Jan. 08, 2003 - 19:26 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Lane

Funny how just a glimpse at a picture will start my memory machine into motion. It usually puts me into a time frame as well.

I read Bonnie's entry tonight and she had a picture of a clock on a stand on the side walk. That's all it took.

I'm in my early teens, downtown to explore more than anything else. Don't have a show in mind. Just wandering, window shopping with a kid's curiosity, sometimes walking into a store to look. I go into some of the business buildings to see what businesses are on the upper floors or whatever a nosy kid can see.

I go back on the street in the sunshine and get the feeling that I am so lucky to live in a town like mine. Asphalt streets, cement curbs and gutters, cement sidewalks, plentiful street lights. I especially like the clocks with big faces and numbers on standards in front of jewlery stores, they are almost at the curb and can be read from cars as well as the sidewalks. Each one is fancy in a different way, no two alike but all are pretty and interesting.

Three of the downtown streets have street car rails down the middle, two sets, one for each direction. Big old yellow cars on the rails, wooden on a metal undercarriage, electric with the trolley meeting the overhead wire, lumbering along at their slow down town pace, stopping at almost every corner.

Two of those well traveled streets have that precious element, cool H2O bubbling continuously from fountains at the corners, even having a small pot at the bottom for the overflow water to rest before draining away - a place for dogs to drink.

The sameness of the view shows many different ways of doing the same thing. One thing is the awnings that extend out over the sidewalk in the shopping district. Seems as if no two have been bought from the same manufacturer, all have a means of rolling them up against the building for the night or during storms. There are two firms in town who supply the canvas and mechanics who put new awnings on the mechanical framework. I like to be downtown early and watch shopkeepers roll the awnings down and sweep the sidewalk in front.

On the busiest street intersections is a cop directing traffic, I notice sweat dripping from his brows and down his neck, I think he could be cooler without that darn helmet on, yet he would burn if he didn't wear it. For me a cap is cooler and shades my eyes.

There is a big hardware store in downtown having all the tools that carpenters use, the newest and best of kind. Over a street or two and nearer the depot is MASSCO Mine and Smelter Supply Co. which usually has interesting things in their window such as jackhammers. Up and over a bit is M. L. Foss which carries machinists tools, vises and things like that, also deals in metals. Right across the street from the Depot is Hendrie and Bolthoff's huge building who wholesales most everything. I think they got their start when the gold rush was on at Central City, those times they supplied dynamite, blasting caps, carbide for miners lamps and things like that, picks and shovels of any kind.

Of course I wander across the street and go into the Depot, looking at the ceiling high above the floor and my favorite hobby, people watching comes into play there. Not only trying to figure out what kind of people I see, but trying to guess where they are going and why.

Today I go up 17th Street to the Security Building to where Mom works in the Western Union Office there and we go to lunch at Keable's. Keable's is a great place to eat, not fancy, but great food and fine waitresses. It is a cut above the usual ulcer gulches to be found downtown. We eat and talk, pleasantly about inconsequential things. Just visiting in the short time she has before returning to work. A hug and a kiss before she goes back into the building. I won't see her 'til after she gets home from work this evening.

I go down skid row on Larimer looking at the variety of things displayed in the windows of the many pawn shops there. On that street there seems to be some of everything to be bought. My eyes slaver over the fine jewelry in the windows, I sometimes go inside to see the tools there, cameras, clothes. The aura of the people who pawned their things seems to radiate from each item. I wonder just what brought each person to the point of having to put something in hock. Some of the stuff has been in the windows since I first started my gawking tour several years ago. I guess that those who pawned that stuff had long ago lost any rights to that stuff or were paying interest on it or whatever it was called.

There are so many places to go that I have to sort by my priority, there isn't time for me to see everything.

I am in a different time where men wear hats, suits, neckties and shiny shoes and women have Marceled hair and funny shaped hats and wear silk stockings with seams up the back and have high heeled shoes. A time when things move a bit slower, people are a bit more sociable, manners are much better than now.

I am there but must return, refreshed by a trip down memory Lane . . . . . . . . . .

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