2001-05-08 - 16:30 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

New Faces, Old Stuff

One of my duties today was to ride shotgun for Heather and move the car if necessary while she took a roll around suitcase (?) into Meeks Luggage to have it repaired.

Its an old name in luggage in Denver, but seems to me not in the same location as when I was a squirt.

She lucked out and found a space in a parking lot near her destination. Leaving me to read my book or take notes or whatever other legal thing I had the money for and wanted to do, she headed out.

The lot is at the intersection of 15th Street and Californina Street, across 15th from the old Denver Dry Goods Building. Memories crowded in of the refined air of the merchandise and the genteel clerks, that aroma I could only smell in the upscale department stores, the the big tearoom upstairs. Remembered again was the time when I worked at the winery, stopping off there on my way home to buy a present for Heather, clad in my dirty, stinky wine stained, work clothes, yet being treated with the utmost respect and civility by the clerks there. That made a great impact on how I look at the world. The exterior seems pretty much the same, and the arched entry looks familiar, with raised gold letters saying, "The Denver Dry Building," across the rounded part of the arch. Underneath, in raised gold letters was, "Robert Waxman." An old line, well known camera store which came into being when Ford Optical went out of business I assume. In one of the front windows is the sign Wolf Cameras.

Change follows change, sometimes before the material evidences have caught up.

Down a block or two is the old Public Serice building with a shiny, white exterior pocked with square holes which once had light sockets. I remember it when it was lit up at night, what a grand and showy display it was, celebrating life as we thought it should be.

The beauty is long gone, World War Two put the lights out and eventually Public Service Company of Colorado moved to another building. It is still shiny white with little black, empty pocks.

Looking a block or two in the same direction and one block over, almost hidden by the new Lego (TM) style excrescences of new buildings, stands the grand Italian style clock tower, the only remnant of the building that once took up a whole city block, once the most upscale merchandising establishment in the West. The Neiman Marcus of my time. The Daniels & Fisher Tower is still the very staid, serious, prim and proper old lady she always has been. Shortened by time, but still a presence.

I sat there and remembered the old Arapahoe County Court house which took a city block at the upper end of 15th and 16th Streets. In my memory it stands out as a gloomy, old fashioned, awkward sort of place that told me that my streetcar ride would soon end at the Tramway Loop.

Putting as much of the old as I could in place in my mind it messed me over to look and think of all the stuff that had been bulldozed and built over again several different times since I snapped a whip.

So I sat in the lot, thinking and peeking into what once was my future town of Denver and noting the raggedy reality of our new day.

There have of course been many good changes. In men's restrooms everywhere I notice tables for fathers to change their babies, stalls that allow wheel chair users access to the facilities. Even in downtown some things have changed for the better. 14th Street where the Auditorium was, is now on one side The Denver Performing Arts Center, which includes and surrounds the old Auditorium, uptown from that is Currigan Hall the Exhibition Hall clad in Corten Steel, which has aged into the beautiful color they said it would. Uptown of that is the new Convention Center which seems to have been designed from a model made also by Legos (TM) type of architect's play toys. Almost the span of 14th Street is the great show and tell place for us all to see shows, of one kind or another.

As we moved about downtown we noticed that the beautiful, old, marble building made in classical style, the Main Postoffice now has cranes around it, but couldn't see what is happening. On upper 14th Street is the old Denver Public School administration building. Big to me then, dinky now, but wearing the same face.

Tramway Tech which once housed the downtown section of Denver University, and relatively unused for years has cranes in there too.

The excursion gave us an idea, to go down town and do the tour all around soon to see what still remained of our cherished, "Down Town."

Today, Heather and I gladly saw remembered places, thankfully, before they were changed forever and forgotten.

So, to this old man it is again, New Faces, Old Stuff. . . . . .

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