereo. This was odd as the burglar couldn't take the car anywhere without a key - right?  We went back into my house and went to my bedroom where things were all over the floor. The burglar had opened my secretary desk where I kept various credit cards, a spare key to my car, and my gun. All were missing. 

This picture shows the side profile of my house with garage at the rear. 

The red 1959 Mercedes was mine for a short while but was sold before my house was burglarized.

They asked me to describe the intruder. He was tall, black, and young. That was it.  Oh, and a fast runner. One of the cops said there had been several recent burglaries in my area. He said the culprit would find houses that looked worthy of breaking into and then watch for times the owner would  be away.  I often tell my buyers that people are creatures of habit. I would normally have arrived home around 5:20  It was my returning home from work an hour early that prevented the theft of my car and maybe more.

I had several cocktails that night trying to calm down from what had happened. Over the following days I felt so invaded and so lucky at that the same time. It could have ended very badly. What a fool I had been chasing that kid. What a stupid fool.

There is No More Officer Goody

Just about a year ago this week I traveled back to Denver to attend my 50th high school reunion. Earlier in the day I went to what used to be Mountain View Elementary School located in the little town where my view of the world was born.  I attended school there from pre-school through sixth grade. My first grade class was the first to use the newly built addition to the right of the original red brick school house. I was a member of the baby boomer generation, but we wouldn't know about that then. Millions of us were born after World War II. We were the progeny of what Tom Brokaw calls the The Greatest Generation. The world would be our oyster.

As the population of Mountain View grew older and the number of school age children declined, my old school was sold to a private company which now operates it as the Re-Create Academy. She young Latino manager allowed me to wander through the school to try to find my past. I took a lot of photos and tried to recalled the teachers, kids, and events from over sixty years ago. I wrote an earlier blog about my lying to my kindergarten teacher, Miss Godley. That was her real name and it fit her perfectly. She was such a kind and gentle person. She knew and I knew that I misbehaved and that I lied to her. The morning after my transgression she told the class someone in the class had misbehaved but she did not say who. I looked around with the other kids as we all tried to figure out who the bad boy or bad girl was. What a little imp I was. But she never told anybody in my class. She made me live with my shame for sixty-plus years.

I went from classroom to classroom taking photos as I tried to recall the names of each teacher. That did not happen and much of my memory is gone forevermore. But when I reached the cafeteria-auditorium my brain went into overdrive. I won't bother you with those stories but one stands out which is why I am writing today's blog.

The floors and the chairs in the cafeteria are new but the memories of mystery meat lunches, school plays, assemblies, Cub Scout Troop meetings, and so on will last forever including the time we got to meet Office Goody.

One day a policeman named Officer Goody came to our school to meet the kids. Now I don't know if that was his real name or not, but I will never-ever forget his name or the kind manner he had with us children. I knew that if ever I needed help that he or some other nice policeman like him would be there to help me. I seriously doubt he had a gun or even a baton. All I remember is his kind demeanor and his name.

I moved away from my little town which was only two blocks long and six blocks wide. We moved to Lakewood located about two or three miles away. Lakewood was not an incorporated city then. We relied on Jefferson County Sheriff officers if we needed a police. But we didn't need them because we didn't have crime. Ours was a homogeneous community of white people. There were restricted areas which did not allow people of color to live. I mention this because as a child I knew I only knew white people. I did not know there were laws to keep non-whites from living where we lived. Denver also had areas where homosexual couples could not live. Even as a young adult lawyer I could not buy a house in the southeast Denver neighborhood called Crestmoor.  I made an offer on a house on the street below which I visited on my trip last year. I remember my real estate agent telling me I could not buy there. I did not get the house. I visited the Crestmoor area on my trip last year and wondered what my life might have been like had I lived on that house and on that street. Those restrictive housing rules were struck down years ago. But I can tell you they still exist in the minds of many.

In college I participated in peace marches and civil right marches. In October 1968 I went to the state capitol to take movies of George Wallace who was running for President. People started getting riled up over Wallace's comments and skirmishes erupted. There wasn't any violence, but hotheads were being hotheads. The cops responded with force. I started to take movies and a cop came right at me and ordered me to stop filming. I did. I was no hero. I was a spineless wimp. In August I attended the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  I went to the Conrad Hilton Hotel on the night of the police riot looking for my friend Annette. I could smell tear gas and vomit for a couple of blocks before I got to the hotel. And when I arrived I saw kids my age walking around with blood soaked bandages on their heads. This was my wake-up call that there were no more Officer Goody's left in this world. Certainly none in Chicago.

Kent State happened two years later. National guardsmen shot and killed four unarmed college students and wounded nine others. LAW AND ORDER became the mantra. Politicians seized on the need to restore law and order. Lines were drawn. People that play by the rules have nothing to fear. Those that don't do.

 I was in my first year of law school when Kent State occurred. I think most people of my generation were outraged over our government taking aim at and killing innocent people. Some dimwit at Colorado State University (my undergraduate school) burned down Old Main - presumably to protest Kent State. That was forty-six years ago. I have learned that the world is full of dimwits. They come in all colors and have all kinds of crazy ideas about world order. I am weary of anybody who professes to know everything and knows how to fix anything. These people are dangerous whether they are on center stage or are lurking in the background.

I woke up this morning and watched the news. Combat Police dressed like those pictured above were charging at a group of protesters upset with the slew of police shootings of black people. Is there no wonder that our character as a people has changed? Those cops would scare anybody. That's why they are dressed like that.

I know we can't and won't go back to the time when cops looked like this Norman Rockwell policeman. But that should not stop us from trying. What you see is what you get.

All The Way with LBJ - Reflections of a Former Teen Democrat

The photo above shows Marcia McGinley, Ben King, and me awaiting the arrival of President Lyndon B. Johnson at a political speech in Denver in 1964. I was the president of the Jefferson County Teen Democrats. Our group attended a speech the President made at the old auditorium arena sometime during the race for the White House. Later that day the President signed the poster I was holding.

I still have the poster with LBJ's autograph as well as autographs of Senators and Congressmen who accompanied him. It's been kept in dorm rooms, basements, and closets for years. There are little tears and water marks, but the color and character of that time are still in tact.  CLICK HERE to see the signatures of those who accompanied LBJ as well as Colorado's former Republican Governor John A. Love.

Lady Bird Johnson stopped briefly at Stapleton Airport in Denver en route Washington D.C after vacationing at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Our teen dems presented her with a small pine tree which we suggested she plant on the White House grounds. She said she would see to it that it would get planted on the Texas ranch.  How naive our gesture seems now. It made the news back then. Lady Bird signed the home made campaign poster with our Teen Dem mascot on it. Years later as her autograph started to fade, I used a magic marker to retrace her signature. For that forgery, I now atone.

Earlier this week I watched the HBO movie ALL THE WAY which depicted LBJ's first year as President and the events which led up to his election as President in his own right in 1964. Since I already knew how that election ended, it was fascinating to watch how Johnson responded to events and political turmoil that raged throughout much of  my youth. The driving force of his election bid was the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It ended racial segregation of public schools, the workplace, and in facilities that serve the public known as "public accommodations". I urge readers to watch this flick. Bryan Cranston did a superb job as LBJ and made history relevant to our current body politic.

I grew up in a lily white suburb of Denver. We had no black students at any of my schools and probably none in Jefferson County located west of Denver and extending into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. We lived a very comfortable post World War II life in an economy that was booming. I had no reference to poverty or racism because I didn't see it. But I knew it existed because I watched the nightly news and saw stories on TV about how blacks were treated in other parts of America - especially the south. Those of us in our sixties and older probably remember those grainy black and white nightly news clips which showed sit-ins, marches, bombings, lynchings, murders, riots, and speeches by civil rights leaders reacting to the turmoil of that era. The Civil War ended slavery, but it had not given black people equal rights to whites. Blacks could not vote in many parts of the south. They could not use restrooms in bus stations or eat a meal at a lunch counter. They could not go to college in many places. Segregation was a method by which the white majority kept the black minority in its place. It was a way of life. In Denver blacks lived in one part of town. A federal judge created forced busing to desegregate Denver's public schools.  A lot of white folks fled to the suburbs in response.

In June 1965 I got a summer job at a guest lodge located in Upper Bear Creek Canyon just outside of Evergreen, Colorado. Historically the lodge had been the summer home of one of Colorado's richest families. In 1965 the owners were a middle aged couple who ran the place with the aid of their adult daughter and her husband plus the summer crew of four or five college students.  I was one of them. I had never had a job in the hospitality business before that job. One day I had to replenish the glasses in the bar. I carefully stacked each cocktail glass in a neat row on glass shelves with a mirror behind. I put one glass too many on the glass shelf. The entire wall of glasses came crashing down. I was mortified. I found an online photo of that room as it exists today. Instead of stocking glasses, I laid kindling and logs for future fires throughout this mountain castle and other odd jobs that did not include anything in the bar area.

The other college kids were like me: squeaky clean white kids. The cook was a young black guy named Willie. We had worked together as a group for a couple of weeks. We all got along great. One afternoon after our work was done and when all the guest rooms were vacant, we all jumped in the pool and had a good time. We spent the entire day preparing for the next day arrival of a group of executives from Duracell or some other battery manufacturing company. The lady owner, whose first name was Sadie, was not pleased that Willie got in the pool. She told him he could not swim in the pool in future under any circumstance. Whereupon he quit before she had a chance to fire him. This all seemed odd and wrong to me. You see Sadie routinely boasted that she and Lady Bird Johnson were cousins. I would have thought she would have treated a black person with respect since she was an important member of the President's family so to speak. She could have said that none of the staff could use the pool and that would have been understood by all. But that is not what happened. In the HBO movie ALL THE WAY LBJ told a story about the time before he was President, when his cook drove the Johnson's car from Washington down to the LBJ ranch in Texas. This was a time before the Civil Rights Act was passed - when blacks were not allowed to use white restrooms in many parts of the south.  Johnson bemoaned the fact his cook had to squat in roadside fields.

Willie got his revenge on Sadie without doing or saying anything. When the guests arrived the next day there was no cook. The owners' daughter and I drove into Evergreen to find already prepared food to feed the guests. There wasn't such a thing in 1965 Evergreen. So we ended up at the Safeway store where we bought Swanson TV chicken dinners. We took them back to the lodge. I remember thinking how loony it was that we were taking TV dinners up a private gated half mile road to this luxurious mountain top retreat to serve to people who were expecting a wonderful meal. We heated the TV dinners and plated them along with a sprig of parsley. We made salads and served some form of desert as well.

The next morning the college kids cooked breakfast. I remember one guest asked me for some jelly or preserves. I knew Sadie had two different kinds of preserves. One was a cheap jar which was to be served to guests and an expensive jar which was reserved for family use. I reasoned that since the guests had to eat a TV dinner instead of a real meal prepared by a real chef they should be treated to the more expensive preserves. Sadie noticed I had done and walked through the elegant dining room with windows looking out to the wooded grounds and removed the bowl from the table. She told me to replace the bowl the cheap preserves. I did as I was instructed.

The owners hired a new cook who started work later that day. We served bottle after bottle of champagne to the battery people that night. We kept the bubbly flowing and flowing. After all the guests paid for it. Sadie's husband who was referred to by all as The Colonel grilled the steaks. The new cook prepared the remainder of the meal. The guests had a really good night in this  remarkable setting.

The next day was Sunday morning. I walked into the office and told Sadie I quit. I told the other kids. They all quit as well. I couldn't work for a crazy woman (or man). Until I started to write today's blog I forgot how wacko Sadie behaved over a jar of preserves and cruel she was to Willie. What a petty person she was. And what a miserable human being she was to treat a really nice man so meanly.

The President got landmark civil rights legislation enacted which has changed the course of American life for the past 52 years. But there are still people who are petty and carry on grudges over the way things used to be. They continue to use the States Rights argument to deny all people fair and equal treatment in these United States of America.Watch ALL THE WAY as it recalls the way we used to be and that the way some of still are. The echoes of that era are a part of our current political debate.

I was a Sputdnut Man

Remember when you were a kid and you marked your age by half years or even quarter years? I just turned 69 and now I mark my age by decades.

The good side of growing older is the wisdom that comes with it. My life experiences help me gauge the present by things I remember from the past. I grew up in Denver in the 1950s. My mom and dad got married in 1929. My sister was born in 1930 and my brother in 1935. My parents raised two kids in the Great Depression. My mom never got over the Depression. I was raised as a child of the Depression even though I was born in 1947 at the very start of the Baby Boom.

Even as a kid I had several odd jobs to make spending money. I got an allowance, but not enough to meet my needs. Back then my needs consisted of candy and model cars and airplanes. I used to build a lot of models. In 1957 a friend and I talked the owner of the Spudnut Shop in the nearby Lakeside Mall into letting us go door to door to sell fresh Spudnuts.  (I found the photo of a very similar Spudnut shop online. It is eerily similar to what I remember.) Spudnuts were donuts made with potato flour. My friend and I made 75 cents each for selling a dozen bags of Spudnuts. One day I rang a doorbell and a woman's voice from the inside rang out "Whose there?" And I answered "The Spudnut Man." I swear this is true: she came to the door in a bra looking for a man and saw only a little ten year old boy. She bought a bag from me. I never saw a woman other than my mother in a bra before. It was amazing.

Sometime either before or soon after my Spudnut days I learned a valuable lesson about the value of my time and my work. We had a horrible snow storm. On a cold and snowy Sunday I went outside with my snow shovel and set out to shovel sidewalks. I think I charged 25 cents. The lesson came when I shoveled a particularly large sidewalk. It must have been a corner property. I remember being exhausted. When I was done I went to the house to collect my money. The man asked "How much?"  I said something like "However much you think it is worth." The bastard only gave me 50 cents. I had shoveled my little tail off for this guy. And all I got was 50 cents. I wasn't so mad at him as I was mad at myself.

I put myself through college and law school. I paid for everything with money I earned plus a couple scholarships. I had to pinch pennies to get by. My college dorm did not serve a Sunday evening meal. I often made soup in my popcorn popper at a cost of ten cents.  I went to the University of Denver College of Law where the tuition was very expensive. I worked at the courthouse in Golden, Colorado during the daytime and attended law school at night. I got a part time job as an assistant to Professor Jamison which helped pay part of my tuition. I managed to have all my college loans repaid within a year or so after graduating. 

The following are some of the benchmarks I used to determine if I am paying too much for something today as compared to what it used to cost. Way back in 1957 I was in the 5th grade.  I went on my first day with Karen S. (my "steady") which lasted one week. We double-dated with another couple and saw a movie at the Oriental Theater located on 44th and Tennyson Street. The "show" cost 25 cents. We bought a long paper bag of popcorn for a dime at the drugstore next door and Green Rivers in the theatre for another dime. Total cost for a Saturday afternoon date was $.45 each. Today the Regal Cinema in Key West charges $10.09 for a matinee ticket. Popcorn and drink would be another $6 or so.

I had to buy a new car just as I started law school. I chose a 1970 VW which cost me $2000. A 2016 Beetle starts at $19,588. My first studio apartment cost $125 per month. A comparable studio apartment in Key West would cost over $1500.

You could buy a Coke for a nickel when I was a kid. Later Coke came out with a King Size bottle for a dime. Today in Key West a can of Coke costs $1.50. I have had to pay $3 for a Coke in restaurants.  I remember we used to have Crestridge Dairy deliver two gallons of milk twice a week to our house. Milk cost $.45 a gallon back then. Today in Key West the price is about $4.50. And nobody delivers milk. Way back in the 50s bread cost $.19. Last week I paid $4.29.

The summer before I started college I had a job at the Jefferson County Airport where I refueled small airplanes. I was paid minimum wage - $1 per hour. A fellow employee who just got out of the Air Force made $1.10. He was a man, and I was still a boy. The minimum wage in Florida today is $8.05. (That's pre-tax earnings.)

Can you imagine getting out of the military and earning minimum wage and having to pay $4.29 for a loaf of bread or $4.50 for a gallon of milk? Or paying some ridiculous amount for rent?  If you lived in Key West your motivation factor would be pretty low. Mine would. In fact I would be pretty angry - like when I felt the man short-changed me on the hard work I put in to shovel his sidewalks while he stayed inside his warm home.

None of this has a thing to do with buying or selling a home in Key West or elsewhere. I do think that my life experiences have given me a genuine appreciation for the value of money and how much time and often times how much hard work it takes to earn money. This in turn helps me be a better Realtor.

If you want to buy a house in Key West please call me, Gary Thomas, 305-766-2642 or e-mail me at kw1101v@aol.com.

My First Job

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 the 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 created doorway passages between the buildings to interconnect the separate spaces into 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.

I remember one day at work when I was 14 or 15. An engineer who worked at Martin Marietta had a part time job as a furniture salesman.  He was probably in his very early 40s was maybe 5'9 to 5'10. He had two sons: one my age and a younger boy. He always wore his short sleeve dress shirts with the cuff rolled up just one furl to show off his muscles. Even engineers do it.  I’m no big guy. I was maybe 5′7″ then. He was standing at the sales counter when he challenged me to arm wrestle him. I was on one side and he was on the other. We locked palms. We struggled but I won.I put him down like the engineer he was. He was so mad. I could see it in his red face. His eyes looked like he would explode. I didn’t make a big deal about beating an adult. But I loved it. 

Formerly Look Furniture Store

The movie theater was where we displayed used furniture. I remember parking a truck in the alley where we could carry newly acquired used furniture to place on the theater floors that still slanted down toward the stage. The owner hired an upholsterer who set up his re-upholstery shop on the stage. His job was to recover old sofas and chairs to give them new life. America was not as quick to throw away furniture as quickly in the 1960s as it is today. Of course, furniture back then was made in America had an inherent quality that lasted longer than much of the cheap stuff we get from Mexico and Asia today. (I gotta agree the Great Orange Man on that.)

I remember one time when I helped unload a new batch of old furniture that was either a trade in or that the company bought for resale.I opened an old chest of drawers and found a folio of pencil drawings that were made in a prisoner of war camp.  I assume the camp was in Germany because all the signs were written in German and that the prisoners were Americans and allies. The pictures showed daily life in the camp including a ‘delousing’ station where men took showers. Other pics showed sleeping and eating places. I kept the folio and looked at it periodically over the years. I stored in the basement of my first house together with boxes of photos. (Yes, I really do have boxes and boxes of photos.) I went to retrieve the folio one time only to discover it missing. I assume it was taken by a young guy I rented an apartment in the third floor of my house.  He did not have access to my house, but he had access to the basement where he could use the washer and dryer. In retrospect I should have told somebody about the pencil drawings when I first found them. They were something totally unique and probably very important to the person who brought them back from the war. Maybe the tenant's larceny was payback for mine. 

When I was 16 a recent returnee from the Army went to work at the store as a truck driver. He was probably in his early 20s. Anyone older than me was "old". I respected "old" because I was brought up that way. Except on this day I was a brat. I was up in the movie theater projection booth.  I heard him walking up the narrow stairs. The space was very small. The stairway was not lighted as I recall. The projection room was dimly lit. When he walked in I spooked him. He cried out “Oh Shit!”  He almost hit me. He should have.

Looking back maybe my first job was a pretty good thing for me despite the fact that I missed out on a lot of things kids my age got to do. I learned the value of hard work. I mean that. I learned the value of saving money. I remember envying this studly Italian boy who lived across the hall from me in my college dormitory. He had a new car and all kinds of spending money. His dad and brother were lawyers. He became one too. Looks and wealth run in some families. Not in mine, however.  I did okay, though. I became a lawyer in a western Denver suburb not far from Lakeside Park. That was a long time ago. Today I live in Key West and I sell real estate. I still have all of my own hair even if it is gray. I can't beat a 14 year old at arm wrestling and I know enough not to try. I do pretty good at negotiating deals for my buyers and sellers, however.

Back to School, But It's Not What You Think

A few weeks ago I returned to Denver, Colorado to attend my 50th high school reunion.  I lived in Denver from birth in 1947 until I moved to Key West in late 1993 when I purchased the Eaton Lodge guesthouse. I returned to Denver only twice since I moved away to Key West - first in 1997 and then again in February 2013 to attend the memorial service for the judge I had clerked for when I was in law school. The 2013 trip was a cold and miserable experience. I thought then that I would never go back. It was only the week before my 50th high school reunion that I decided to go attend. I had looked at the online list of former classmates who had passed away. Tears welled in my eyes. I saw the faces of 18 year olds that I remembered. I impulsively felt I needed to see my old classmates before it was too late. Perhaps I will write about the reunion another time. It's what happened earlier in the day that made such a mark on me.

I got in my rental car and drove all over the neighborhoods of my youth and adulthood. I stopped and took photos of a couple of the houses where I lived and wondered who lived inside those places now.  I was not expecting my childhood neighborhood to look much different. But it did. The houses and yards were different. My house had been added onto, the garage was turned into a living space, maybe a bedroom. A new much larger garage was added. The white picket fence was removed and an ugly galvanized wire fence installed. The rock garden my parents created from collecting rocks on various vacations was gone as were the fruit trees my mother used to back apple and cherry pies.

I remembered my dad and big brother chase someone who had been looking in the bathroom window when my sister was in there. I'll never forget how quickly they bolted from the house. My dad had a gun which he took it with him. Thank God he didn't find the creepy  peeping tom. My dad always suspected it was the tall skinny guy that lived in the house caddy-corner across the street. I always had my guard up when I walked past that house.

Mrs. Young  as anything but. She lived directly across the street from our house. She had white hair, wire framed glasses, and would sit on her screen enclosed front porch for hours watching pretty much of nothing. Her house was older than ours. It was a bungalow typical of what was built in the 1920s.  I would go over to her house in the summer and sit on her front porch and talk with her for the longest time. She had a grandson named Freddy who would come to visit on the weekends. He lived nearby - about one mile away near the old Wheat Ridge High School.  His parents were divorced - a novelty back in the mid 1950s. He had a huge bedroom filled with toys. His dad was a contractor who drove a Cadillac and a big truck. Freddy and I became good friends. I envied all the things Freddy had, but I had my parents so things evened out - that is until they got divorced. It was Freddy Young who came to my house one Saturday afternoon banging on the front door telling me a little black bear had got run over by a car. We were both really young - maybe six or seven years old.  I went over to see the bear who wasn't a bear after all. It was my little black Cocker Spaniel who I named Blackie. He laid lifeless with blood running from his nose.  I remember screaming and running back home. My mother called my dad who was at work. He came home right away and picked Blackie off the street and carried him home. My dad dug a small grave in the backyard. We had a small funeral.  Later I made a cross. 

I drove a block west of my old house and turned left to see my grade school,  Mountain View Elementary School, which is still located at 4165 Eaton Street except now it is called the RE-CREATE ACADEMY. I took a couple of photos of the outside of the building. I noticed a woman open the front door at north wing of the old school. That addition was built in 1953 and my first grade class was the very first class to use that classroom. The next year we moved next door where Mrs. Parham was my teacher. The Principal's office was on the left side of the entry. I went into the building, introduced myself as a former student, and asked for permission to walk around and take some photos. Permission was granted.

First Grade Class in 2015

The first grade class room looked so much larger than I remember. Of course back in 1953 we had blackboards and individual metal desks with with cubbyholes under the molded wood seats where we would store books and things. The 2015 classroom had long tables and computers everywhere.

The second grade class room and then the kindergarten followed in order down the hall. Back in the 1950s student desks came in different sizes. Little kids had little desks. By the time I got to the sixth grade, the desks were much larger. I remember one of the more memorable moments in my life was when I could sit on our living room sofa and my feet finally touched the floor. No longer fitting in a kiddie desk was another.

Kindergarten Class in 2015

My kindergarten, however,  was located on the rear side of the ground floor of the original school building. We only attended kindergarten for half a day. My kindergarten teacher's name was Miss Godley. She must have been 900 years old. She wore her long gray hair tied up in a bun. She wore paisley dresses and was one of the kindest people I ever met in my life other than my grandmother.

I lived one block away from school. Both my mother and dad worked. When I got out of school at noon, I was supposed to walk to the corner of 43rd and Eaton and walk one block east to Mrs. Sorrentino's house where I would spend the afternoon waiting for my mom to get home from work. We would listen to Arthur Godfrey's radio program while Mrs. Sorrentino and her daughter Rose would prepare dinner. Mr. Sorrentino (Pascal) and I would sit on his front porch on warm days where I would constantly try to hit his hand that laid flat on the arm rest of his wood chair. Of course he would move it away in the last millisecond and  my fist would hit the flat surface of the arm rest. He was pretty quick for being so old.

One day a classmate who lived a couple of blocks south of the school, and in the opposite direction of where I lived,  invited me to go to his house for lunch and to play. I agreed and we set out to his house. Miss Godley happened to be driving her car home to have her lunch and saw me and my friend walking. She knew I was walking in the wrong direction. She stopped her car and asked me where I was going. I said to my friend's house. She told me I had to turn around and go to my house because my parents would be worried. I said goodbye to my friend, turned around, and started to walk back toward my house. Miss Godley drove her car away.  I looked back and as soon as I saw that she was gone, I pivoted and ran to my friend where we proceeded go to his house where I spent the afternoon.

I don't remember exactly how or when I was found. I do know Mrs. Sorrentino called my dad who came home from work and looked all over for me. I know the school got involved in the search because of what happened the next day.  Miss Godley made my classmates sit in a circle in the middle of the kindergarten. She then said one of us had been very bad the day before. She told the story of the bad child who disobeyed and deceived her.  We all looked around the circle wondering which one of us was the bad seed. She never said it was me, for which I was grateful.  But as you can tell from reading this, I was still deceitful brat by not admitting my guilt or my shame. I now confess..

Boy's Restroom in 2015

The boys restroom was located on the ground floor of the school next to the original kindergarten. When I was in kindergarten the boys would line up at one of the two troughs to do their business. Boys are boys and peeing turned into a sport to see who could pee the furthest. We moved to the new building in 1953 and returned to use this bathroom from the third grade on. By then I got too modest and retreated to one of the stalls. I was surprised to see that the bathroom has has not changed in sixty three years. Nor have I.

The new kindergarten classroom (photo four above) was occasionally used by my classmates. I can't remember much about when or why we went there except for reading class when one of the teachers would read us a story. I remember one book especially - Little Black Sambo.  My school was as lily white as they come. In fact all of the schools in the Jefferson County school system were lily white. I had no conception of black people other than Amos and Andy which was a television program in the early 1950s. I knew that Little Black Sambo was not real, but then again I did not know what "real" was living in my little environment where everybody was white.

Cafeteria, Auditorium, and Gym in 2015

The school auditorium also served as the school lunchroom. And on really bad days we would retreat to this space for recess instead of going out into the snow. The photo above shows the room as it looks today. Back in the 1950s there were long tables and grayish-brown metal chairs that folded away. The school kitchen was located just to the left of the stage. The nice ladies made us lunches that back then cost $.25 a day. Twenty-five cents. We had our share of mystery meat, Salisbury steak, spaghetti, and chipped beef. But we also had pizza . It was pretty good fare for a quarter.

Backstage in 2015

I think it was 1955 when I played an orphan in my school's Christmas play. I remember the play took place at Christmas time because Santa was the main character who was played by an adult - probably a teacher. Children from each grade played the other orphans.

The play took place right after school on the Friday before our Christmas recess began. The audience was filled with kids from each grade along with their parents. I remember staring out at the audience to find my mother. I did not see her. Later she told me she was there.When I stood on the stage taking the photos I remember looking out at the space sixty years earlier - looking for my mother's face. I didn't see it. She told me later that afternoon she was there. I was never really sure. The auditorium was much smaller than I remembered.

The play was short. My part was even shorter. My part required intensive practice on my dialect. I'm not sure who taught me the phraseology, and I cannot remember my line.  But as I recall my one line brought down the house. One of the teachers applied my makeup. Yep, an eight year old boy wearing makeup. The teacher rubbed burnt cork all over my hands, neck, and face. I was supposed to be a little black orphan.  I got my line out and the audience roared. Maybe a bit of Little Black Sambo or Amos and Andy rubbed off on me.

Sixth Grade Classroom in 2015

By the sixth grade we were all pretty much grown up or so we thought.  Mr. Albert Morrison was my sixth grade teacher. He had fought in World War II. He was a member of the Kiwanis Clubs and got his group to provide our safety patrol yellow slickers and surplus Army helmets painted yellow which we wore while standing guard for the younger students as they walked to and from school each day.

Mountain View Safety Patrol Members - Sixth Grade Boys in 1959

The Cork Board

The original cork board at the back of the sixth grade classroom was still there. My mind raced back to when we were studying Canada. We did a mock television documentary about what we had learned on the subject. We did not have a TV camera. Heck, we didn't even have a TV. We used a giant roll of art paper upon which we had drawn various scenes of Canada.  The roll of paper was unfurled as it progressed through a pretend TV set accompanied by the recorded narration on reel to reel tape. I was the narrator. I still remember one of my lines: "Qui! Qui! Zis is Channel Six Mountain View." Today my old class room and all of the other class rooms have computers.


Mr. Morrison also assisted Dr. O'Day who was our Boy Scout troop leader. Mr. Morrison took us on a weekend over-night camping trip up in the foothills of  the Rocky Mountains. I saw him smoke. He swore, too. He was mortal.

I guess every school has a kid that is a bit different. Our kid was Tommy Myers. He wore clothes like Pig-Pen. He was never really scrubbed clean like the other boys. One time Tommy gave me a twenty dollar bill as a gift for being his friend.  I remember one night I was in our living room. I had set up my mom's ironing board, and I was ironing my money. That wasn't a typo. I ironed my money so it would look crisp. My big brother saw my stacks of ones but got really demanding when he saw that $20 bill. He demanded to know where it came from. That got my mother in on the conversation. I told her Tommy had given it to me. I had to go over to Tommy's house to return the money back to his mother. Twenty dollars in 1959 would be worth $162.49 today.

Mr. Morrison did not like Tommy. Not one bit. One day Mr. Morrison got so mad at Tommy that he dashed from the front of the classroom to grab Tommy by his dirty little brown arm and yank him out of his chair and dragged him through the classroom like a rag doll and kicked him out the door. We were shocked. We had never seen Mr. Morrison or anyone ever treat a student like that. He was three or four times the size of that kid. He had been in the war. He could have killed the kid. Yeah, he smoked. And he did bad!

Hallway to First Floor Exit which Freddy Mander Bolted to Escape

 Sometime during the sixth grade a boy named Freddy Mander enrolled in my school. He had moved from Germany to Colorado. The very first day of class the school bell rang as it always did. Freddy jumped from his seat and ran out of the class, down the stairs, and out to the front of the school to hide. He later explained he thought it was an air raid warning.

Bruce Small had been my best friend throughout school. His mother had been my Cub Scout Den Mother in 1955.  His mother's name was Shirley, the same as my older sister. They lived in a modest little house on Benton Street. Bruce had a brother named Ronny, just like I did, except my brother was twelve years older than me. I think it was our fifth grade teacher whose name I don't recall who continually called Bruce "Short" instead of Small. This really infuriated him.  I remember him liping off to her saying "My name is Small, not Short!".  It did no good. She continued to call him Short.

A lot of what you learn in school occurs outside the classroom. I participated in little league baseball for only one year - 1958. Our team was sponsored by Denargo Market. Because of my prolific sports prowess, I was selected to play center field. One Saturday afternoon we were at our home field, behind my school, when this random kid hit a pop fly directly to where I was standing. A few weeks earlier I was playing catch with my Uncle Joe who had moved in with us for some unknown reason. Anyway, my uncle through a baseball that hit me straight in the eye. I never got over my fear of baseballs after that. So when that random kid's ball was falling from the sky directly into my mitt, I flinched and acted like the sun was too bright and I could not see the ball. That was the only time in all of our games that a baseball ever got near me. Our team lost every single game we played that year. Maybe I could have saved the day had I even tried to catch that ball. I didn't, and I have never forgotten it.

There were two big baseball fields and a tennis court (which we used for playing dodge ball) behind my school. When I was in the sixth grade I got upset with Bruce small about something. I acted totally out of character and blurted out "I choose you!".  I forgot the matter by the time we were back in school. But he didn't. Nor did the rest of my class. When school let out, my entire class walked back across the street to the baseball field where Bruce and I squared off. I don't know who went first. I remember boys and girls picking their favorite. I don't know who favored me or him. It did not matter. I hit him hard several times. He started to cry and went home. I felt terrible. I have never forgotten this little episode either. I loved that kid.

I look back on my seven years at Mountain View Elementary School with sincere fondness and appreciation. I have recounted little episodes of my life at my grade school. These were lessons learned for me both in school and about life. We made it out alive and without wearing helmets. I guess some of my teachers may have been politically incorrect in choosing some books to read and some plays to perform. Mr. Morrison behaved terribly wrong in how he treated Freddy, but he was still a good man. I am very happy I took time to go back to school.  

You can find out more about the RE-CREATE ACADEMY on FACEBOOK.