September 9, 2022 ~ Friday (night/it’s raining and now blissfully COOL!)
Hello Autumn! While this summer was brutal (in so many ways/and notice the PAST tense) … I’m not sure I’m quite ready for Fall. At least not in ONE DAY. What happened to the gradual sliding into the next season? But, with these much/much cooler temps, I think it has arrived. Yesterday was 99° … as were the past 5 days (somewhere between I’m-sick-of-sizzling 97° and bake-your-brains-out 99°). Today we topped out at 72° (maybe) and right now, at nearly 10pm – it’s raining and an unusually cool 52°! What a difference a day makes!
Tomorrow we are to warm up to 54° … tomorrow night we dip to 44°! Crazy. But, I’m not complaining. I’ve roasted this summer and right now I’m not getting a year’s worth of rain in one day – like southern CA. I’m not being evacuated because of a raging wildfire – like in too many places in the West. And, I’m not preparing for a hurricane (on both coasts) to whip off my roof/flood my streets/and make my life miserable.
Instead, I get to wear a sweater!
I tried one on tonight – as I’m pretty sure I haven’t had anything on my arms (but maybe once) since the first week in June. My arms took to it like my last dose of penicillin or if I’d taken a sip of champagne … ITCH-CITY! This is going to take some getting used to! The older I get the more sensitive I get to just about everything … clothes, food, animals, environmental anything. In another 10 years I’m going to have to join a nudist colony … in a bubble!
I’m not sure I’m ready for “sweater weather” (though I love it) … but as I look at the next two weeks’ forecast … we’ll be dropping into the low 80s and high 70s. Today and this weekend are just a jolting reminder that the summer heat will not last (thank god!) – but it’ll come back for a last hurrah and by the end of ten more days, we’ll all be really ready for the cooler temps of autumn.
I’ve been realizing that being back in Denver poses the same issues as whenever I’ve moved before … as in, I need new doctors (dentist/derm/primary/eye). Yesterday I drove to my eye appointment. The dr. is new to me … well, not completely. Her parents were our first neighbors when we moved to Denver in 1979! I knew Amy when she was an infant. And there she was – forty years later with a two year old at home herself – examining my old eyeballs! Full circle.
I loved the drive to her office. I drove up (old) South Broadway which is now known by locals as SoBo. It is a busy 4-laner which goes from one end of the Denver metro area to the other (north/south) and right through downtown. Now that old area houses an eclectic mix of craft breweries, eateries, rooftop patios, antique stores and about a million pot shops (my friend today regarded it as “The Green Mile”). Back in the 1980s and ’90s when I knew it best, it had a much different feel … a bit more run down … mostly antique shops … some old, crappy (don’t you dare go in) taverns … too many vacuum and razor stores. Times are a’changin’ once again … as gypsy Madam LaRue’s shop (complete with crystal ball readings) has been replaced with a Starbucks.
And while I remember some of it from those decades when I lived here before, I wish I could have been in a time machine just to see what that strip of 3-4 blocks looked like some 60-70 years ago … back in the ’50s and ’60s. I imagine the corner shop was a drug store – complete with a soda fountain and a jangly bell on the door. The quaint windowed double store front was possibly a diner with a jukebox. I could just imagine those pink or red booths and a black and white tile floor. The worn down (and now some empty) shops once housed the neighborhood “necessary” shops … block after block of what made a community a community … butchers, bakeries, barber and beauty shops, book stores and cleaners. The shops that the locals walked to … the delis, the shoe stores, the women’s boutiques.
As I drove along I saw an old touristy motel with its large, rotating sign atop a tall pole … the Lucky ‘U’ Motel … complete with a big cloverleaf. I remember going by that place eons ago when they were filling in the parking lot swimming pool. I felt a wave of nostalgia as I passed by. It’s now filled in with tired landscaping and the whole motel is looking like it’s seen (much) better days. Oh how I wished I could have a minute’s glimpse of a hot summer’s day back in 1963 with city visitors laughing, going down the pool’s turquoise curved slide and tossing striped beach balls to one another and splashing around in its cool waters.
A far cry from the tattoo parlors and liquor stores that seem now to be on every corner in that area.
All that made me wish I could pop back to 1968 or so … when I was old enough to go to the shopping center with my girlfriends and walk around by ourselves! Someone’s mom drove us and while she shopped, that gave us a whole hour or so to be on our own! Delightful!!!! So, what did we do with this new-found freedom? We headed straight to Woolworth’s. OMG. I’d love to walk through an old Woolworth’s today! They had EVERYTHING. If you’ve ever been in one, you know what I mean … from fish to aprons to toys to hardware … cosmetics, slips, shoes … and the BEST luncheonette anywhere on the planet.
As I type I can almost smell the greasy burgers frying on the flattop. We girls sat at an aqua booth with the laminate table top that looked like little colored boomerangs were embedded in it. (My brother’s desktop was the same laminate. Lucky him!) We’d order cokes and fries (using as much ketchup as a football team) … and just enjoyed smelling everyone else’s lunches. We didn’t have the money to buy “real” food but those fries and cokes were heavenly. And the freedom was, too!
As an adult, and new in Denver in 1979, I worked at an oil and gas company in the “mailbox building” downtown. It never occurred to me (what an IDIOT I was!) to bring gym shoes to work and slip them on when I ventured out at lunchtime to walk the downtown corridor. Oh no! I was too cute to be sensible! I’d walk from my building to the old Woolworth’s building – roughly 6 blocks. I walked blocks and blocks and BLOCKS (in any weather – snow/rain/sun) in my lilac suede Candies slip ons with the 4″ heels (I called them my “hooker shoes” – for obvious reasons)! I’d walk all the way down to Woolworths, buy a slice of the BEST pizza anywhere in town, and carry it back to my desk/inside a wax paper envelope. By the time I got back to the office and my desk/my feet were sore and the grease from the pizza had saturated the wax paper. It was a glorious lunch break!
I thought of all this in a matter of minutes as I drove along passing all those old shops and places. Good thing I didn’t run a red light while so distracted. It would have been hard to explain to a young cop (but an old one would have enjoyed the memories with me and given me a warning, I’m sure!) There’s nothing like a nice trip down Memory Lane.