Len's Memory Blog

Cheesman Park (entry for 11/27/2024) Cheesman Park in Denver has always been one of my favorite places, from the first time I ever saw it, at age three or so, till the last time I saw it, about twelve years ago, now. If I saw it tomorrow I would still love it. And all this in spite of the fact that it was the setting for my first ever, and worst ever, nightmare. The Park, in real life and nightmare both, is long and narrow, running north to south. It’s two and half city blocks wide, and almost five blocks long. In other words, it’s almost a double square, but not quite. Its northeast corner is only five blocks away from the much more famous City Park, with its world-class zoo, duck pond, beautiful reflecting lake complete with band-shell and tour boat, Museum of National History, and semi-pro baseball field. But I prefer Cheesman. It has four claims to fame. The first is that it has a magnificent Greek-columned style pavilion near the half way point of its eastern edge. The pavilion ha...

alfalfa (entry for 11/20/2024) I love alfalfa.  No, I don’t mean the character of that name on Little Rascals. I mean the actual stuff, the green stuff, that grows in fields, is harvested and made into bales, and then fed to cattle or horses or sometimes even goats.  The lower case item, alfalfa, not the Capitalized one. I love the smell, when it is being mowed, or raked.  It's like a cross between raw green peas and a freshly-mown lawn.  It loses its smell, and its color, and its weight, if you leave it in the field too long before baling.  (It's amazingly heavy when it's first cut.  A good field that has been well watered during growth can yield ten tons an acre when baled green.) In 1956 we bought the farm. (No, I don’t mean anybody died. I mean my dad  bought —as in paid for—a farm. An alfalfa farm, in fact. Forty acres thereof.) I had no idea how he paid for it, as we were very poor, barely making ‘ends meet,’ as they say. I found out years later ...

  Unscathed (entry for 11/13/2024) Sixty-nine years ago yesterday I escaped 'unscathed,' as they say, from a situation where everyone around me fell victim to a scourge of sorts. It happened in the beautiful Mount Baldy area of Washington County, Oregon, less than a mile above where I was attending boarding school at Laurelwood Academy, my first (and Junior) year there.  A photo of a nearby feature (at an earlier time of year) appears at the head of this post. It had been a warm fall, and winter still seemed a long ways away.  The leaves had started turning but were still on the trees. The underbrush was turning dry but hadn't died yet.  The number one song in the US was 'Autumn Leaves' by Roger Williams.  The number one recreational activity in Oregon was hiking, and would be for another few weeks. I guess that's why some idiot decided that our Saturday evening 'entertainment' that week would be to go for a hike in the woods.  At night.  In the woods....

  Daytime (entry for 11/6/24) I have mentioned in previous Memory Blog Posts that we moved from Montrose to Grand Junction in 1953, so that I could continue my Adventist education. One side effect of the move was that we could suddenly watch TV. There was a TV station in Grand Junction, which had not been true of Montrose. My dad discovered the Lawrence Welk Show immediately, and we had to watch it with him every Saturday night. (Fortunately it was on late enough so that even in the height of summer when the sun didn’t go down until 7:30 or so— there was no such thing as Daylight Savings Time yet— we didn’t have to violate the Sabbath to watch it.) That is the only show I remember from our first year in GJ. For one thing, the Health Food Store that my dad owned was too busy, and consumed too much of our time, for us to watch anything on weekdays, even after hours, as cleaning up after a day at the store and getting ready for the next day usually took all of us a couple of hours to ...