2001-05-06 - 12:45 M DST

THE WONDERING JEW

Progress ?

When I was a kid, I think maybe I was one once, or have I been a spoiled cantankerous old man forever ?

Okay, when I was little, back in another century. Airplanes were an event, just to see one up there in the sky, close to the earth. There weren't too many of them either. They flew mail at night, following the rotating beacons spread along their routes, one was along US 85/87 south from Denver. I remember watching the beacons rotating their lights just a bit off the highway.

The only pet animals that were kept behind a fence were ones known to bite people.

There weren't stressed owners accompanying their pets with "Pooper Scoopers" or plastic gloves and baggies. The animals did their thing in their own way, and usually in an inconspicuous place. Of course our Cow Town of the Rockies was much smaller then, fewer people, fewer pets and with a lot more room to roam. Back then most dogs were a member of the family and ate portions of what was served on the table above, from their own dish on the floor. Dogcatchers duties seemed to be to take unlicensed dogs to the pound.

Birds used to fly south in the winter time, I occasionally saw the geese in their "V" formation headed out and knew snow would soon fly here.

The smell of burning wood didn't require a call to the fire department, it was just someone starting a fire in their stove to kindle the coal added to it later. It smelled good too as I passed by on my way home kicking leaves and cans, messin' up the toes of my shoes and dusting my pants cuffs with powdered leaf corpses. Fallen leaves, raked in a pile by a dutiful man usually, and set afire before we kids scattered the pile by exuberantly jumping into it -- were the incense of dreamland I guess it was, it fired my imagination and made me feel I was in a new land where all things were different. Just for a short time in the fall things looked different, bare bones of trees, carpet of dry leaves underfoot and the leaf bonfires permeated the air with that fall smell.

Trudging in the snow a fair distance, later in the season to find a hill big enough to coast down on our sleds, our nostrils being purified by the cold, astringent, clean air, coming home to a warm house, tired and hungry after an afternoon of fun.

Nowadays, to go sledding one must be taken by car somewhere, nothing can be burned outdoors, I exist in a world of blacktop and concrete. The only thing I see rise in the atmosphere is in winter and it is just steam from the power plants cooling towers. Freeways, schmeeways, flyovers, takeovers, layoffs with no day offs. And Nature in our city ? People and pooper scoopers, geese who now do not feel a need to fly south and liberally litter our parks and cemeteries with huge carpets of their pellets. Countryside ? What ? Where ? Oh, yeah those few little patches of greenery waaaay out from town. Seldom now can I see an aircraft up above me, then it is a big jet at 30,000 or above, soundless at that altitude. No more is the roar of gasoline reciprocal aircraft engines heard in town and seldom out side of it either.

Downtown, which existed in one location instead of being splattered over our area into malls, was the only place that blacktop, street car rails and concrete seemed to be natural.

Lowry Field made from countryside land containing Phipps Sanitarium fifty some years ago has been given back to Denver by the Air Force and is now becoming what I call Lowry city. The land is being put to use, but is so very high density occupation with that and traffic from the built up areas in the east suburbs, will cause gridlock around Monaco Parkway and Alameda Avenue is terrible in rush time and are ferocious race tracks a good part of the rest of the day.

Now it appears that things have been highly overextended and the big stores have begun to realize that branches in the suburbs with the increased cost of more building space and additional sales staff etc. plus the transporting equipment and drivers are not profitable, looks like to me. Whatever the reason the widespread malls are dying and being bulldozed while ridiculously more and larger malls are being built (to be bulldozed in ten years or so). Guess they don't get it yet.

TV and VCR's killed off the movie theaters and the pleasure of going out and relaxing into a land of imagination. Where the smell was different and the seats comfortable or at least hard in different spots. When I was little, a movie theater opened and a person could walk up, pay for their ticket, go in and find a seat any time the theater was open. Come in the middle of a show, no problem, just sit through it and watch the start when the show began again, with the added advantage that you could watch the thing in its entirety if you so wished. There were ushers with flashlights who would show people to their seats. The traffic seems to me wasn't any worse than the traffic now to the snack bars of today.

Present day, flashbacks, present day, flashbacks, I'm not sure, can this be called Progress ? . . . . . .

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