2001-06-16 - 22:36 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

The Hub

No matter how many ball fields they build and Six Flags they put in down there, what once was there is still in my heart and head. I am drifting down into the bottoms along the Platte River, just west of the Union Depot. Down there is where sweat producing work used to go on, from the river up to just below Larimer Street. Market Street on towards the river had railroad tracks on both sides of each street. At night the boxcars that were in front of the businesses were moved. Some full ones are pulled out to be sent to destination and empties put in place of them. Some boxcars had come into town for a business and were switched in to the line so as to be in the proper place come work time come daylight. Took some ingenuity to put that all together, but night after night it was done. There were a couple of places down there which were storage places for household goods. A couple of department stores had their warehouses in that area. A flour mill and grain storage places. Most anything taking place down there was by physical effort, except for the office people of course. They just had to put up with the soot and dirt of the area, and the smells.

Not too far from where Coors Field is now, the Public Service Company had a steam plant which fed steam uptown to heat the buildings. I remember on cold mornings downtown seeing the steam coming up from the manhole covers.

Near there the Telegraph Company that Mother worked for had a branch office. A very spartan office, dusty in the extreme. When I would go down to visit her in the summer time dusting was my chore. I dusted when I first got there in the morning and then again before I left with her at quitting time. There were telegrams coming and going down there as they did uptown in the fancy brokerage houses etc. Her messenger boy was always complaining about the dirt and dust wreaking havoc on his uniform and the grit grinding his bicycle parts to runination.

Near her office was a coal yard. A small business which dealt in coal by the sack. The man who owned it made a living, a black, grimy, backbreaking living, but a living nonetheless. When he had a few minutes to spare he would come over to Mom's office to use the facilities as he had none in his coal yard. I always knew he was coming because I could hear him stamping his feet and swatting at his coveralls to get rid of as much coal dust as he could. At first sight he was a frightening man, huge, all muscle and not handsome at all. Staring out at the world throught a face blackened by coal dust, the kind that is ground in and never washes off. But he was a kind and gentle soul and a gentleman of the old school. He had family who owned truck gardens near town and he would drop by fresh vegetables from time to time for Mom to take home.

Later, still in the bottoms his nephew was my boss. In the course of years my life was lived in the bottoms. First as a messenger boy for the CB&Q Railroad, then at various small businesses down there. I worked in the Wazee Market where wholesale produce would come in by boxcar and be unloaded, also at a wholesale spice company, where the product was sneezy to my hayfever. Handling mesh bags of cabbage which were rough as coarse sandpaper on the hands, I would often be put to unloading crates of lettuce which were large, wet, packed on top with ice and stacked high in the reefer cars. Lettuce crate construction was such that the ends were rectangles of strong pine pieces with slats backing them. When the lettuce was packed, ice would be put top and the top of the crate nailed down. The nails would protrude from the underside of the end crosspieces and really mess up a guys hands. Bananas gave troubles of a different kind. Oranges and lemons were in those neat boxes. They were stacked as high as a man could reach and were heavy, heavy and splintery. Every once in a while I would go to heaven and help unload reefers of avocados, those blessed little wooden boxes that weighed little and handled easily.

After I reached my majority I worked at a wholesale liquor company's winery and warehouse in the Wazee Market continuing the unloading of boxcars of spirits this time. They were easy on the hands and didn't weigh too much compared to some of the produce, consequently we unloaded more boxcars than the produce people did in a working day.

Their wine came in in tank cars from California, piped into vats downstairs and bottled down there under the company label, boxed and stacked to be sent out. That is where I ended up there. I remember that some of the wine came from Italian Swiss Colony in California in the tank cars.

I applied for work at the D&RGW - CRIP Freight house just toward the river from Wazee Market. Soon I was working for the railroad, as a messenger boy, and then a messenger boy patrolman. Which job entailed the necessary switching back and forth of waybills from our road and from other road to ours and checking the seals on the boxcars on the incoming stuff. Broken seals entailed people in the yard office calling for the railroad cop to come check out the load. I was still doing that when the war materiel was coming through and being accosted by military guards who were accompanying certain shipments.

Later on I became a clerk in the freight house for the duration. Walking from the Tramway loop down past city hall, Brecht Candy Co., Carson Crockery to the frieght house.

Today, passing through the area they call Lo-do where the companies who supplied the mines during the gold rush here, Meadow Gold storage building, the Oxford Hotel and the building where Hendrie and Bolthoff used to be -- those marvelous suppliers of most any hardware item imaginable, Windsor Farm Dairy, on by Coors Field where part of The Denver Fire Clay Co. and Carpenter Paper Co. used to stand.

Heather wonders why I get to breathing heavy and get that funny look in my eyes. I smell the engine smoke and steam, figuratively rub the dust between my fingers, remember the hours and days spent working down there , right in the middle of what was then going on at the real true Hub . . . . . .

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