Dec. 09, 2002 - 21:26 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

High Gateway

In my most fond memories is the little two room house on the back of a lot that is the place of my first awareness. Originally it had been built to be a two car garage but the man who was building it became ill and later died. At the end of the teen years of this century very few people had a car and fewer yet had two cars. So the new owner had walled in the two large doorways, full finished the inside and made it a small house. Garages of those days were narrow and that dictated the size of it. The main part was of brick and had four sets of hinged windows, each room had two sets of them.

Our house was not overfurnished and what was there was pretty utilitarian. What Mom and Dad laughingly called the Living Room or Front Room held our sleeping furniture. Their bed, a Davenport, a forerunner of the Simmons Hide-a-bed a fold out with a mattress, mine was a crib which had a side that could be lowered. There was what they called a Chiffonier (chest of drawers) for our clothes, Mom's 'White' electric sewing machine, and a windup Victrola in a cabinet that had lots of room for records. In what little room there was left were two benches made of pine by my uncle, unique in that they had no nails, screws or glue used in their construction. They would be pressed into service for the family gatherings. A leaf in the table and the benches would accomodate everyone.

The other room had a very small restroom with two layers of shelves overhead, right next to that was our closet, one clothes pole across the narrowest part of it, the other end of the closet had coat rack and shelves, floor to ceiling. There was a coal range for heat, baking and cooking, across the room was the sink with a cold water tap, sinkboard and a cabinet of drawers underneath. Above the sink were two cupboards with hinged doors and four shelves. The main part of the room had a small sideboard with drawers, four chairs, a table and Dad's desk. The desk extended out from the wall to the edge of the table. The desk was a Governor Winthrop style without a bookcase on top, made by my uncle out of pine. An ice box accomodating ice from the front, complete with the pan underneath for the water off the melted ice. On top of the ice box was the Atwater Kent radio in three pieces, radio, speaker and battery box.

That was all that we needed to live, and for entertainment we had the Victrola with records in the front room and the Atwater Kent radio in the kitchen / dining room.

I can vaguely remember Dad putting shelves of one by eight pine above the full length of each window. I can remember Dad going through the access hole through the ceiling and handing small boxes down to Mom. They contained treasures that I still hold at great value. Books. Books enough to fill all four sets of shelves except for about a foot. That foot eventually held my little library. At first were two little childish books, more came later.

I think I was four when I finally began to put the letters of a hard earned alphabet together to form words. From words I learned pronunciation and definitions from what I could decipher of the Rocky Mountain News. I would read out loud my kiddie books to Mom and Dad at last. My little library grew a bit as the years passed A Child's Garden Of Verses (which I still read from that very book, once a year in our daughter's library in Oregon), Howard Pyle's Book Of Pirates was so big it almost fell off the shelf, and Mom or Dad would let me read of their books, handing me one down now and then.

But I had the hugest library in our neighborhood, it was one I had to walk to though, Sarah Platt Decker a branch of Denver Public Library.

I was quite young when Mom took me to the library, a very beautiful and imposing place to a kid it was and still is to this guy, small though it seems now, it holds a large amount of treasured memories. My entry into it caused me one of the biggest scares I ever had experienced at that young age. As we stepped inside I saw a group of kids, all prissied up and standing in ranks. I barely had time to see that, when the photograper set off his flash powder to give enough light for an indoor photo. Mom once told me that she didn't see how I could do it but I had the door open and was about a half block away before she could catch me. So ended my first trip to the library.

For a while I contented myself with the books at home. Another week or so lured by Mom's tale of walls of books there and her assurance that I wouldn't walk into that flash of picture taking again, we walked down to the library. I was in heaven, there was one whole wall in the south wing that had children's and young people's books. Mom helped me pick out books there for a short time. Later as there was limited seating, I usually found a place for Mom to sit while I looked, occasionally asking her to get a book down from one of the upper shelves for me.

Mom set the parameters after the librarian, Mrs. Harvey saw how fast I went through books gave her approval for Mom to check out as many books as I wanted, then the rule was Mom's, I could check out as many books as I could carry, she wouldn't carry any for me. She warned me that whatever I checked out would have to be read and returned before they came overdue. Soon my eyes and my literary stomach adjusted which allowed me to get what I could read.

As time went on and was allowed out by myself my trips to the library were alone because I finally had a card.

I went through the books on the shelves at home as Mom or Dad would let me. Then came the frustrations, "Oh, that one is too old for you, you wouldn't understand it." Jeepers there were a bunch of them.

Finally I became a latch key kid and had duties to perform at home after school which didn't take all my time, leaving me time to do as I pleased. Some of those times were spent with friends out of doors, doing our thing. But some of my time was used by readings books off the shelves at home. I could stand on a chair and reach them. So I soon went through all the books that were too old for me -- of course. I don't think I had any real trouble understanding them, one or two of them were a bit racy, such as The Lady Of The Camillias by Dumas on which I later found out the opera La Traviata was based. The Rubiyat of Omar Kahyyam a book of poetry that they said was too old for me too. Some that could understand were boring and soon put back on shelf.

In between would be trips to the library. I had finally convinced Mrs. Harvey that I could read adult books with understanding and she would let me pretty well check out what I wanted to. Occasionally she would gently say, "I think you better bring your Mom some Saturday and if she wants to she can check it out herself and give it to you to read."

When I got old enough to ride downtown on my own I would frequent a bookstore in the lower end of the district near the Tramway Loop that had used books of all kinds. With my Scrooged cash I would buy one or another of the books that were, "too old for me."

I guess that is where my utter distaste for censorship started to grow in me and has grown through the years.

But always on those shelves at home were old friends that I read and reread. I don't know how many times I read "Hiawatha," and some of the other poems in that book. In a way my homegrown education outstripped my formal school education. Somehow I could see how people acted toward each other and situations. I could see how each person's morals and ethics had a bearing on their actions and the results of same. I had no brother or sister or Mother at home to explain things to me, so I learned in the best way I knew how. At that, things I learned from extensive reading then stood me in good stead later in coping with and understanding life and the actions of people who did such a thing as living in the world of my time or earlier.

Those shelves of books at home were to me life's High Gateway . . . . . . . . .

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