Jan. 31, 2002 - 19:44 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

The Park

Although I was only in Denver's East High School not quite a year and a half, I was there long enough to form a love for City Park which abuts the school grounds on 17th Avenue.

The school itself is a beautiful piece of architecture, built along classic lines with a wide Esplanade in front of it. City Park is approximately a mile square if the golf course is included in the measure. An expanse of beautiful green grass and a mixture of evergreen trees and a wide variety of deciduous trees with winding paths throughout. It is big enough to contain what used to be called the Museum of Natural History but is some other fancy name now I think. It has a zoo which has expanded over the years. Two lakes one of which seems to be the habitat of the web footed creatures and the other on a bit higher ground has the Band Shell and the now inactive Lighted Fountain. Also there are tennis courts and horse shoe pegs.

When I was in high school the park was where it was at. Sack lunches eaten in a favorite spot were much more pleasant. Of course it was the ideal place for lollygagging. Our ROTC used it as a drilling place and parade ground.

In our spare time we would go to the zoo, the big playground near the zoo was beneath our adult dignity of course and was merely a path from somewhere to somewhere else - maybe taking a round on the rings or a quick bit on the Merry Go Round, on the way to the Museum and sometimes to pitch horse�shoes or play a little tennis. Sometimes on a Saturday some of us would cobble up some food and have a picnic there, those were especially nice if some of the group were girls or mothers who would fix something for the outing.

In the fall gathering different kinds of leaves for art classes or biology classes was a good activity. The trees in the park were subjects of drawing by art classes, fall, winter or spring. I used to go around the huge rose garden just west of the bandshell in the blooming season, I could smell then. There was a small pond on the south side of the park which had lily pads, a beautiful sight when the lilys were in bloom.

In winter the big lake would have an area that the city would clear and scrape off for ice skating. So for me the Park was a year round place I loved to be in. In the spring and early summer would be the wonderful smell of growing vegetation, acres and acres of grass and shrubs and trees perfumed the air with life to excess. Of course fall had the special smell of the carpet of dead leaves on the ground and the fun of kicking through said leaves.

I guess I was lucky in parks. In elementary and junior high school Platt Park and Decker's library was just a block or two away and was about the same distance from my house. When I went to South High the beautiful Renaissance style school building was just to the south east of Washington Park, another huge park with two lakes, grass, shrubs and trees. I was over there with the ROTC on a review once in the late spring. I also skated on the north lake in the winter time there.

In the main part of Denver we were fortunate that Mayor Speer tried to get all the parks and parkways in town that he could swing and I think he did a superb job of it. For an arid plains town, irrigation ditches were everywhere early on, when I was a kid I remember some were still in existence along the curbs. There are still trees planted in the old days growing in town here.

It is strange to me to go to a new development and see the start of lawns, baby trees and shrubs and not a bit of shade anywhere yet. It just doesn't seem like Denver. There are places that were that way when I was a kid but now have shade trees and ornamentals growing and seem to have grown into our town.

I remember that the old Number 5 street car went from near Washington Park to Lakeside Amusement Park clear across town. Most of our parks could be reached by street car.

Still in our life a park is an important living place for Heather and I, we are more or less just across the street from Crestmoor Park, which although a little smaller than most Denver Parks is one obviously planned and planted by the same genius who was responsible for the other parks here in town.

I guess that is why I liked to go out into the country as a kid. A park I guess is in a way a formalized bit of countryside, fancied up a bit and having things built there of an attractive nature. The country side to me was fields, cattle, streams and wide spots beside the roads where we could picnic. In its own right the country side was The Park . . . . . . .

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