May. 13, 2002 - 19:28 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

So Long Gene

A term used by us kids in lieu of good bye, "So long," is an appropriate one for me to use to tell goodbye to Gene Amole as he grew up in Denver in the same era as Heather and I did and that would be language he would easily understand. He is gone, died 5:30 PM Sunday May 12, 2002.

He was two years older than Heather and two years younger than I. The three of us always had a great thing in common, we were born and raised in Denver and grew up loving it as it gradually changed from a town sneeringly referred to by the Easterners as a "Cow Town." And when we were little I think it was. We had a huge stockyards bordered with several meat packing businesses, feed lots outside of town. Down by the rail yards the cattle cars were present in great numbers in the freight trains. A great event here then was the Stockshow which went on during the winter, in fact "Stock Show Weather," was almost uniformly bitter cold with snow possible. A Cow town ? Sure, why not ? Our town was one of the towns that fed meat to the USA.

We always knew which way West was, it was where Mount Evans flanked by lesser mountains loomed protectively over our town. We existed through the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl days, knew every nook and cranny of downtown knew by name the big buildings and which businesses were in which building and some of the crooks and nannys that plied their trade down town. We knew the Union Station that served five railroads and the rail yards stretching to the Platte River behind said station. We remembered vividly the rails on each side of Market Street and Blake street where boxcars were switched in and out to the businesses there, in the middle of the night. We knew the Tramway Loop where the streetcars looped around and going back on the route they just came in on. We knew the two big grocery markets down town where odors of delicious eatables which varied depending on where you were in the store similar to surfing the tv channels but with a slight change of air currents new odors would be sniffed. We knew the Number 5 street car that didn't loop but went back and forth from kids Heaven to kids Paradise -- Heaven being Washington Park where we could swim in the north lake and roam the rest of the park as we played and to Paradise at the other end, Lakeside Amusement Park where the roar of the roller coaster urged our feet to carry us quickly in to all the fun. Gene and I knew the drinking fountains on most every corner downtown which had cool water bubbling evermore and the fountains had at their bases a bowl fed by the drainage from the fountain where horses and dogs could get a drink of water too.

He knew the same Denver I knew. Why am I so sure ? He wrote about it frequently and much more eloquently than I can about how Denver was, back when we were growing up. He would rant about things too, sometimes I would disagree with his thoughts but most of the time I had that, "Right on Geno," feeling.

I read snippets now and then in his column about one ailment or another that he was coping with, understanding that he worked with pain and heavy discomfort -- but over the years his ills accumulated until about eighteen weeks ago his doctors told him more or less he was terminal with multi-systems failure. At that time I guess he decided to go under Hospice care at home. For seventeen weeks he wrote a column six days a week, four more than the three a week he had been writing before. Last Thursday night he told John Temple the publisher that he still had more that he wanted to say. But, after a period of silence I think we all knew that he just wasn't able to write a column any more.

I met him once at the Rocky Mountain News booth on First Avenue during a Cherry Creek Art Festival and had a conversation with him, a time I have treasured since then which will stay in my memory and heart for as long as I live.

In my eyes, Gene Amole was a Great Communicator who talked to peons and pooh bahs in language readily understood by us all.

I will miss Gene and his columns, but my sadness is over his wife Trish and his kids and grandson Jacob, where there is now an aching void in their lives that can't be filled. I just hope that when I die I go to the same place he went to, hoping that his grin and handshake will welcome me there.

The last farewell, So Long Gene . . . . . . . . . .

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