2000-11-07 - 17:25 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

Peripatetic

The early years had just a few addresses for me. I was born in Denver at 2315 Marion Street in my grandmother's duplex, Mom and Dad rented the upstairs from her. I seem to have memories, rather spotty, of that place -- but they are probably from visits there after we moved.

When I was about 2 1/2 years old we moved out on South Pennsylvania, into a small house on the back of a lot -- originally intended to be a double garage. Two rooms plus a closet and toilet, bathing was done in huge galvanized washtubs in the kitchen. It had a coal range with a hot water reservoir, a sink (cold water only), an earthen cellar with wooden access doors and a coal / wood shed between the house and alley. And a big, big front yard whch became a play place for us kids later on as I gained friends in school.

As small and requiring innovative imagination as to the necessary routines of living in a small house necessitated, we coped well. All of our possessions were few and treasured. My Dad had bought brackets and mounted four one by eight book shelves above the windows, so was born the family library and the books therein had a great deal to do with my social education. There is no wonder that a boy who could read before he went to school, would get into the books and manage to read way beyond the level that grown ups felt that a young boy should. Thus passed the years of elementary school, junior high (now middle school) and the tenth and part of the eleventh grade out in south Denver. In my mind I felt that maybe someday I would meet a girl and move out from there to live with my bride.

I knew that Dad and Mom had two lots in the Montclair area of East Denver because every once in a while we would ride out there to see if someone had built on the lots, as some of that was happening in town. However I was not prepared for a move from the scenes of the neighborhood where I grew to be about 17 years old. Dad and Mom had a house built on those lots, brick, two bedroom, living room, dinette and kitchen on the main floor and a full finished basement and an attached, and full finished garage.

Much of the little amount of furniture we had out south was given away and Mom and Dad proceeded to get new furniture. I should have been in hog heaven, hot and cold running water, a furnace, a gas stove, an Easy washing machine with a wringer run by that machinery, big two compartment, cement, laundry tubs, a fruit closet and a big gas furnace.

I suppose I should have been ecstatic, but I wasn't. I didn't like my new high school and couldn't seem to make any friends. A lot of the population there were kids who had been kicked out of private school and were left home to be raised by the cook, maids etc., Mom and Dad were seldom home and the kids problems were often covered over with scads of cash but no love and attention. It was later in life that it became clear to me that those kids were as world weary, blase and bored as spoiled fifty year olds. They had been everywhere, done everything, tried for more and valued not what they had. I finally quit school and went to work, at age 21 I went to work at a winery and when world two came along I was working in the freight house on a railroad in town.

Now that was simple. But from there on the moves were fast and furious. In the mid 1960's when I filled out the paperwork to get a security clearance for overseas work as an employee of a government contractor I could remember every place I had ever lived, the years there, the addresses and what I had been doing. At that point in time I had it all together -- it did get a bit blurred after that what with layoffs, moves etc.

Up to that point I had listed over one hundred addresses where I had lived. Some were across the country, some were as close as next door. By a major mental effort and much grinding of gears Heather and I can remember where we were living when each child was born and where we were living when the next one arrived. As the kids grew older they became part of the moving crew when we shifted domiciles.

There are in our family some good years and some bad years and some that had made a trip through the Mixmaster and a terrible one or two.

I am in the process of gathering data to make an informal history of my life, as I saw it through the years, at my children's behest. Not researched, but from memory, faulty as it is and it is my qualification and obvious why I belong on the No Spring Chicken list.

Now in retirement and at ease my next move might possibly be the final one where we have lots and vaults and all that jazz already paid for. Then I will no longer be Peripatetic . . . . . .

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