Jun. 28, 2004 - 18:26 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

In Another Time

There is a very talented columnist at the Rocky Mountain News. Her name is Tina Griego. Her column shows up in "Rocky Talk." Much like Mr. Lopez was before his untimely death, she seems to be able to come close to and understand people in Denver, especially those of us who have seen hardship. Her column today takes me back to the early days of my childhood in colors very clear. In part:

Sun Hasn't Set On West Side Friendships

"When they were kids they figured they'd be friends forever. They don't remember ever saying it out loud. It wasn't that way with them. It was more that their imaginations wouldn't let them conceive of any other possibilty."

The future was forged in the secrets they shared and the knees scraped, in the games of Kick-the-can and the ringing bell of the street cars passing overhead and the calls of Lawrence the ice man and Johnny the fruit man and Junior's aunt yelling at him to put down that umbrella and get off the viaduct bridge. Right ! Now ! It was in the smell of pumpernickel bread from the Star Bakery and the days they took straw mats from the brickyard and floated down the Platte River and the nights they lit bonfires and cooked potatoes on sticks, gobbling them, hot, hot, hot, going home with soot on their cheeks."

"They were Westsiders during the last good years of the West Side. Before the Platte River flooded in the 1965, destroying homes,leaving sewer stench behind. Before the old homes were turned into the Mile High Stadium parking lot, and, yes, you better believe that Verna Davis-then-Duran can walk that lot and show exactly where her house used to be. Five-oh-nine-five Dale Court."

"They grew up on the same street, went to the same schools, fell in love with the girls and boys across the street, joined the service, married young, moved out of the neighborhood. If this were a typical story of childhood friends, that would be the end of that. But this is a West Side story."

"They became godparents to each other's babies and celebrated weddings and birthdays and when one among them died, they'd shake their heads and hug each other a little tighter. They started holding picnics in the park every summer and they'd visit for hours while the kids and grandkids and, later, the great-grand-kids, ran around. A few years ago, a few hundred people showed up."

"They got together again at Berkeley Park on Saturday. It was the 14th year of the picnic and -- give or take a year -- the 65th year of their friendship."

"Here's the way it started," Lucio Duran says, getting comfortable at one of the picnic tables. His wife, Polly, is here. So are Sam Miranda and Julian and Loretta Chavez and Richard and Gloria Lucero, all picnic planners. Julian and Loretta are in their mid-60s, and so are officially the youngest of the group "It was a Hispanic-Jewish neighborhood," Lucio is saying." "Well, it was a Jewish neighborhood" . . . . "Then we moved in," Rich interrupts. "And took over," Loretta finishes, laughing."

"It was the late 30s, early'40s. Most of them were 9, 10, 11. The Platte river the viaduct, the clay banks and a city dump the would become the Bear Stadium and then Mile High bounded their world. It was defined by their poverty. They shared the neighborhood with Jews who would later move up the hill heading west toward prosperity and Sheridan Boulevard. Dinner might be beans and chile. Breakfast, bagels and lox. During the Sabbath, the orthodox families would pay them a nickel to come in and light the stoves."

"Oh, they all sigh, and stories come. Of baseball games and Saturday night dances and teachers who forbade them to use the Spanish pronunciation of their names.

"What made it so good is that all of us were in the same boat." "Yeah, we were all poor." "We thought poor was great." "We didn't know any better."

"It may be that nostalgia always makes poverty better than it is. It may be that poverty which not recognized until many years later is a kind of blessing. In any case, they never starved and they turned a neighborhood where other people dumped garbage into a kingdom. They call themselves lucky. Others were not so. Some kids ended up in Canon City, some died in wars -- almost all the joined the service. Lucio -- the young umbrella-weilding daredevil also knows as Junior -- signed up for World War Two when he was 14 using his brother's birth certificate. Naturally he became a paratrooper." - - - - - - "Rich and Gloria were among the last to leave the old neighborhood. That was in 1973. Not much remained, The beautiful brick and stone building that houses Brooklyn's Bar is about all. It used to be a fish market."

"Last years picnic was supposed to be the last. Ater all they're getting old and the planning is a lot of work. Some people thought this year's would be it. Lucio says it won't be.

"I doubt it, too." "That's not how West Side stories end."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Oh, the memories. Radetzky, I think was its name, had the wiping rag business. Men would go through the alleys of the city with a horse and wagon. Their cry was almost unfathomable to me, sometimes it was more of a mutter than anything else. It was a long time before I understood it, "Rags and bottles." I think they sold rags to Radetzky's. There was a junk yard there and a steel company. Down in there was a power plant too.

I rode that street car many times and rode over the viaduct with my Dad and Mom also. I would look down into that other world like an observer from a space ship. Dad would tell me about much of that world, especially how poor the people were who lived there. A time or two when I had the extra carfare I would ride that street car and go down into that world. I would roam, looking quietly - making no noise, just seeing. Sometimes trying to visualize myself living there.

Tina Griego reported, "What made it good is that all of us were in the same boat." "Yeah we were all poor." We thought poor was great." "We didn't know any better." Her next paragraph starting "It may be nostalgia always makes poverty better than it is. It may be that poverty is defined in many ways or that poverty which is not recognized until many years later is kind of a blessing." Mrs. Griego's words went to my heart in so many ways.

One thing I will say, I think those folks from the "bottoms" were folks who learned to work and earn, and practised it all their life.

So much of what she wrote in that column was about what I saw and learned In Another Time . . . . .

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