Jul. 04, 2005 - 13:28 MDT

PIQUANCY OF THE PAST

My earliest memory is of the two room house on the back of the lot on South Pennsylvania Street. It was the womb of a growing little lad. Fitting it was I think. A part of me lives in it still, Mom, Dad and I in the evenings, each doing our thing but close in spirit as humans can get I think.

When I was about 16 we moved to the eastern part of town to a new house that the folks had built. It was a place that didn�t become a true home to me until Heather and I moved in to take care of my Dad in his last years.

Moving there took me away from my friends from first grade on. The cut was pretty much one hundred per cent. Those few who had cars couldn�t afford gas to go across town, the rest of my bunch could hardly afford carfare for the trip. So the move was traumatic for me. Oh sure I had lots of fun as I became used to the place, made a few friends at school. For the most part though my associations were with DeMolay friends and activities, and with my cousins.

I remember the few months Heather and I lived in an apartment in the upper story of a house in South Denver until the little two room house where I was raised came empty and we moved in there. That was where we became used to being a couple and I began to grow up.

There are some great memories of living in the little house, some of which I have written about and some still in my heart and mind.

Then we moved to the front of a house two blocks from where Heather�s parents lived. That was when our first child, a son, was born, so Heather�s Mom an her baby sister were close and helpful.

Then we moved near Wyman school to a building on the street that my grandmother was buying, once a store with living quarters. Heather and I had the ground floor, my uncle and his wife the upper one. Our son spent his babyhood there with us. Grandma�s son quit paying rent and Grandma couldn�t keep up the payments, so we had to move out while grandmother ousted her son and sold her equity. Heather and I went to Illinois for a while then.

The years blur and the places we lived spin past in a rapid rerun. Each place in my memory flashes good memories by my eyes and heart, but having lived in over 100 places (as of 1965), it will be a bit before I even think of trying to log all of them.

After my Dad died we sold his house and moved to a house in the same Montclair neighborhood. A two story thing, built in the 1940s too. That was where our baby daughter went through high school. Where our middle daughter married her second husband. A place of many family gatherings and holiday feasting. It was a place that I had trimmed shrubbery on the south side of the house and made it into a canopy overhanging our little aluminum table and two chairs, where Heather and I would sit and sip tea or coffee and feel the light breeze that usually seemed to come through. The air never seemed dead still there. Up from that was the big back deck with the a bunch of lawn furniture and umbrella where our kids and their kids would hang out in the summer picnics we had.

I loved that place, our breakfast room was on the back of the house on the east side, fully glassed except for the dining room side, our glass table and four chairs where we almost felt as if we were outdoors when there. Our room, the front bedroom on the upper floor faced west and I could look down 13th Avenue at the traffic. When getting over an illness I used to nap up there, with the windows open, drowsing to the hum of traffic going by. I used to spend a lot of time in the yard keeping the shrubbery trimmed, weeding and doing maintenance work. I did paint the outside woodwork which was one thing that showed me we needed to move to a place easier on us. Mowing the lawn was getting too strenuous for one thing, the embankment down to the sidewalk in front was a hairy operation for an old man. I loved every inch of the place and all its nooks and crannies stuffed full of precious things. But it was time.

We found a place we wanted to live, at an apartment complex, put the house up for sale while doing the necessary things to make it marketable. It was fortunate that we could get out of our house and into an apartment without delays and problems. The apartment was on the first floor and I could walk off the back deck (those above us were balconies) right onto the lawn in the quadrangle between buildings. There was an elevator to the garage as well as a stairway, grocery carts to unload stuff from the cars were available. The grounds were well kept, the apartment spacious, the management gracious and I settled in, thinking that I would be buried from there.

Over the years our Denver children kept urging us to move across town near where they lived. Saying they could come by and help us when we needed it. Being quite comfortable in our apartment I stubbornly held out to stay where we were. The thought of making a move from there to anywhere boggled my mind anyhow, so much stuff.

But as I aged and enfeebled it was obvious we should be closer to our kin. They all assured Heather and I that they would move us and help us get settled � which they did. It took a lot of time for us to get squared away and learn to live in a house (duplex) again and a budget rearrangement to take care of things that came free with our apartment. So we moved in the fall and it is now summer, we have made ourselves comfortable, have our aluminum table and chairs along with an umbrella in the front of the house and a nice swing in the back so there is a nice place to sit morning or afternoons.

How I wish I could go back to each place we lived for just a while though. Re-experience life as it was for us, be with our kids as they grew from littles to adults. Be with our folks while they were in their prime of life, long for things past, sigh, and go on about our daily routine enjoying being alive and with friends and relatives. Truly there is a PIQUANCY OF THE PAST . .

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