“Itsa gone!” My Italian grandmother, Louisa, known as “Nonni,” used to play a game with me when I was perhaps 5 years old. I would play with a toy, and then leave it to go on to another. When I came back it would be gone. I’d ask Nonni if she’s seen my toy. “Itsa gone!” she would tease.
The old neighborhood, my playground the first 14 years of life, was roughly bounded by West 32nd to the south, West 44th to the north, Lipan Street to the east and Federal Boulevard to the west. When we ventured further, it was never by much, and it was a special excursion when we did. But the most fun was just out my back door.
Behind our house was a vacant lot, the last in northwest Denver for many years. That large lot was a precious world to us kids.
Recently my wife and I drove down to the old neighborhood to have dinner at Rosa Linda’s on West 33rd Ave. Driving down Tejon, I saw a construction fence around the vacant lot. Townhomes are being built on the site. My childhood world will be forever lost (“Itsa gone!”), but the many memories of it are not.
Greg DiPaolo and I invented mountain bikes and cross-country racing thanks to that vacant lot. During “free time” at the Bryant-Webster school library, I had seen a Schwinn Continental racing bike on the back cover of Boy’s Life. Of course we couldn’t afford $89.95 for a bicycle. So we did what kids did back then: made do with what we had, ladled with generous dollops of imagination.
We bought two old bikes from a neighbor. I think we got them both for $5, or two weeks’ worth of lawn-mowing earnings. Greg and I went to work. We first took off the fenders to emulate the Schwinn Continental. The chain guards had to go, also.
We mounted the biggest, ugliest tires we could find. Last, we reversed the handlebars, took off the handle grips and taped the bars.
Next, we set out to turn that vacant lot into a race course. We built some hills, and used rocks to create barriers. Where the figure-8 crossed in the middle we dug a hole and created a nice water hazard to jump up and over. The finish line was just past a clump of large shrubs. Greg and I had races there all summer. Other kids in the neighborhood soon joined.
One evening, I watched a television show about a time capsule that had been placed in a building and opened 50 years later. I decided to put together one of my own and bury it in the vacant lot. In a small box, I placed a plastic model car, several Lincoln pennies, a picture of my Uncle Gene’s gorgeous, jet-black 1957 Oldsmobile 98, and a Flash comic book. Early the next morning, I buried it just off the alley on the edge of the vacant lot. I remember making sure I threw over some weeds, sticks and a few rocks to conceal the spot.
That vacant lot gave us the opportunity to be creative and spread our little wings. I suppose with iPods,
iPads, the Internet and smartphones, kids today don’t need to be so creative. That’s a shame. Try to launch a model rocket in a mall.
If the construction workers putting up the new townhomes find the time capsule, I hope they return my Flash comic book. It’s now probably worth $200. Alas, I suspect itsa gone, too.
Michael Duane Archer grew up in northwest Denver. He is the author of several non-fiction books, including “Getting Started in Currency Trading” (John Wiley & Sons, 2010).
