2001-06-24 - 19:19 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

For All Ages

Those vast areas of green lawn and towering trees in the park I saw when a tyke, got smaller it seemed when I grew older. The park that seemed to stretch out to infinity showed itself to me as just a full city block which also housed Decker's Library and a house.

The many parks are with us here in Denver, hopefully they will stay. I hope that those patches of green grass, green trees and benches survive countrywide, they should.

It seems to me that a park is what each person wants it be. Heather and I today wanted Crestmoor Park to be a haven of peace, tranquility and nice scenery. And it was, it was definitely. On a bench, on a low hill west of the tennis courts is a comfortable spot which affords us a view across most of the park.

Off to the left is a little playground that recently had five of the new, pretty metal benches installed on cement pads, great new equipment for the kids to play on. A nice brick building in a clump of trees houses the restrooms near by with a water fountain on the outside.

Evergreen trees abound throughout the park, with various deciduous trees interspersed between, shrubs here and there.

The park is about three long city blocks by three short blocks in size. Has two well kept ball fields; soccer and volley ball are also heavily played seasonally in the open greens.

There is an asphalt path on the circumference gently curving as it goes with benches to rest on here and there.

Today Heather and I rested and relaxed up there, watching the life of the park as it unfolded. Cater-corner there was a big picnic going on in the adequately tabled picnic area. The playground was peopled with kids playing and their folks sitting by for comfort or encouragement as the events called for.

The path is alive with dog walkers, joggers, little kids on trikes, kids on bikes, big kids on bikes, grown folks on bikes and in line skaters of all ages and folks like Heather and I feebling along at our own pace. It seems as if the path is the artery giving life to the park, the flow is uninterrupted, each entity smoothly flowing past slower traffic. There is one asphalt path going from near the playground to the big picnic area which is vibrantly alive with little kids on bikes and running folk. The blue sky arching over us and smiling. That path is under our eyes too. Usually the two ball fields and the wide stretches of greensward are full of competitors on the week ends, but not today.

The city started in the fall digging ditches interlacing the park and spent the winter and most of spring putting in the piping and sprinklers for their new system. All are electrically controlled from a central point in the park. So, no longer will we see park employees pulling out or putting in the sprinkler heads as they used to. Watering in the parks brings back some of my childhood to me, then the watering was done with sprinklers attached to thick walled hoses. This year we feared the grass would be dead before they got the water flowing, but 'twas completed in time.

Heather and I think that there have been no competitions scheduled at Crestmoor for the summer to enable the park to heal itself. Most of the little ditches are already grassed over, but there is still bare ground on the wide places where the mains were laid. By next year the games will probably be scheduled again.

It looks to Heather and I that parks here in Denver are in a lot of ways the scenes of life at its best, an aura of peace, serene tranquillity, restfulness and a place where throbbing life exists and glows. At times I will take a book and go over to the park, find a shady spot and read, intermittently looking up and enjoying the park.

At the north end of the park the houses have resplendent flower beds making a grand show across the park.

Heather's folks had a house near a little block park. In the day time on the week ends we would sit at the park, strolling once in a while, making a trip to the grocery a block away to get Pepsi's and or candy. A place where, although in the midst of people we were in privacy because all the others were busy doing their own things. We held hands, looking into each others eyes, making our plans. At night when we came up from town, the bus stop was at a corner of the park and we would sit on a bench there awhile and then go to her house.

As a younger man, before I met Heather I swam in the north lake at Washington Park - ice skated there in the winter -- bicycled there and roller skated to and from there in the summer. City Park had the zoo, natural history museum and a lake where paddle boats could be rented. Hot dogs and various things could be bought at a concession there. Sometimes I could persuade a girl to go with me in the evening to that lake and sit on one of the benches arranged for the band concert. I really enjoyed that, nice music from the band and the wonderful colored fountain sraying in various patterns in the background. We used to take our kids out on week end evenings, they would play sometimes rolling down the big bank nearby while Heather and I sat above listening to the band and watching the fountain.

I have found, that for myself, peace and contentment can be found in a tiny park also, no uproar, a little greenery and the blue sky above are balm to my soul, sometimes just sitting there and watching the birds, or kids, reading a book maybe puts my soul back in order again. Don't tell on me, dozing a bit if the mood strikes me. Inspecting the inside of my eyelids ya' know.

I guess it was in the parks in the city that I learned to appreciate places in the country around town, watching the Magpies flying in and out of the scene and cattle wandering in the meadows, a farmer working somewhere in the scene. It always feels to me that I have been let out of school or off work when I go into the park, free of the restrictions and interruptions of city life, slowing down to smell the roses and watch the goings on in an ant pile. I am a small boy again, my bare toes scritching in the grass watching the grown ups do their thing while I do mine.

In old age it is very plain to me that Parks are For All Ages . . . . .

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