Mar. 28, 2007 - 20:56 MDT

MINISCULE MAGNIFIED

I occurred to me tonight that my good memories of growing up are pretty well concentrated in a few short years. As it might just be with many folks, I don't know.

My good and treasured memories for the most part were from my first awareness up to our move from South Denver to East Denver.

But in those few short years is a world of happiness. Even though Dust Bowl days and the Depression loomed over us, we had our fun and good times.

The fact that if one closed their mouth a bit hard the teeth would grit from the breathed in dust, was just a common thing with us, that's the way it was and we went on from there. Constant colds and breathing problems, same thing.

I was poor, so was everyone else I knew and went to school with. Wasn't 'til we moved to East Denver that I was exposed to the sneering of the kids of the wealthy, the ones who had been everywhere, done everything and been kicked out of exclusive boarding schools, who had everything handed to them by servants, all the money they could spend and more if they asked for it. I had one thing they didn't, my parents. They were home every night, we lived as a family, coped and eked as best we could. They loved me and I loved them. But many of the rich kids essentially didn't really have loving parents, they were seen after professionally, but didn't have loving parents around very often, if at all.

During those years I was a living sponge, trying to learn about everything and all things. Heh, I even tried to learn at school, especially when I encountered a teacher that gave a damn for their pupils. But in life outside the school environment, I tried to determine what made things run, why people thought the way they did, what made them tick and what infuriated them. Not that I tried to rile any one in particular, a lot of that was from questions asked and careful diplomatic listening.

That short time of growing up, becoming a person, is so short and so very precious to me.

I was going through a book I have about Denver and its history. The book is mostly photos, with some paragraphs. Which led me to dredging up more memories. For instance our teachers asking that we bring in "Current Events" clippings out of our newspapers. Part of that bit was the emphasis the teachers put on us finding "significant" news items. The discussions in class were probing and sometimes making us kids shake our heads over the state of things (even then).

In junior high we were introduced to sock hopping don't know what they called it then, can't remember, but street shoes were not allowed on gymnasium floors. The audio must have been primitive, what with the state of the art in 1935 compared to today, but it had noise and rhythm with a bit of melody mixed in. Back then even the vocals overrode the instrumental. But trying to make my rebellious stuttering feet do as others did was pretty hopeless, but I still enjoyed it and being that close to a girl without getting cooties began to reconcile me to the difference between boys and girls. My romantic ideas up to that time were more or less worshipping from afar and bashfully tendering valentines to a girl that took my fancy.

I think all of us boys dreamed of the day we could drive a car, and on into the dim future ahead, of the day we would own a car of our own. We went to great lengths to build a "chug" coaster wagon wheels on a home built vehicle, that might have a real steering wheel mounted on a broomstick stuck for and aft through one-by boards, with rope wound around and tied to the axles, quite primitive way to steer but we were proud of our endeavors. Most of our chugs were push powered by friends and the onus shifted from pusher to pushee at times. The early essays into automotive imagination I think were what caused soapbox derbies to come into being. So many of us didn't have hills near our homes, that coasting down a hill in our own "chug" was a dream beyond measure. While we dreamed, we also cobbled up brakes in case we ever got close to a hill.

So a short time growing up, lived as rapidly as a young chap could was the MINISCULE MAGNIFIED . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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